By Helen Regan, Adam Renton, Meg Wagner, Melissa Macaya and Mike Hayes, CNN
From CNN's Joe Sutton
The United States reported 34,516 coronavirus cases and 751 deaths on Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The national total now stands at 2,381,538 confirmed infections, including at least 121,979 deaths from the virus, per JHU.
The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases.
CNN’s interactive map is tracking the US cases:
From CNN Health’s Jen Christensen
US Food and Drug Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn said he's optimistic that scientists will develop an FDA approved treatment for Covid-19.
“The short answer is, I am optimistic,” Hahn said on FDA Insight, the podcast the agency launched on Wednesday. “Of course, I can’t give a definitive answer because that depends on the science and the data, but we have great people working on this.”
Hahn said that from the beginning the FDA has worked closely with the private sector to develop therapies and vaccines for Covid-19. “They have responded greatly to this pandemic,” Hahn said.
Hahn said there are more than 144 Covid-19 focused clinical trials underway in the US.
The FDA has been working closely with the NIH on ways they can speed up the discovery and approval process, Hahn said. The agencies developed a platform trial for Covid-19.
“That way you can study multiple different drugs, all at the same time and much more efficiently and quickly study those,” Hahn said. It’s an approach he hopes the agency will be able to take with other therapies and diseases.
Safety, accuracy and effectiveness are essential to drug approval, Hahn said, and especially where this fast-moving pandemic is concerned, so is urgency.
“I can’t tell you when we’ll have a treatment for Covid-19,” Hahn said. “But a lot of great work in this country is in progress and I am confident about our ability to find appropriate therapies.”
From CNN's Shawn Deng in Beijing and Vanesse Chan in Hong Kong
The coronavirus outbreak linked to a wholesale food market in the Chinese capital Beijing has "basically been contained," an official said Wednesday.
Xu Hejian, a spokesman for the Beijing Municipal People's Government, said that "the pandemic situation directly related to the Xinfadi market has basically been contained."
The official warned that “the pandemic prevention and control situation is still complicated and should not be underestimated as cluster outbreaks and sporadic cases were still found in the communities."
His comments come as Beijing reported 13 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, the country's National Health Commission (NHC) said.
Nationwide, China reported 19 new Covid-19 cases, including the 13 from Beijing on Wednesday.
Fourteen cases -- 13 in the capital and one in Hebei province -- were locally transmitted, while the rest were imported, the NHC said.
China has confirmed a total of 83,449 coronavirus cases with 4,634 deaths, according to the NHC.
Of those cases, more than 78,400 patients have been discharged.
From CNN's Shelby Lin Erdman
Health experts continue to express the importance of wearing masks as coronavirus cases surge in some parts of the United States.
"Going out in public without a mask is like driving drunk," Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at George Washington University, told CNN’s Erin Burnett. "If you don't get hurt. You might kill somebody else."
Reiner continued, "That's how I want people to think about not wearing a mask in public, just like driving drunk."
The nation’s top disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, responded Wednesday to the recent politicization of mask wearing, saying, "It should not be a political issue. It is purely a public health issue. Forget the politics -- look at the data."
Yet mask wearing still faces resistance.
In Florida, where coronavirus cases spiked by 5,500 on Wednesday -- eight times more than in New York state -- Gov. Ron DeSantis said that any mandate ordering cloth face coverings in public would be too hard to enforce.
"The governor of Florida needs to make a clear, unequivocal statement that it’s dangerous to your community if you go out in public without a mask," Reiner said.
He faulted the White House for not setting a national example.
"This should really come from the White House, except the President is laser focused on reelection and he thinks that wearing a mask will impede that somehow. It’s bizarre," Reiner said.
From CNN’s Andy Rose
Two passengers of the MS Zaandam cruise ship filed suit against Holland America and its parent company, Carnival Corporation, Wednesday.
Leonard Lindsay and Carl Zehner, who are married, accuse the company of mishandling the Covid-19 outbreak onboard. They say it led to Zehner contracting the disease and being on a ventilator for three weeks.
“This cruise was a life-threatening nightmare,” plaintiffs’ attorney Kenny Byrd says in a news release.
The attorneys are asking a federal judge to give the case class action status covering all of the passengers aboard the MS Zaandam. They claim Holland America did not follow through with promises to ensure the health of its passengers, who were allegedly not given a temperature screening at boarding.
“Additionally, Defendants did not implement social distancing among the passengers, or implement other reasonable precautions at this stage of the cruise,” the lawsuit states.
According to the suit, the ship was denied entry to a port in Argentina in March, but it was nearly a week before the crew began telling passengers to isolate in their staterooms. The plaintiffs claim the company was already aware that some of its crew members had become ill with coronavirus symptoms. It was not until April 3 that most passengers were allowed to disembark in Port Everglades, Florida.
CNN has reached out to Holland America for a response to the lawsuit.
From Angus Watson in Sydney
Australian airline Qantas announced on Thursday that it’s cutting at least 6,000 jobs as part of a three-year plan to help it recover from the coronavirus crisis.
The airline will also continue to stand down 15,000 employees and ground up to 100 aircraft for up to 12 months, some for longer, including most of its international fleet, according to a statement from the company.
The plan aims to save the company 15 billion Australian dollars ($10.3 billion) in costs over three years, the statement said.
Announcing the plan, Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce said the crisis had left them with no choice.
"We have to position ourselves for several years where revenue will be much lower. And that means becoming a smaller airline in the short term,” Joyce said.
From CNN's Jim Acosta and Paul LeBlanc
Dozens of US Secret Service agents will be quarantined as a precaution following President Donald Trump's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a law enforcement official told CNN on Wednesday.
The official said the number of quarantined agents is on the "low" side of dozens. A Secret Service official said the quarantining will not impact the agency's operations.
The news was first reported by The Washington Post.
A US Secret Service source who worked advance for Saturday's rally and is now quarantining told CNN that agents from Dallas and Houston worked the event as well, and they had been warned before the trip from those field offices that they would need to quarantine when they got home.
The step comes after two Secret Service agents who attended the rally tested positive for coronavirus, a person familiar with matter previously told CNN.
"The U.S. Secret Service remains prepared and staffed to fulfill all of the various duties as required. Any implication that the agency is in some way unprepared or incapable of executing our mission would be inaccurate," US Secret Service spokesperson Catherine Milhoan told CNN in a statement Wednesday evening.
"To protect the privacy of our employees' health information and for operational security, the Secret Service is not releasing how many of its employees have tested positive for COVID-19, nor how many of its employees were, or currently are, quarantined," she continued.
Read the full story:
From journalist Rodrigo Pedroso in Sao Paulo and CNN's Maggie Fox
Brazil announced plans to expand coronavirus testing in a televised briefing from the health ministry Wednesday.
The ministry estimates the delivery of 46.5 million tests to the public health system by the end of the year, Secretary of Health Surveillance Arnaldo Correia said in the briefing.
Of those tests, there will be 24.5 million PCR tests that look for direct evidence of the virus and 22 million serological tests, which measure antibodies to indicate a previous infection.
Brazil previously only allowed testing for those hospitalized, but the new recommendations will also allow for tests on people reporting mild Covid-19 symptoms, Correia added.
Correia also said the ministry was expecting the curve from newly reported cases to flatten last week, but the numbers showed an increase from the previous week.
In the past three days alone, the country reported 103,593 new cases. Total confirmed cases stand at 1,188,631, according to the health ministry Wednesday.
From CNN's Frank Pallotta
Disney is delaying the phased reopening of Disneyland and Disney California Adventure, the company's flagship theme parks in California, the company said on Wednesday.
The resort, located in Anaheim, California, was set to welcome back guests on July 17 after being closed for months because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Disney did not give a new reopening date for the Disneyland resort.
The company said that the State of California had indicated it would not issue theme park reopening guidelines "until sometime after July 4," according to a statement. "Given the time required for us to bring thousands of cast members back to work and restart our business, we have no choice but to delay the reopening of our theme parks and resort hotels until we receive approval from government officials."
The news of Disneyland's delayed reopening comes as coronavirus cases are spiking across the country, especially in California.
California blew by its previous single-day high with more than 7,149 cases reported Wednesday, according to data from the state Department of Public Health.
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