April 14 coronavirus news

President Trump announced Tuesday he is halting funding to the World Health Organization while a review is conducted.

Trump said at a news conference the review would cover the WHO’s “role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of coronavirus.”

The President said that while the US imposed travel restrictions on China during the early stages of the outbreak, WHO was "opposed to what we did," he said.

Trump continued: "The decision of other major countries to keep travel open was one of the great tragedies and missed opportunities from the early days."

California said it has 1,544 new coronavirus cases – the highest number recorded in a single day since the beginning of the outbreak.

These additional cases bring the total in California to 23,338. More than 11% of those patients are health care workers, according to new data from California Department of Public Health.

At least 758 people have died in California due to coronavirus.

Dyson is gearing up for full-scale production of ventilators to help with the coronavirus pandemic.

The company has confirmed that its production lines based at the Hullavington Airfield in England are now in the process of manufacturing ventilator units in preparation for final regulatory approval. 

In a letter shared with CNN in March, James Dyson – the company’s billionaire founder – confirmed that the company had received an order from the UK government for 10,000 ventilators.

In a video shared by Dyson today, the company showcased its latest development, highlighting that engineering teams and manufacturers have been working “around the clock” to develop this new ventilator. 

The video continued: “The project has brought together engineers, scientists, medical device designers, clinical testing and high technology manufacturing knowledge, to achieve the NHS specification."

In March, a spokesperson for Dyson told CNN that they hoped to have the ventilators ready for mass production by early April 2020. 

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said today that she doesn't believe the city's biggest events — French Quarter Festival, JazzFest and Essence Festival — should be held in 2020, but instead push to 2021.

All three events had been postponed in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

Cantrell said she's been in touch with event organizers but did not give any additional details on those conversations. 

As of mid-March, the French Quarter Festival and JazzFest posted on their social media that the events were postponed to the fall of 2020. Nothing new has been updated since then.

Prosecutors are asking a federal judge to postpone the trial of associates of Rudy Giuliani by at least four months until February due to the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on the criminal justice system.

In a letter to Judge Paul Oetken, prosecutors also said they informed lawyers for Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman and two other men charged in a campaign finance scheme that their plans to bring additional charges against the men have also been impacted. 

The “timeline for seeking a superseding indictment has been pushed back due to issues involving the availability of witnesses and grand jurors given the pandemic-related travel and social-distancing restrictions,” prosecutors wrote. 

Parnas and Fruman had been schedule to go to trial on October 5, about one month before the presidential election. The men, who were central players in Giuliani’s effort to dig up dirt on Joseph and Hunter Biden’s activities in the Ukraine, have pleaded not guilty to the charges. 

The coronavirus pandemic has ground the criminal justice system to a halt across the country with grand juries disrupted and criminal and civil trials postponed. In the Southern District of New York trials are postponed until at least June 1.  

Prosecutors didn’t object to a request by lawyers for the defendants who sought to postpone the trial because of their difficulty of meeting with their clients, who are based in Florida and California, and prepare for trial.

If the trial is delayed, it would remove the potential for information about Giuliani’s associates spilling into the public just weeks ahead of the presidential election.

Other high profile trials have also been postponed. Michael Avenatti, the celebrity attorney, was set to go to trial this month on charges he stole more than $300,000 from his former client Stormy Daniels. A federal judge set a new trial date for August. 

Paul Manafort's lawyers have also asked for the former Trump campaign chairman to be moved out of prison due to potential health risks from the coronavirus.

There are at least 594,207 cases of coronavirus in the US and at least 25,163 people have died from the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University's tally of cases.

On Tuesday, Johns Hopkins has reported 11,600 new cases and 1,535 reported deaths. 

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

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said that he and a number of his gubernatorial counterparts think President Trump is off-base with his desire to reopen the nation’s economy by May 1.

Lamont instead reiterated the May 20 date he offered on CNN's New Day Tuesday morning as more of a realistic timeframe when he could make an informed decision about when to reopen the state.

“I said we're not gonna be reopening schools before May 20, but by May 20 we're gonna have a lot of our testing in place by then, we'll have a lot more of the PPE, the protective gear,” Lamont said. “And that will give us a lot stronger indication about who and when and how people can start getting to work.”

California’s health director told CNN that the state is not completely ready to reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“This is the right time to start talking to Californians about what it might look like as we start loosening restrictions," she added.

Angell noted that there are a number of quick indicators that will help leaders make decisions to proceed and that it’s time to start modifying orders in a way that's safe for Californians.

"We're not sure this is the end of it, but it's a good moment to take stock and look at what it might look like as we get back to normal," Angell said.

The new normal will be about creating space for people to safely leave their home but keeping those with greater risk at home, she said.

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A drug that’s been touted by President Trump as a “game changer” didn’t help hospitalized patients with coronavirus, and was associated with heart complications, according to a new study. 

“This provides evidence that hydroxychloroquine does not apparently treat patients with Covid-19,” said Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious disease specialist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “Even worse, there were side effects caused by the drug – heart toxicities that required it be discontinued.”

The study was published Tuesday on a pre-print server and was not peer reviewed.

In the study, among the 84 patients who took hydroxychloroquine, 20.2% were admitted to the ICU or died within seven days of inclusion. Among the 97 patients who did not take the drug, 22.1% went to the ICU or died. 

The difference was determined to not be statistically significant.

Looking just at deaths, 2.8% of the patients who took hydroxychloroquine died, and 4.6% of the patients who did not take it died. That difference was also found to not be statistically significant.