Coronavirus US live: Trump heralds disaster declarations in all 50 states and says US is 'winning'

A New York Times report on Saturday, which appeared to be backed up by Dr Anthony Fauci today, that said Donald Trump ignored warnings as early as February that he needed to take action against Covid-19 has clearly riled the president. Trump had already complained about the Times’ reporting on Saturday but renewed his attacks on Twitter on Sunday.

“If the Fake News Opposition Party is pushing, with all their might, the fact that President Trump ‘ignored early warnings about the threat,’ then why did Media & Dems viciously criticize me when I instituted a Travel Ban on China,” wrote the president this afternoon. “They said ‘early & not necessary.’ Corrupt Media!”

Fauci, a prominent government health adviser, appeared to confirm the Times report earlier on Sunday. Asked on CNN’s State of the Union why the administration did not act when he and other officials advised, Fauci said: “You know … as I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint. We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes, it’s not. …It is what it is. We are where we are right now.”

Storms and tornadoes have hit the south today with 20 states, including Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana affected. That raises two dangers for residents – Covid-19 and the elements. However, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said that people should prioritize shelter over social distancing in the case of emergency.

“Have a safe place to go. If you go to a public shelter please wear a mask, bandana, or scarf around your nose and mouth. Practice social distancing. We will get through this,” wrote the agency in a tweet.

Louisiana, which has the fourth-highest number of deaths of any state despite ranking only 25th in population, has reported a drop in deaths. The 34 deaths from Covid-19 reported on Sunday was the lowest total in Louisiana since 1 April. Fears the state will run out of ventilators and intensive care beds have also eased. 840 people have now reported to have died from the virus in Louisiana since the start of the outbreak.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune also reports that the number of most serious crimes, such as homicide and robberies, have fallen since Mayor LaToya Cantrell ordered the closing of most businesses in the city last month. However, other crimes such as some categories of domestic violence and shoplifting have risen.

A friend who Donald Trump alluded to when detailing his experiences with Covid-19 has died from the virus. The Real Deal, which covers the New York real estate industry, identified the man as Stanley I Chera when it reported his death on Saturday. Chera’s identity was then confirmed to the Associated Press by a White House official. Chera was in his late 70s and involved in the real estate business and had donated money to the Trump campaign.

The president mentioned Chera, but did not identify him, when he spoke about the effects of Covid-19 on 29 March. “I had a friend who went to a hospital the other day. He’s a little older, and he’s heavy, but he’s [a] tough person,” Trump said. “And he went to the hospital, and a day later, he’s in a coma … he’s not doing well … The speed and the viciousness, especially if it gets the right person, it’s horrible. It’s really horrible.”

Trump mentioned Chera at a 2019 rally when he described him as “one of the biggest builders and real estate people in the world.” The president added: “He’s a great guy, and he’s been with me from the beginning.”

The Associated Press spoke to a New York cab driver as part of a project to gauge the effect of the pandemic on the nation’s workers. Nicolae Hent has been a cab driver in the city since 1988 and said he no longer bothers heading to JFK airport for lucrative fares as there are almost no passengers. He said on a good day he used to be able to earn $300 but the figure is more like $100 since the start of the lockdown.

He said the best places to look for a fare are hospitals. “That’s where the customers are now,” Hent told AP last week. “Hospital workers, nurses, doctors, and where there are stores for food.”

He said once the day shift at hospitals ends around 7pm he heads home too. “Then there’s no reason to stay on the street, because there’s nobody,” he said.

One day after Donald Trump declared Wyoming a disaster area due to the coronavirus outbreak, the US president framed it in the broader context of national victory – namely, winning – on Sunday afternoon.

According to White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere, it is the first time a disaster declaration has been in effect in all 50 states at once. As of Sunday afternoon, the overall US toll from the pandemic has surpassed 21,300 deaths and more than half a million confirmed cases.

Richard Luscombe has news on Joe Biden’s movements over the weekend…

From a basement in deepest Wilmington, Delaware, comes a special Easter Sunday edition of the popular podcast Here’s the Deal. Its host is none other than Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, chewing the fat with Reverend William J Barber II, the prominent activist, Protestant minister and board member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

In lockdown and unable to command national attention in the way he would like, Biden has turned to the internet to spread his message. Today’s podcast, the third of a series launched just over a week ago, deals with the coronavirus, a return to civility in the US, and “this guy in the White House.”

“I’ve preached about the soul of America and how we had to restore it,” Biden says, referring to a central tenet of his campaign to unseat Donald Trump in November.

“Well, you’re seeing it not just in those poor folks out there making the minimum wage and busting their neck and putting their lives on the line to help everybody else, you’re seeing it with acts of kindness that haven’t occurred in a long time across the board, in white communities, Asian communities, black communities, Latino communities.

“And that, I pray God, is going to be contagious.”

In the podcast, Biden and Barber discuss their faith, hope that comes from the Easter story and the long fight for civil rights and racial equality in the US.

“God doesn’t bring us viruses, but God works in the midst of pain, just like God worked in the midst of the slavery of the Hebrew people in ancient Israel,” Barber said.

Despite the religious overlay, Biden’s podcast did not stray far from the political. People’s experiences with the pandemic, the vice-president believes, have made them more appreciative of social policy.

“If Hillary had won, if we didn’t have this guy in the White House, it would have been very hard for Hillary to sell some of the things she wanted to sell, and the things that I want to sell, that Bernie wanted to sell, because people didn’t quite get it.

“People now understand. When’s the last time people walked out and thanked the guy who’s cleaning the sewer, for keeping his basement from backing up? When’s the last time that somebody walked out and said, ‘Hey, thanks?’

“Well, people now are seeing every single day people busting their neck, risking their lives, to save other people, these first responders, these nurses, the people that are out there in the ambulances… People are getting their eyes opened.”

Biden also has thoughts about the financial hardships people are experiencing.

“We should freeze all evictions for rent, we should freeze mortgage payments, we should be increasing social security payments right now by at least another $200 a month, we should be forgiving student debt,” he said.

“We’re going to need a lot more money spent to deal with this crisis and the aftermath of this crisis.”

Ariel Dorfman warned of the dangers of Donald Trump’s attack on science in 2017. Now he says that even those dire predictions did not go far enough as the president’s response to Covid-19 begins to play out:

Today’s chaotic and bumbling response to this emergency is no accident, but deeply rooted and systemic, the direct result of a pattern of callow benightedness that verges on the criminal and that goes back to the very start of Trump’s regime, embedded in the very recalcitrant anti-intellectual DNA of this president and his followers.

If, back in October of 2017, Trump seemed a remote, albeit inadvertent, disciple of the fascist general who shouted “Long live death!” all those decades ago as democracy was being destroyed in Spain, today I see him as someone far more terrifying: the personification of one of the horsemen of the apocalypse, the one riding the white horse of pestilence.

You can read the full column below:

Edward Helmore has the latest on oil production during the pandemic:

The world’s top oil producers have agreed to reduce global crude output, ending a price war after four days of video conferences involving government ministers from around the globe.

Under the terms of the deal, the 13-nation Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries – and 10 other nations including Russia – will cut production by 9.7m barrels a day, just below the initial proposal of 10m. The US, Brazil and Canada will contribute another 3.7m barrels as their production declines.

Last week, talks stalled when Saudi Arabia’s energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, refused to compromise with Mexico, which wanted to reduce output by 100,000 barrels a day.

Under the agreement struck on Sunday, the US will reportedly cut 300,000 barrels per day to compensate for Mexico. Delegates are set to hold a final call to agree the deal ahead of the market’s opening on Monday.

Oil prices have dropped 40% since early March, when Saudi Arabia and Russia failed to reach an agreement to counter an oil-market supply glut as the spread of coronavirus signaled a slowdown in world consumption. Last week, Saudi and Russian delegates pledged to bury their differences.

New Jersey, the state with the second-most deaths in the US from Covid-19, reported another 168 deaths on Sunday, although that is down from Saturday’s figure of 251. However, the number of positive tests (3,733) was up from Saturday’s total of 3,599. The total number of deaths from Covid-19 in New Jersey now stands at 2,350. New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy, said the state has received another 200 ventilators from the federal government. “Ventilators are our number one need right now. We won’t stop fighting to get the equipment we need to save every life we can,” he wrote on Twitter.

The White House has not scheduled a press briefing for today. If Donald Trump does not appear it will be the first time since the president started his Covid-19 updates that he has missed two days in a row. It should be noted that there was no briefing scheduled for last Sunday either before one was called at the last minute. However, the president could help his popularity by missing a few. He has been accused of spreading misinformation and undermining his own advisers during the briefings, and there is some evidence even his own base may be tiring of his behavior during his appearances.

Saturday’s report in the New York Times detailing the Trump administration’s failure to act on early warnings about the potential of Covid-19 to cause havoc in the US continues to cause a stir. On Saturday night, Donald Trump himself attacked the Times as “fake news”. On Sunday, Fox News host and Trump ally Sean Hannity ramped things up with a series of tweets directed at the Times and the newspaper’s White House correspondent, Maggie Haberman.

“Hey .@maggieNYT . @nytimes You should Thank .@Potus for the Travel Ban(s) put in place while you and .@Nytimes were fixated on impeachment and advising people to travel to China. #NYTimesEpicFail,” he wrote on Twitter.

He also called Haberman and the Times “corrupt and abusively biased” and said “it was your paper telling people it is safe to travel to China”.

Hannity, it should be noted, said early on in the Covid-19 outbreak that the virus was being overplayed by Democrats and the media to “bludgeon Trump with this new hoax”. He has since denied calling the virus a hoax.

Reverend Brian X Needles delivers Easter Sunday mass via livestream from at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church in South Orange, New Jersey. In an effort to include the congregation, Needles and the church staff attached pictures sent in by parishioners so that they may be there for today’s celebration. Pope Francis, as well as many Christian leaders, pivoted to live streaming services during the pandemic.

The Associated Press reports that more than 2,600 deaths over the past two weeks in nursing homes and long-term care facilities have been linked to the coronavirus outbreak:

Because the federal government has not been releasing a count of its own, the AP has kept its own running tally based on media reports and state health departments. The latest count of at least 2,646 deaths is up from about 450 deaths just 10 days ago.

But the true toll among the 1 million mostly frail and elderly people who live in such facilities is likely much higher, experts say, because most state counts dont include those who died without ever being tested for COVID-19.

Alarming outbreaks in just the past few weeks have included one at a nursing home in suburban Richmond that has killed 39 and infected 84, another at nursing home in central Indiana that has killed 24 and infected 16, and one at a veterans home in Holyoke, Mass., that has killed 37, infected 76 and prompted a federal investigation.

This comes weeks after an outbreak at a nursing home in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland that has so far claimed 43 lives.

And those are just the outbreaks we know about. Most states provide only total numbers of nursing home deaths and dont give details of specific outbreaks. Most notable among them is New York, which alone accounts for 1,439 nursing home deaths but has so far declined to detail specific outbreaks, citing privacy concerns.

Experts say the deaths may keep climbing because of chronic staffing shortages in nursing homes that have been made worse by the coronavirus crisis, a shortage of protective supplies and a continued lack of available testing.

And the deaths have skyrocketed despite steps taken by the federal government in mid-March to bar visitors, cease all group activities, and require that every worker be tested for fever or respiratory symptoms at every shift.

Cuomo’s pitched skirmish with New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has continued into a second day with the governor reasserting that a final decision on opening schools will be made by him.

“We’re not going to open any schools until it is safe from a public health point of view,” Cuomo says. “We won’t open schools one minute sooner than they should be opened, but we won’t open schools one minute later than they should be opened either.”

On Saturday, De Blasio’s announced that New York City’s school district, which oversees 1.1 million students, would shutter for the rest of the academic year to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus, only for Cuomo to insist no decision had been made. The governor is only reemphasizing that line during today’s briefing.

“Am I, as I sit here, prepared to say what we’ll be doing in June? No,” he says. “I do not know what we will be doing in June. Nobody knows what we will be doing in June.”