April 14 coronavirus news

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he wouldn’t follow a possible order from Trump to ease coronavirus restrictions in the state if it put public health at risk.

“If he ordered me to reopen in a way that would endanger the public health of the people of my state, I wouldn't do it,” Gov. Cuomo said. “That would be the worst possible thing he could do at this moment would be to act dictatorial and to act in a partisan, divisive way.”

Some background: During yesterday’s White House coronavirus briefing, President Trump falsely claimed he has "total" authority over states' coronavirus restrictions. 

Cuomo said that Trump’s remarks are a reversal of his previous positions on leaving stay-at-home orders up to individual states and letting them find equipment for hospitals. 

“This is a 180 … So it makes no sense. It’s schizophrenic,” Cuomo said. “The first position, he stepped back and said it’s up to the states. This is stepping forward and trying to step over the states, which is frankly I think more partisan, more divisive and more dangerous.” 

Cuomo reiterated his call to keep politics out of the coronavirus pandemic. 

“I know this is a political year. I know it is a hyper-partisan environment. I know it is red versus blue. Not anymore. Not when it comes to this. This is red, white and blue. I have 10,000 deaths in my state," Cuomo said. "This virus didn't kill Democrats or Republicans. It killed Americans.”

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In yesterday’s White House coronavirus briefing, President Trump falsely claimed he has "total" authority over states' coronavirus restrictions. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said that "sends a mixed message."

States on the country's East and West coasts are forming their own regional pacts to work together on how to reopen from the stay-at-home orders each has issued. Connecticut is one of seven states in the East coast working group.

Lamont did commend officials from Vice President Pence’s coronavirus task force for being responsive to the state’s need for equipment. 

“Don't let the verbal hand grenades from the President distract from a lot of other good work that's going on,” he said. 

Lamont said he is seeing a rising number of cases in the northern part of his state, and he’s told residents that he won’t make a decision on reading restrictions until at least May 20. 

“I think it's going to take at least another month to be careful and doing the testing before we can get more aggressive … I still have an infection that's growing in most of the state. This is no time to relax,” he said. 

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The European Commission is set to propose an action plan for a co-ordinated coronavirus lockdown exit across Europe. 

Its proposed plan -- seen by CNN -- says measures to slow the spread of the virus have "come at a dramatic cost for our economy and society, and cannot last indefinitely."

The Commission is expected to send its plan to the EU's member states later on Tuesday and to present it on Wednesday. 

European Commission Chief Spokesperson Eric Mamer told CNN Tuesday: “It is up to member states, it is their prerogative to determine when they want to take restrictive measures and when they want to move out of restrictive measures."

The plan says there are two main criteria to assess whether the time has come to begin to relax the restrictions: Has the spread of the disease has significantly decreased for a sustained period? And do health care systems have enough capacity to cope if case numbers were to rise again?

The plan calls for an exit strategy based on science, coordinated between member states with "respect and solidarity."

It says a successful exit strategy would also be dependent on measures being met, including an expanded coronavirus testing capacity to measure contagion and the population's immunity, along with a "harmonized" and "robust" system for contact tracing.  

It notes that the exit should be gradual, starting at local levels. Gatherings of people should also be permitted gradually and economic activity should be "phased in."

"Once the exit phase is successfully entered, the next phase would be the recovery, in which the economy needs to pick up pace and get back on a growth path," the four-page document concludes. 

"What we have been working on over the past weeks is a roadmap with recommendations, to ensure that when they start to move out of these restrictive measures, they do so in a manner which is effective," Mamer said.

He added that this includes, in particular, "taking into account obviously the situation in other EU countries and … in particular in neighbor countries.”

Mamer said the Commission would be making recommendations as to "what we believe are the main criteria which member states should use when they are taking these decisions."

“We are not going to going to be saying to any specific member state: ‘This is now the right point in time for you to start taking measures to ease the restrictions you have in place’. This is really a decision for member states," Mamer said.

“What we are going to be recommending is a series of criteria and conditions that we think should apply when assessing and ultimately deciding whether it makes sense to start to ease the measures.”

At least 3,022 US service members have tested positive for Covid-19. At least two US service members have died from the virus.  

There are at least 4,769 positive cases across the entire Department of Defense.

The meat supply is at risk. Farm workers are in fear. It's hard to get groceries.

Health professionals -- doctors, nurses and everyone down the line -- are the rightful and obvious heroes of the pandemic, but if this dark episode has taught us anything about the way we live today, it could be that our society rests on the backs of a lot of people who cannot simply stay home and chill while the coronavirus blows through.

Food workers are frontline workers too: You probably saw the headline recently that one of the largest hog processing plants in the country had ceased production for the foreseeable future. The reason? Employees at the plant, a Smithfield operation, account for about half of the coronavirus cases in South Dakota.

Similar closures have hit plants in Pennsylvania and Iowa and the CEO of Smithfield said the country's meat supply is at risk.

Read the full analysis here:

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It's time to talk more seriously about the food supply

Iran has reported 98 new coronavirus-related deaths over the past 24 hours – the first time in nearly a month that the country has seen a two-digit increase in new deaths, health ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpoor said on state TV on Tuesday.

“We hope it is the beginning of a diminishing trend, but as a proverbial saying in Farsi [says], one flower may not bring spring," Jahanpoor said, adding that: “We must observe social distancing and stay at home as far as possible."

Jahanpoor announced 1,574 new cases of coronavirus across the country on Tuesday, bringing the total to 74,877. The 98 new deaths he announced bring Iran's death toll from coronavirus to 4,683.

On Monday, Iran reported 1,617 new cases, and 111 new deaths.

The number of coronavirus-related deaths in England is significantly higher than the British Government has reported in its daily updates, according to new data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS).

The daily updates from the Department of Health and Social Care only include people who have died with coronavirus in hospitals, and not those who have died in nursing homes or other locations. They are also affected by a lag in reporting times.

But more complete data, released weekly by the ONS, records all deaths where coronavirus is registered on the death certificate – regardless of whether a person died in or out of hospital.

According to the ONS, the number of coronavirus-related deaths that occurred up to April 3 in England was 5,979. The comparative daily update released the following day by the UK Government reported 3,939 deaths in England.

The ONS number represents an increase of 52% on the figures initially reported for that period.

Confusion in UK death toll reporting: The disparity highlights the murkiness of Britain's recorded death rates during the coronavirus pandemic.

The number of people who had died by April 3 has now been reported as three different figures. The first number -- 3,939 -- was revised upwards by the government on April 12, to 5,186. This was likely done because deaths can often take several days to record, so initial numbers effectively understate the true figure.

Now, the ONS figure -- registered on April 11 and released on Tuesday -- has added the deaths which occurred outside of hospitals to the total, resulting in an even higher number.

The newest ONS number is a 15% rise on the updated government figure, and a 52% on the initial government figure.

Such confusion means that making direct comparisons between the UK's coronavirus curve and those of other European nations is difficult.

But the numbers clearly highlight that the UK's headline figures for daily coronavirus deaths -- which already amount to the fourth-highest total in Europe -- are understated, and the true number can be significantly higher than the numbers revealed each day by ministers.

"Older people's lives are not worth less": The conflicting data sets have also prompted calls for the government to include deaths in care homes when they announce the new figures each day.

A number of leading British charities released a joint letter to Health Secretary Matt Hancock on Monday demanding a "daily update on coronavirus deaths in the care system, just like deaths in the NHS, so that as a society we can understand the scale of the challenge we face."

"Older people’s lives are not worth less. Care home staff are not second class carers," the charities said. "The Government must step in and make it clear that no-one will be abandoned to this virus simply because of their age, condition or where they live."

Spain recorded a slight rise in daily deaths from coronavirus on Tuesday -- 567 over the past 24 hours -- according to Spanish Health Ministry data.

It is an increase from the 517 reported on Monday, but remains the third-lowest daily rise in the past three weeks. The total number of deaths from coronavirus in Spain stands at 18,056.

However, Spain also recorded a fall of 299 active cases in the last 24 hours, bringing the total down to 86,981. The decrease suggests the number of new "recovered" patients and the dead are outnumbering the increase in new cases. 

This fall in the numbers of active Covid-19 cases is the first recorded in Europe’s coronavirus “hotspots” -- Italy, Spain, France and the UK – since the pandemic began.

Spain has now reached an accumulated total of 172,541 coronavirus cases since the start of the outbreak

This post has been corrected to reflect that the fall in active cases recorded in Spain on Tuesday is the first such reduction in the European countries hardest hit by the pandemic.

Some shops and business in Italy will be allowed to reopen on Tuesday, according to a government decree signed by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, as the country tentatively seeks to emerge from its coronavirus lockdown.

Among the stores permitted to reopen are book shops, laundries, stationery shops and clothing stores for babies and children. However, some regions have decided to delay lifting restrictions.

The measures will be in place until May 3, according to the government decree.

The government has also expanded the list of permitted production activities to allow some forestry, landscape care and maintenance and hydraulic works to resume. Computer manufacturers and wholesalers of paper and cardboard products can restart production.

These openings are in effect a preview of the larger scale openings expected to take place during “Phase 2” of Italy's three-phase plan to bring the country back to normal.

Phase 2 will only start sometime after other lockdown measures are lifted, at some point after May 3.

This week's easing of the lockdown “is not phase 2”, Gianni Rezza, Director of Infectious Diseases at the National Health Institute (ISS), said in a press briefing Monday evening.

The death rate and the epidemic curve in Italy show “positive signals that need to be consolidated in time,” he said.

In Lombardy and Veneto, the regions hardest hit by the pandemic, book stores and stationery shops are not allowed to reopen.

In Lazio, the region including Rome, book stores will be allowed to open from April 20 “to give time to the owners to organize security measures,” such as guaranteeing minimum distances between people, providing disposable gloves at shop entrances and promoting the sanitation of the premises.

The new decree says anywhere that reopens to the public must respect the rules, for example making hand sanitizer available, enforcing the use of masks in enclosed spaces, and in areas where distancing cannot be guaranteed, and the use of disposable gloves in the purchase of food and drink.

Access to shops will be staggered to ensure the social distancing of customers.