May 25 coronavirus news

While Montgomery, Alabama, has seen an increase in available ICU beds, the city is "still at a crisis level," Mayor Steven Reed told CNN today.

The number of beds grew from just one on Thursday to six as of this morning.

Reed sounded the alarm last week when he revealed the city had just one ICU bed.   

When asked about his states upward trend in positive cases, the mayor told Camerota that "people have decided the pandemic is over," and aren't doing things like social distancing or wearing masks. He said he was not comfortable with Gov. Kay Ivey's decision to reopen the state and depend on residents to be personally responsible.  

"I think that we have to ask people to be personally responsible but I also think the government has to set the tone," Reed told Camerota.  

Reed told Camerota's the governor's decision to allow high-school sports to resume training June 1 was "another example of us moving too fast, moving too soon."     

"I'm concerned that we may put not only the students at risk but we may also put their loved ones, their families at risk as well," Reed told Camerota. 

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Vienna’s medical university successfully conducted the first coronavirus lung transplant in Europe last week, the medical center said in a press release Monday. The hospital said the 45-year-old COVID-19 patient would not have survived otherwise but is now recovering well. 

The hospital said the patient was in good health without prior illnesses before coming down with coronavirus eight weeks ago. Shortly after falling ill, her condition deteriorated dramatically. 

“The situation was hopeless," Klepetko said. "The lung was like a block, there was nothing left,” 

The hospital describes the operation as being “highly complicated” but successful. 

Klepetko added, “All organs are working and we are very satisfied. But it will still be a long way ahead until we can hopefully discharge her from the hospital." 

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said he thinks that the unemployment rate will reach "north of 20%" for the month of May. He said he expects the rate will be even higher in June than in May, but after that "it should start to trend down."

Hassett, speaking on CNN's "State of the Union" yesterday, said that he thinks it is possible that the unemployment rate could still be in double digits in November, but he said he thinks "all the signs of economic recovery are going to be raging everywhere."

Pressed further by CNN's Dana Bash, Hassett doubled down on his prediction for November, saying it would take a while for the unemployment rate to go down and adding that a vaccine breakthrough could change things.

Hassett said President Trump is "going through all the options" related to another phase of economic stimulus. Bash ticked through a series of potential proposals for future legislation. On extending unemployment insurance, Hassett expressed hesitation about incentivizing not working and said the benefit would need reform.

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The political scandal consuming the UK’s government continues to develop, with police officers asked to investigate the facts of a trip made by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings.

Cummings is accused of breaching lockdown rules by driving 260 miles across England in March to stay with his parents in Durham while his wife was sick with Covid-19 symptoms. He denies any wrongdoing. Johnson has defended his aide and refused to sack him.

Steve White, the commissioner overseeing Durham Police, said he had written to the police force's chief constable on Monday, “asking her to establish the facts concerning any potential breach of the law or regulations in this matter at any juncture”.

He added that he believed the police force had responded “proportionately and appropriately” to the issues surrounding Cummings’ visit to Durham.

“It is clear however that there is a plethora of additional information circulating in the public domain which deserves appropriate examination,” he said.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will end the state of emergency across the whole country tonight, he said in a briefing on Monday.

Much of Japan entered the state of emergency on April 7, as the country tried to rein in the coronavirus pandemic.

It has since been lifted across most of the nation and businesses have reopened and social activities have slowly resumed.

The country has recorded 16,550 cases of the virus and 820 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Abe will have a task force meeting Monday night after which the lifting of the state of emergency will take effect.

Abe also announced he would put together a second supplementary budget on Wednesday, to boost the government's stimulus packages.

The amount provided by the two stimulus efforts comes to over 200 trillion yen ($1.87 trillion).

"The economic revival would be the first priority for my administration," Abe said.

Museums and sports facilities will open in Tokyo from Tuesday, the city's governor Yuriko Koike said, while schools in the capital will reopen with a phased approach.

While taking questions after the briefing Abe also discussed the Tokyo Olympics. He said that the development of a coronavirus vaccine was “significant” for the country being able to host the event in its complete form.

The Games are scheduled to begin on July 23 2021, after being postponed for a year due to the pandemic.

The Japanese leader was also asked about the dispute between the US and China over the origins of Covid-19.

Abe said in response that he believed the coronavirus started in China.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has "trashed" the recommendations of scientific advisers by refusing to sack his embattled chief aide Dominic Cummings, according to one of the professors working with the government on Covid-19.

Johnson has stood by Cummings, who is accused of breaking the UK's lockdown restrictions by driving 260 miles across England in March to stay with his parents while his wife was sick with Covid-19 symptoms.

Professor Stephen Reicher, a member of the UK Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), responded on Twitter to Johnson’s defense of Cummings.

In an interview with BBC on Sunday, Reicher added: "I'm not particularly concerned what happens to Dominic Cummings -- it's what happens to the rest of us."

"If we undermine the unity between the population and the government, if people lose trust and lose adherence, if they stop complying with the measures which have contained the infection, then all of us will lose out because the infection will spike again and many more people will die."

Reicher's comments have been echoed by his SPI-B colleagues.

"People have to feel that everyone's doing the same thing and pulling their weight in the same way. And once you start to see that crumble, that's a problem," said University College London health psychology professor Robert West, another government adviser.

"But even more problematic, I think, unfortunately, in relation to the prime minister's statement on it, is that in interpreting the rules he seemed to be blurring the boundaries," West said.

"And another very important principle with this kind of behavior change is that the rules have to have very clear boundaries."

"As soon as they start to get leaky, then people start to say, 'Okay I'm sure I must be in this exceptional case.'"

Russia reported 8,946 new Covid-19 cases over the past 24 hours, the country's coronavirus headquarters said in a statement Monday.

The nation has the third-highest number of confirmed cases globally, with 353,427 recorded cases according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

 Officially, Russia has recorded 3,633 deaths caused by the virus.

At least 97,722 people have died in the US from coronavirus, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The country has record at least 1,643,499 cases of the disease, the most anywhere in the world.

The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases. 

CNN is tracking Covid-19's spread across the US here.