Potential COVID-19 treatments and vaccines continue to show promise as the number of Americans put out of work amid the pandemic hits 30 million.<\/b>
\nThere’s cautious optimism that an experimental drug may help COVID-19 patients recover sooner, and possibly even save lives. The rare good news comes as a team working on a more permanent solution to the coronavirus pandemic says it should have a good idea by July whether its experimental COVID-19 vaccine really works.
As a staggering 30 million Americans apply for unemployment benefits in the space of just six weeks, President Trump says he’ll let national guidelines that impede both the virus and the economy start \u00ab\u00a0fading out\u00a0\u00bb next month.
Latest major developments:
Detailed information from the CDC on coronavirus treatment and prevention.
The USNS Comfort is scheduled to depart New York City at noon today, exactly one month after it arrived CBS New York reports.
The Navy hospital ship has been docked at Pier 90 on Manhattan’s West Side since March 30. It started accepting coronavirus patients a week later. All the patients have now been discharged or transferred.
The Comfort is scheduled to return to Norfolk, Virginia, where it will be ready for any future deployments needed during the pandemic.
Pennsylvania has tested less than 2% of its 12.8 million population for COVID-19. For many in Philadelphia, testing can be hard to find.
Pediatric surgeon Dr. Ala Stanford took matters into her own hands to get much-needed tests to the residents of the local community. \u00ab\u00a0Every time someone got turned away, I would get a call,\u00a0\u00bb Dr. Stanford told CBS News’ Jericka Duncan.
Her solution? To pay for the tests herself.
Stanford said she and her team of volunteers have been able to test more than 1,600 people in three weeks. When CBS News caught up with her on Friday, they had given diagnostic tests to over 200 people in a Philadelphia church parking lot.
Read more here and watch the full story below:
A health clinic is traveling throughout California’s Sacramento County to provide free coronavirus testing for its homeless population, CBS Sacramento reports. Elica Health Centers is using one of its three mobile clinics to target eight shelters with the highest populations around the county.
Shelter guests are first pre-screened and required to put on a mask, then are taken to a tent to be tested. Results are available anytime between one and three days after they’re submitted, according to the Sacramento County Department of Health Services.
\u00ab\u00a0Bringing as many of these necessary units on-site to minimize the need for folks to leave to seek services elsewhere is very important,\u00a0\u00bb said Meghan Marshall with the Sacramento County Department of Health Services.
Aide Long, director of Elica Health mobile medicine, said the response from the homeless community has been positive, testing more than 100 people in the three first days. \u00ab\u00a0They are very willing to get tested because they know how dangerous it is,\u00a0\u00bb she said.
The mobile clinic will continue to test at the eight shelters for two weeks.
Gov. Larry Hogan has issued an executive order that requires universal testing of residents and staff at all Maryland nursing homes. Facilities will be prioritized based on an \u00ab\u00a0imminent outbreak or a current rising threat risk,\u00a0\u00bb according to the Hogan administration.
\u00ab\u00a0Even when best practices and care is in place, this virus may still be transmitted by asymptotic staff, meaning that every patient interaction comes with some risk,\u00a0\u00bb Gov. Hogan said.
Under the order, it will be mandatory for facilities to fully comply with strike teams deployed by the state. All nursing homes must have a physician, nurse practitioner, physician’s assistant or registered nurse to evaluate all residents on a daily basis. Click here to read more from CBS Baltimore.
A second Turkish military plane took off from an air base near Ankara on Thursday carrying more medical aid to the United States which has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
The cargo plane is carrying a second consignment of personal protective equipment, including masks, hazmat suits and disinfectants, the Defense Ministry announced.
Turkey also dispatched a planeload of medical supplies on Tuesday that included 500,000 surgical masks,4,000 overalls,528 gallons of disinfectant,1,500 goggles,400 N-95 masks and 500 face shields.
The items dispatched Thursday were sent in boxes displaying the words of 13th-century Sufi Poet Jalaluddin Rumi in Turkish and English: \u00ab\u00a0After hopelessness there is so much hope and after darkness there is much brighter sun.\u00a0\u00bb The government didn’t immediately provide a breakdown of what was in the shipment.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans to extend the ongoing coronavirus state of emergency beyond its scheduled end on May 6.
Abe said Thursday that hospitals are still overburdened and medical workers are under severe pressure to deal with the patients still on the rise.
\u00ab\u00a0I believe it will be difficult to return to our normal daily lives after May 7,\u00a0\u00bb Abe said. \u00ab\u00a0We must expect an endurance race to a certain extent.\u00a0\u00bb
Abe said he will consult with experts to decide how long the measures should be extended. Local officials and medical experts have called for an extension for another month nationwide.
The rise in the cases somewhat slowed in the last few days. But Japan still had more than 200 new cases overnight, bringing a national total to some 14,000 cases, with 415 deaths.
Another 3.8 million U. S. workers filed for unemployment insurance benefits last week, bringing the total number of Americans who have sought jobless aid since March to nearly 30 million. All told, the layoffs amount to the fastest loss of jobs on record.
\u00ab\u00a0This is a decline from the week before, but still more than five times the previous all-time high,\u00a0\u00bb Nick Bunker, director of the Indeed Hiring Lab, said in a statement. \u00ab\u00a0A number in the low millions may be a relief compared to earlier this month, but it’s objectively a horrifying statistic.\u00a0\u00bb Click here to read more.
Tajikistan registered its first coronavirus cases on Thursday, one of the last countries in the world to confirm it had been affected by the pandemic.
Five people had tested positive for the disease in the capital Dushanbe and a further 10 in the northern region of Sughd, the state information agency Khovar said, citing the government’s coronavirus response body.
The coronavirus response group \u00ab\u00a0officially confirmed the existence of COVID-19 infections in the Republic of Tajikistan,\u00a0\u00bb Khovar reported.
The same body also said it was now compulsory for citizens to wear masks.
Tajikistan has taken a stop-start approach to enforcing precautions against the spread of the infection. Mosques across the majority-Muslim country were shut earlier this month shortly after being allowed to reopen following an initial shutdown in March.
Tajikistan was also one of the few countries where professional football was still being played up until the weekend, when the local federation suspended the season until at least May 10.
Tajikistan, which borders China, began placing returning nationals and arriving foreigners under quarantine from the beginning of February.
– AFP
The European economy shrank a record 3.8% in the first quarter as hotels, restaurants, construction sites and manufacturing were frozen by coronavirus shutdowns. It was the biggest drop in the eurozone since statistics began in 1995 and compares to a 4.8% contraction in the United States.
Lockdowns that turned major European cities into ghost towns are plunging nations into recession. France’s economy shrank an eye-popping 5.8% in the first quarter, the biggest quarterly drop since 1949, and the Spanish economy shrunk 5.2% in the same period.
New unemployment figures Thursday covering the 19 European countries that use the shared euro currency underscored how massive job-protection programs are temporarily keeping millions of Europeans on payrolls, sparing them the record-setting flood of layoffs battering tens of millions of Americans.
But as Europe’s economies splutter back to life and workers adapt to the strangeness of new barriers designed to keep them apart, governments are watching infection rates and public behavior like hawks, wary of a second wave of deaths.
Governor Gavin Newsom will order all beaches and state parks closed Friday after tens of thousands of people flocked to the seashore last weekend during a heat wave despite his stay-at-home order, according to a memo sent Wednesday evening to police chiefs around the state and obtained by CBS Los Angeles and other news outlets.
Eric Nu\u00f1ez, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, said it was sent to give chiefs time to plan ahead of Newsom’s expected announcement on Thursday.
A message to the governor’s office seeking comment wasn’t immediately returned. Click here to read more.
– CBS\/AP
South Korea detected its first case of the new coronavirus on January 20, in a Chinese tourist arriving from the ground-zero city of Wuhan. But it wasn’t until infections started spreading fast among members of a religious sect in the city of Daegu in February that the outbreak hit South Korea full-on. During the peak of the outbreak, almost 1,000 new cases were confirmed in South Korea daily.
On Thursday, however, there was good news.
\u00ab\u00a0For the first time in 72 days, we have zero new domestic cases,\u00a0\u00bb President Moon Jae-in wrote on his Facebook page.
South Korea still registered a handful of new cases Thursday, but they were imported from abroad, in people flying into the country from the U. S. or Europe.
As a six-day holiday kicks off in South Korea, there are fears, however, that the country’s success in suppressing COVID-19 could be tested.
Some 240 flights to Jeju, a tourist Island at the southern tip of the country, are scheduled every day during the holiday period, and those flights are already 60-70% booked.
J. H. Shin, a data researcher in Seoul, told CBS News that plans to head to Jeju as, after a month working from home, she wants to \u00ab\u00a0get out of the city and rest alone.\u00a0\u00bb
When asked if she’s worried about travelling with the coronavirus still lingering, she said she \u00ab\u00a0can’t ignore COVID-19,\u00a0\u00bb and she’s bringing her masks and hand sanitizer, and while she knows she \u00ab\u00a0can’t wander around much,\u00a0\u00bb at least she’ll have a sea view.
Police were called to a Brooklyn neighborhood Wednesday after a funeral home overwhelmed by the number of bodies from the COVID-19 pandemic resorted to storing them on ice in rented trucks, and neighbors complained about the odor, officials said. Dozens of bodies were found in two unrefrigerated U-Haul trucks at the funeral home, reports CBS New York.
One neighbor told the station the stench was \u00ab\u00a0overwhelming.\u00a0\u00bb Some area residents said they’ve been complaining about the smell for a couple of weeks.
Investigators learned the business was overflowing with so many deceased that workers had to put bodies in two large U-Haul trucks outside that had no refrigeration, CBS New York said. The Associated Press reported that they were stored on ice. Click here to read more.
– CBS\/AP
The chief executive of British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca told BBC radio on Thursday that the company expects to know by June or July whether a coronavirus vaccine it’s working on with University of Oxford researchers will be effective.
\u00ab\u00a0By June, July we will already have a very good idea of the direction of travel in terms of its potential efficacy,\u00a0\u00bb CEO Pascal Soriot told the BBC.
\u00ab\u00a0We’ll continue working with the Oxford Vaccine Unit to bring it to patients, and to regulatory authorities first of all as soon as possible,\u00a0\u00bb he added.
CBS News’ Charlie D’Agata reported this week that, in the race for a vaccine, the Oxford team has jumped way ahead of the pack. Human testing is already underway, and scientists leading the project have said they’re hopeful it can be widely available by September.
The experimental vaccine reportedly protected monkeys that were exposed to heavy quantities of COVID-19. In the human trials,550 participants are being given the vaccine while 550 others get a placebo.
\u00ab\u00a0Our hope is that, by joining forces, we can accelerate the globalisation of a vaccine to combat the virus and protect people from the deadliest pandemic in a generation,\u00a0\u00bb Soriot said in a statement Thursday, announcing his company’s collaboration with the Jenner Institute for vaccine research at Oxford..
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, is optimistic about the ability of the antiviral drug remdesivir, produced by Gilead Sciences, to shorten the time it takes seriously ill patients to recover from a COVID-19 infection. Preliminary data analysis from an international COVID-19 drug trial \u00ab\u00a0shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery,\u00a0\u00bb Fauci told reporters at the White House Wednesday.
This development is \u00ab\u00a0really quite important for a number of reasons,\u00a0\u00bb Fauci said, calling the data \u00ab\u00a0highly significant.\u00a0\u00bb He said that the recovery time was reduced from 15 days to 11 days in the drug trial, which involved over 1,000 hospitalized patients in the U. S., Germany, Denmark, Spain, Greece and other countries, and was, he said,\u00a0\u00bbthe first truly high-powered, randomized, placebo-controlled\u00a0\u00bb trial for a coronavirus treatment.
\u00ab\u00a0Although a 31% improvement doesn’t seem like a knockout 100%, it is a very important proof of concept,\u00a0\u00bb Fauci said, adding that \u00ab\u00a0what it is proving is that a drug can block this virus.\u00a0\u00bb Click here to read more.
Russia reported its highest one-day increase in coronavirus cases on Thursday, bringing the country’s official total to 106,498.
The increase of 7,099 new confirmed infections was a 7% jump from Wednesday’s tally. The country’s total death toll from the virus stood at 1,073 on Thursday.
When asked whether the epidemic in Russia had started to plateau, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a Russian television station: \u00ab\u00a0this is what everyone would like to see.\u00a0\u00bb
The Kremlin has urged Russians to adhere to lockdown regulations during upcoming public holidays at the beginning of May, when citizens traditionally rush to the countryside and get together for barbecues.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk railed against what he called \u00ab\u00a0fascist\u00a0\u00bb social distancing measures on an earnings call Wednesday. In an expletive-laden rant, Musk warned that shelter-in-place orders in California, where a major Tesla factory is located, also pose a \u00ab\u00a0serious risk\u00a0\u00bb to the company.
\u00ab\u00a0If somebody wants to stay in their house, that’s great,\u00a0\u00bb Musk said, according to a recording of the call reviewed by CBS News. \u00ab\u00a0They can stay in their house and they should not be compelled to leave. But to say that they cannot leave their house and they will be arrested if they do, this is fascist. This is not democratic, this is not freedom. Give people back their g**d*** freedom.\u00a0\u00bb
No state has implemented an order forbidding residents from leaving their homes, although many have ordered residents to only leave for essential purposes. Click here to read more.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Wednesday that the city will offer all residents free testing for the coronavirus.
\u00ab\u00a0While priority will still be given to those with symptoms, individuals without symptoms can also be tested,\u00a0\u00bb Garcetti tweeted, adding that LA is the first major city in the U. S. to offer such widespread free testing. Click here to read more.
Announcing that L. A. is now the first major city in America to offer free COVID-19 testing to all residents. While priority will still be given to those with symptoms, individuals without symptoms can also be tested. Sign up at https:\/\/t.co\/rHWABmXUEl. pic.twitter.com\/TYqo6Bzwxe
A CDC study released Wednesday found that over 80% of the COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Georgia last month were black. It’s the latest analysis showing that communities of color are being hit disproportionately hard by the coronavirus.
The study comes just days after Georgia Governor Brian Kemp started reopening some of the state’s businesses – a move condemned as premature and dangerous by local black leaders as well as public health officials and even President Trump.
The study from the CDC, which is headquartered in Atlanta, surveyed eight hospitals in the state – seven in the Atlanta metro area and one southern Georgia. In the sample of 305 hospitalized COVID-19 patients,247 – or 83.2% – were black. By comparison,32 patients (10.8%) were white,10 (3.4%) were Hispanic and eight (2.7%) were Asian or Pacific Islander. Click here to read more.<\/p>\n