The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. was closing in on 1 million Sunday, but new cases appear to have reached a plateau, one of the nation's top experts said.
“Unfortunately, it is a very high plateau," said Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the daily death total in his state, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, fell below 400 for the first time in weeks. When the state does begin to reopen, construction and manufacturing will be in the first wave, he said.
Cuomo's counterpart in Maryland, Republican Larry Hogan, said President Donald Trump should focus on delivering factual information about the virus to Americans, not f whatever pops into his mind.
And in China, the hot-spot city of Wuhan reported that its last hospital patient had been discharged.
The virus has killed more than 206,000 people globally, according to Johns Hopkins University data. Almost 3 million confirmed cases have been reported, including 963,000 in the U.S., where there have been more than 54,000 deaths.
The U.S. COVID-19 outbreak has reached a plateau in new cases but probably will not ease much before Memorial Day, said Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Inglesby told Fox News Sunday the U.S. is “near the end of the beginning” of the coronavirus pandemic but was skeptical of Vice President Mike Pence’s claim that the U.S. would "largely have this coronavirus epidemic behind us" by Memorial Day.
"I mean, trends can change over time, but at this point, we have a plateau in new cases per day," Inglesby said. "More importantly, wherever we are in the epidemic, this virus is going to be with us until we have a vaccine."
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican who has butted heads with President Trump over his messages about the coronavirus, urged the nation's chief executive to use "fact-based'' information in his media briefings. On Thursday, Trump pondered the possibility of introducing disinfectants or ultraviolet light into the human body to kill the coronavirus, which Hogan said prompted hundreds of calls into his state's emergency hotline inquiring about ingesting Clorox or cleaning products as a treatment.
"They certainly pay attention when the president of the United States is standing there giving a press conference about something as serious as this worldwide pandemic," Hogan said. "And I think when misinformation comes out or you just say something that pops in your head, it does send a wrong message."
-- William Cummings
The number of hospitalized coronavirus patients in Wuhan, the central China city hardest hit by the epidemic, reached zero after the last patient was released Friday, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. In Hubei province – Wuhan is the capital – the number of existing COVID-19 cases has dropped below 50 for the first time. No new confirmed cases of the disease have been reported for over 20 days in the province, Xinhua said.
The coronavirus, which is believed to have originated in a wet market in Wuhan, first emerged there in December before spreading worldwide. Wuhan and the province of Hubei were locked down at the end of January. China has reported a death toll of more than 4,600 people but is seeing very few new cases.
New York's statewide daily death toll dipped to 367, the lowest one-day total in weeks and continuing a trend of decline, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday. He said hospitalization and testing numbers continue to show improvement and that the state agrees with federal guidelines for 14 days of declines before reopening begins. The state will reopen in phases, he said, with construction and some manufacturing part of the first wave.
In a separate news conference, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said his city's economic reopening might not be completed until 2022. The mayor promised that a "more just society" will emerge for the city.
"We're not going to risk people's lives, we're going to be smart about it," he said. "It will be a reimagination of what this city can be."
Churches in Georgia did not exactly rush to open their doors Sunday even after Gov. Brian Kemp gave his approval to resuming in-person services if “done in accordance with strict social distancing protocols.” Most churches remained relegated to video streaming or drive-in services.
One exception was the Redeeming Love Church of God the Bible Way in Statesboro, which held two services Sunday, according to its Facebook page. Both were live-streamed and each appeared to have at least 20 parishioners in attendance. This was the same church whose members recorded video on April 10 of police ordering a service to be broken up.
-- Lorenzo Reyes
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has added several symptoms attributed to the coronavirus. The CDC now lists fever, cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, chills, repeated shaking with chills, muscle pain, headache, sore throat, and loss of sense of taste or smell. The symptoms are important not only as a warning sign to ill people but because most testing sites require a patient to have a COVID-19 symptom before they can be tested.
The CDC also recommends seeking "medical attention immediately" for trouble breathing, persistent pain or pressure on the chest, bluish lips or face or new "confusion or inability to arouse."
Savannah, Georgia, Mayor Van Johnson took steps to keep local churches closed, and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms urged residents to stay home as the state dramatically rolls back its social distancing restrictions. Johnson asked more than 70 Savannah religious leaders to keep their worship centers closed. None of the leaders said they would reopen.
Johnson told the religious leaders he understood the financial burden of the religious institutions being closed but said, "We can reach God without going through a building.” Georgia has become a high-profile outlier as dozens of states have announced plans to relax social distancing restrictions, but few have yet made major changes.
– Asha Gilbert and Joel Shannon
The federal government says it will help U.S. pork producers find new processors – or potentially destroy thousands of pigs that have backed up on farms – because large meatpacking plants have slowed or closed because of the COVID-19. Pat McGonegle, CEO of the Iowa Pork Producers Association, said farmers "will need help in a significant way," including culling herds if the state continues to see a widespread loss of processing capacity. Iowa, the nation's largest pork producer, has about 25 million pigs.
"The clock is ticking … it's days, not weeks" when pork producers will face destroying animals because there's no longer room for them on farms, McGonegle said.
– Donnelle Eller, Des Moines Register
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will return to work Monday after recovering from a coronavirus infection as his government is facing growing criticism over the deaths and disruption the virus has caused. Johnson spent a week at a London hospital, including three nights in intensive care before being released two weeks ago. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who has been standing in for the prime minister, said Johnson – the only world leader to be diagnosed with the coronavirus – was “raring to go.”
Britain has recorded 20,732 deaths among people hospitalized with COVID-19, the fifth country in the world to surpass 20,000 deaths. Thousands more are thought to have died in nursing homes.
The latest coronavirus assistance package signed into law Friday does not include the hundreds of billions of dollars sought by state and local governments to replenish their coffers. More than $2.5 trillion has been approved for businesses, individuals, hospitals, testing, and other immediate needs, but a major political battle looms over government bailouts.
"The last thing we need in the middle of an economic crisis is to have states all filing bankruptcy all across America," Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican who heads the National Governors Association, told Politico. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt last week that "we’re not ready to just send a blank check down to states and local governments to spend any way they choose to."
– Maureen Groppe
From coast to coast, epidemiologists are using some of the many antibody tests that have entered the market recently to determine how much COVID-19 has spread. The importance of these tests are not lost on Americans, who are itching to go back to work, see loved ones and find out if they have been infected with the virus. With little public data about the tests' accuracy, experts question whether the tests will give people false reassurances by indicating they have immunity to the disease.
"There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection," the World Health Organization said in a statement Friday. The tests also "need further validation to determine their accuracy and reliability," the statement said.
– Adrianna Rodriguez and Grace Hauck
As the U.S. struggles to track coronavirus fatalities amid spotty testing, delayed lab results and inconsistent reporting standards, a more insidious problem could thwart its quest for an accurate death toll. Up to 1 in 3 death certificates nationwide were already wrong before COVID-19, said Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the National Center for Health Statistics. Experts say the inaccuracies are part and parcel of a patchwork, state-by-state system of medical examiners, coroners and doctors who have disparate medical backgrounds, and in some cases none at all.
“I’m always worried about getting good data. I think this sort of thing can be an issue even in a pandemic,” Anderson said.
– Jessica Priest
The USNS Comfort, docked at a Manhattan pier since March 30, will soon leave for its homeport in Norfolk, Virginia, Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said. The 1,000-bed hospital ship, sent by President Trump at the request of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, treated just 182 patients. There was one patient left on the ship early Sunday. The ship was deployed to care for patients without the coronavirus, but the Comfort shifted gears when there was little demand for non-COVID patients while the city’s hospitals became overrun with people suffering from the disease.
