May 9 coronavirus news

The Doe Fund, a group know for aiding formerly incarcerated men to rejoin society, has moved about 300 men into a high-end hotel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a spokesman for the organization told CNN.

Bill Cunningham, the spokesman, said the city matched the organization with the hotel to follow social distancing protocols because their three housing facilities in Harlem and Brooklyn have dormitory-style rooms housing about 10 men at a time.

Two men will be assigned to a single room and meals will be delivered to the rooms three times per day. They will continue their work program jobs, including cleaning public spaces like bus shelters and mail boxes. They will be subject to the same security policies in the organization's shelters, Cunningham said.

About 7,000 people in need of shelter have been staying at hotels across the city, "enabling them to more effectively isolate while also increasing social distancing at the shelters from which they moved,” said Isaac McGinn, a spokesman with the city's Department of Social Services.

The agency declined to discuss what hotels are being used to house New Yorkers in need of shelter. As of Friday, DSS had tracked 882 positive Covid-19 cases in their system and 73 deaths, McGinn said.

The Doe Fund had about 20 positive cases among its members since early March, but no Covid-19 related deaths thus far, Cunningham said.

Robert Redfield, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "will be teleworking" for the next two weeks after he was exposed to a person at the White House who tested positive for Covid-19, a CDC spokesman told CNN.

The Washington Post first reported Redfield's action.

Redfield "has been determined to have had a low risk exposure on May 6 to a person at the White House who has Covid-19. He is feeling fine and has no symptoms. He will be teleworking for the next two weeks," the spokesperson said.

The decision comes after the Food and Drug Administration announced that its commissioner, Dr. Stephen Hahn, planned to self-quarantine after coming in contact with an individual who tested positive for coronavirus.

Neither agencies have named the person or people with whom Redfield and Hahn came into contact. 

Both men are members of the White House coronavirus task force, which held its most recent meeting on Thursday. 

White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere declined to confirm the report that Redfield will self-quarantine, but he said the physician to the President and White House operations officials "continue to work closely to ensure every precaution is taken to keep the President, First Family and the entire White House Complex safe and healthy."

Patients who took famotidine while hospitalized for Covid-19 were more than twice as likely to survive the infection, according to a paper posted Friday on a pre-publication website. 

Among the 1,536 patients in the study who were not taking famotidine, 332, or 22%, either died or were intubated and put on a ventilator. Of the 84 patients who were taking famotidine, eight, or 10%, died or were put on a ventilator.

But the study doesn't prove the drug caused the lower death rate, its authors say. It's possible that it was just a coincidence.

"It is not clear why those patients who received famotidine had improved outcomes," the authors wrote in their statement. "This is merely an association, and these findings should not be interpreted to mean that famotidine improves outcomes in patients hospitalized with COVID-19."

The drug is a common heartburn medicine and has been on the market for nearly 40 years. It's an active ingredient in the popular over-the-counter heartburn treatment Pepcid.

Read the full story here.

The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe won't comply to a request to take down its coronavirus checkpoints.

"We will not apologize for being an island of safety in a sea of uncertainty and death," Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Harold Frazier said in a statement.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem sent letters Friday to the leaders of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and the Oglala Sioux Tribe, demanding they "immediately cease interfering" with traffic and remove the checkpoints.

Reservation residents have been asked to complete a health questionnaire at checkpoints when they leave and when they return, according to Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe policies. South Dakota residents who don't live on the reservation are only allowed there if they're not coming from a hot spot and it is for an essential activity.

Read the full story here.

The spread of the novel coronavirus has slowed down in significantly in most parts of Canada but the situation in Montreal remains critical.

"Of course I'm worried — as a Quebecer, as an MP — about the situation going on in my riding, in the province, as I am concerned about Canadians coast to coast, as prime minister," Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters on Saturday in Ottawa.

There are more than 68,000 cases of the virus in Canada and about 4,800 people have died, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University. Montreal's cases account for about a quarter of the country's cases, Quebec officials say.

More background: Trudeau’s electoral district is in Montreal, where senior centers have been reporting outbreaks.

New projections released by the Quebec’s public health institute on Friday indicate the virus could lead to as many as 150 deaths per day if Montreal fully reopens and strict social distancing guidelines are loosened.

Earlier this week, authorities in Quebec, the province where Montreal is located, postponed plans to lift some restrictions in the city from mid-May to May 25.

The novel coronavirus has infected more than 4 million people and killed more than 227,000 worldwide, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University.

At least 1.3 million people have tested positive for Covid-19 in the US and more than 78,000 people have died from the disease in the country.

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo urged people to be cautious after the state's stay-at-home order was lifted on Saturday.

Rhode Island became the first state in the northeastern United States to loosen its statewide restriction on Saturday. Social gatherings remain limited to up to five people and retail stores are reopening under some restrictions.

There were 210 new Covid-19 cases on Friday, Raimondo said.

President Trump tweeted that beginning next week, the US will purchase $3 billion worth of food from farms to provide to food banks.

Trump called the initiative “Farmers to Family Food Box.”

CNN previously reported this program is part of the $19 billion in aid to farmers the US Department of Agriculture that was announced on April 17.

About the program: The USDA is partnering with private distributors who will buy a variety of food and package it into boxes that it will deliver to food banks. The USDA said it will spend $100 million a month on fruits and vegetables, $100 million on dairy products and a $100 million on meat products.

The other $16 billion will be distributed in payments directly to farmers, though that system is not expected to be up and running until the end of May.

American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall applauded the USDA’s moved on Friday.

This news comes as food banks across the country face immense pressure with Americans out of work at historic rates.

A food distribution site with “Women Giving Back” in Sterling, Virginia, gave away almost 11,000 pounds of food on Saturday to nearly 400 households, according to statistics provided by the group.

The organization was forced to turn five carloads of people away after running out of food.

Read Trump's tweet:

Today marked the lowest number of Covid-19 positive patients currently hospitalized in Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp said in a tweet. 

There are currently 1,203 patients hospitalized with the virus, the lowest number since hospitals began reporting this data on April 8.

Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) reported 32,511 confirmed coronavirus cases and 1,400 deaths on Saturday. DPH is now reporting cases in every county in the state.