Our live coverage of the global coronavirus pandemic has moved here.
The world is “weeks to months” away from knowing what drugs will work to fight Covid-19, said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the technical lead for the World Health Organization’s coronavirus response.
The WHO is tracking a number of studies that are trying to determine exactly how many people have been infected around the world, Van Kerkhove said.
According to one study in Germany, the number of people who have antibodies that show they’ve had the coronavirus infection ranges from 2% or 3% up to 14% of the population, she said during CNN’s coronavirus town hall earlier tonight.
“What’s interesting about this is that these numbers, this seroprevalence, is a lot lower than some of the earlier models had predicted that would have suggested that this virus was circulating a lot more, and that much more of the population was already infected.” Van Kerkhove said. “So these studies right now are not actually showing us that.”
Seroprevalence is the number of people in a population who test positive for a disease.
The WHO is also closely monitoring the hundreds of Covid-19 drug trials.
It’s critical that the studies are done and done well, Van Kerkhove said.
“So we can get to the answer that everybody needs,” she said. The results, she added, “can’t come soon enough.” But the world is “weeks to months” from knowing what works.
CNN’s global town hall on the facts and fears about the coronavirus has just wrapped up.
A panel of experts, including representatives from the World Health Organization and the US Food and Drug Administration, joined to answer questions like: Can face masks be disinfected and reused? Are there any available treatments yet? Can the virus be transmitted through food?
Other guests included celebrity chef Jose Andres, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and singer Alicia Keys.
Scroll through our posts below to see the highlights.
Fifteen-time Grammy winner Alicia Keys had a powerful message tonight for African Americans whose communities have been especially hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
“I think that we should be recognized accordingly,” Keys continued. “It’s just time for there to be this America, to be the equal compassionate America that we claim it to be.”
Keys remarks came just moments after she debuted her new song “Good Job,” a tribute to the unsung heroes of the pandemic.
Alicia Keys debuted her new song “Good Job” tonight on CNN’s coronavirus town hall as a tribute to the unsung heroes of the coronavirus pandemic: Hospital workers, nurses, x-ray technicians, doctors, grocery store clerks, delivery workers, truck drivers and all who have stepped up to keep the world moving during the crisis.
The song was written several months ago for important people in her life, Keys said – her mother, grandmother, friends, who were perhaps going through difficult times.
The track will be released via RCA records and is available on all digital platforms today. It will be featured on Keys’ forthcoming studio album, ALICIA.
Since March 14, 26.5 million American have filed unemployment claims seeking financial relief – and families are struggling to feed themselves.
In Miami, more than 1,000 families slept in their cars to keep their place in line outside a food distribution center. Around 10,000 people showed up to a similar food distribution in San Antonio.
“We have a humanitarian food crisis on our hands,” said celebrity chef José Andrés, whose program World Central Kitchen is working to provide meals to people and first responders.
Speaking during CNN’s coronavirus global town hall, Andrés urged government officials to address the growing crisis and set aside partisan conflicts. “This is not about Republicans or Democrats. This is about Americans, we the people. Many people right now as they are losing their jobs, they are in desperate need of somebody to be feeding them,” he said.
This isn’t the first time Andrés has cooked in disaster scenarios: He also helped cook for those affected in the Bahamas during Hurricane Dorian, and after Hurricane Maria, Hurricane Florence and the California wildfires.
Andrés and his team also helped cook for federal government workers who were furloughed or working without pay during the 35-day partial shutdown last January.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the New York tri-state area will soon require “an army of tracers” to help track the spread of coronavirus in the region.
Cuomo has tapped former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg to help design and implement the contact tracing effort, which the governor called a “very challenging task.”
“He offered to help, and he’s a great talent,” Cuomo said. “We need help from great talents.”
The travel ban implemented by US President Donald Trump on China in late January did little to halt the spread of coronavirus to the US, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.
“It had already left China,” said Cuomo, when asked by CNN Thursday evening if the travel ban had made a difference. “The strain in New York came from Europe, it didn’t come from China.”
Speaking earlier during CNN’s coronavirus town hall, Cuomo said he believed the US and even medical experts were hardly prepared for a global pandemic of this scale.
“We’ve never actually lived through (a global pandemic),” he said. “So I don’t think that this country was ready for it. I don’t even think our experts were ready for it.”
Watch:
Preliminary results of a large-scale study of hydroxychloroquine suggest that the drug “didn’t really have much of an effect on the recovery rate,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during CNN’s town hall Thursday evening.
The study, sponsored by the New York state Department of Health, looked at about 600 patients at 22 hospitals in the greater New York City area.
Those who took hydroxychloroquine, with or without the antibiotic azithromycin, were no more likely to survive their infections than those who did not, according to David Holtgrave, dean of the University at Albany School of Public Health, who conducted the study.
Some more background: Since hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin are both already on the market for other illnesses, doctors are free to prescribe them to coronavirus patients if they want to, and the Albany study found that doctors did often use them to treat their coronavirus patients.
Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University infectious disease expert who was not involved in the Albany report, said while it’s hardly the last word on the issue, he hopes it will guide doctors who are considering prescribing it to their hospitalized patients.
“This study is not a red light. It’s a yellow caution light,” he said.
This post was updated to more clearly reflect the size of the hydroxychloroquine study.
On Thursday, US President Donald Trump suggested that scientists may want to explore bringing UV light inside the body to kill a Covid-19 infection, or should consider the use of disinfectant that “knocks it out in a minute … by injection inside or almost a cleaning.”
Speaking on CNN’s global coronavirus town hall, Hahn added that it’s a “natural question” given that there is some preliminary data showing that light therapy can have an impact on the coronavirus.
Dr. Leana Wen, the former Baltimore health commissioner, agreed that nobody should be ingesting bleach or other disinfectants.
“I don’t think there’s any need to hedge on that,” she said. “Do not try these things at home, and follow your doctor’s advice and follow good public health guidance.”
Watch:
A panel of experts at CNN’s ongoing global coronavirus town hall are answering questions sent in by viewers.
You won’t get sick from eating the virus because it’s not a food-borne illness – it’s a respiratory illness, said CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta. When you touch your eyes, nose, or mouth, the danger is that you could be infected by inhaling the virus or by touching the mucus membranes in those areas.
N95 masks and other types of face masks are meant to be single-use, said Dr. Leana Wen, the former Baltimore health commissioner.
But hospitals and medical staff have run out of N95 masks, forcing some to find ways to reuse them. There are some “promising” studies that suggest vaporized hydrogen peroxide or UV light could be used to disinfect the masks, but it’s still not optimal, Wen said.
Here are three things you can do to lower the risk, said Wen.
The US has enough tests and supporting material to accommodate the first phase of the White House’s plan to reopen the country, according to a member of the administration’s coronavirus task force.
Hahn said the administration’s appraisal is based on the 1.1 million tests now being performed weekly.
He added the task force is working with members of Congress and state governors to “identify” and “fill” gaps for supporting matter like agents and swabs.
Watch Hahn’s remarks:
The coronavirus cannot be transmitted by food or food packaging, according to Dr. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration.
Hahn addressed this topic Thursday evening during CNN’s global town hall on Covid-19.
Some context: Hahn’s comments come after Tyson Foods closed its largest pork plant as a growing number of workers become ill from coronavirus infections.
The plant, located in Waterloo, Iowa, had already slowed production because many of its 2,800 workers had been calling out sick. The Black Hawk County health department linked the Tyson plant to 182 of the county’s 374 Covid-19 cases. Last week, Waterloo Mayor Quentin Hart called for the Tyson facility to be shut down.
Those were all factors in Tyson’s decision Wednesday to indefinitely stop production at the Waterloo facility this week. The company will continue paying its employees while the facility is closed, and the plant’s 2,800 staff members will be invited to take Covid-19 tests later this week. The plant’s reopening will depend on several factors, including the outcome of the tests, the company said.
Later on Wednesday, Tyson announced it will also close another pork plant in Logansport, Indiana, by the end of this week.
Watch:
Dr. Stephen Hahn, the Food and Drug Administration commissioner and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, spoke tonight at CNN’s ongoing town hall about research into treatments for the virus.
The FDA has authorized 62 clinical trials in the United States, and there are another 211 trials in the planning process, he said. Trials that began months ago are well underway, with initial results expected as soon as a month from now.
He added that the FDA relies on results of randomized clinical trials, but did take into consideration results from observational studies, which are particularly important for physicians making decisions for their patients.
CNN international correspondent David Culver joined CNN’s global town hall to talk about the reopening of Wuhan, China – ground zero for the coronavirus pandemic.
Wuhan and much of the surrounding Hubei province was completely locked down for 76 days. But now, life is slowly returning to normal, with the outbreak appearing largely under control.
“I want to show you some video we captured as we drive through one of the commercial streets in particular,” said Culver from Wuhan.
Fewer than half of the stores he saw had reopened, and major brands that have resumed business did so with some modifications, Culver said. The stores have moved products to the front, and changed their procedures, to reduce interactions between customers and staff and keep stores as uncrowded as possible.
Read more about Wuhan’s reopening:
CNN’s global town hall on the coronavirus is kicking off soon. It will start at 8 p.m. ET.
We’ll have medical experts, CNN international correspondents, and US politicians weigh in on the facts and fears surrounding the pandemic.
There’ll also be an extra surprise – Alicia Keys will premiere her new song “Good Job” during the town hall, dedicated to the heroes on the front lines.
How to watch: The town hall will air on CNN, CNN International and CNN en Español. It will stream live on CNN.com’s homepage and across mobile devices via CNN’s apps, without requiring a cable log-in. You can also watch on CNNgo, and subscribers to cable/satellite systems can watch it on-demand.
We’ll also be covering it with live updates here.
President Trump heaped praise on British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, with whom he spoke following his release from hospitalization with Covid-19.
“I will tell you, he sounded incredible, he was ready to go,” Trump said at Thursday’s coronavirus task force briefing.
Trump said he spoke to Johnson “pretty close to when he got out of the hospital” and described his counterpart as “so sharp and energetic.”
The number of coronavirus cases reported in Ecuador nearly doubled Thursday, from 11,183 to 22,160, according to the country’s health minister.
The sharp increase was not caused by a new outbreak, Health Minister Juan Carlos Zevallos said during a news conference Thursday. Zevallos said it was due to a backlog of tests in the country’s laboratories, which left thousands of tests unprocessed.
Ecuador is one of the countries that has been hit hardest by coronavirus in Latin America. The country has the second highest number of cases behind Brazil, where more than 49,000 cases have been confirmed and 3,313 deaths.
South Africa will begin easing restrictions after its nationwide lockdown comes to an end on April 30, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced during a televised address Thursday night.
The country will adopt a five-level alert system to determine future restrictions dependent on coronavirus spread and readiness to combat the disease, with an immediate downgrade from the strictest level five to level four on May 1.
Under level four, certain sectors of the economy will be permitted to resume phased operations including much of the country’s mining sector.
South Africa’s borders will remain closed. No travel will be allowed between provinces except for transportation of goods and for exceptional circumstances such as funerals. South Africans will still be encouraged to stay home, but people can begin to exercise under strict public health conditions. The sale of cigarettes will again be permitted, but bars will remain closed, along with entertainment venues and events.
Roughly 75% of confirmed cases in South Africa have been found in just six of the country’s metro areas, Ramaphosa said, outlining the reasons for continued strict travel restrictions.
Some more context: Earlier on Thursday, Ramaphosa spoke with President Trump on the phone to discuss the two country’s Covid-19 response.
“I have passed our condolences to the government and the people of the US on the devastation the virus has wrought,” Ramaphosa said in subsequent tweet.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he would honor provincial requests to send in the military and shore up seniors’ residences in a state of crisis.
Echoing the frustration of millions of Canadians, he acknowledged they needed to pull together and “do better” to support seniors.
“This is not a long-term solution. In Canada we shouldn’t have soldiers taking care of seniors,” Trudeau said during his daily news conference in Ottawa on Thursday.
Nearly half of those that have died in Canada from Covid-19 are linked to residents in long-term care centers throughout the country. In Ontario, where there are well over 100 senior residences with outbreaks, more than 70% of those who have died of the virus are residents of care centers.
Trudeau also announced hundreds of millions more dollars for vaccine research and clinical trials for possible treatments, and testing.
“Testing is key. We’ve now reached 20,000 tests daily, almost double where we were earlier this month. But testing must increase even further before we can reopen and restart our normal activities as a country,” Trudeau said.
Trudeau said that although Canada’s efforts at social distancing were working, the research funds will ensure that the progress wouldn’t be wasted. Until there is a vaccine, Trudeau said his government would focus on clinical trials for treatments and immunology testing.
