Coronavirus US live: 'What you're doing is saving lives': Cuomo calls quarantining this generation's challenge

Dr Anthony Fauci, White House coronavirus task force member and infectious diseases chief at the National Institutes of Health, said on Saturday that a randomized controlled trial is the only way to prove whether any of the drugs being explored as Covid-19 treatments in fact work.

“We need something out there, but safety and efficacy is something we owe to the global population,” Fauci said during an online meeting of the National Academy of Sciences.

He added that caution must be of paramount importance as economies re-open, lest areas wounded by infections experience a resurgence.

“Any attempt to leapfrog over these almost certainly will result in a rebound, and then we can set ourselves back,” he said. “If we don’t get control of it we will never get back to normal. I know we will, but we’ve got to do it correctly.”

He added: “We don’t want to get fixated on how many tests you need. … Instead, places must “have enough tests to respond to the outbreaks that will inevitably occur.”

Florida governor Ron DeSantis said the re-opening of his state’s economy will begin with “a very, very small step forward”.

DeSantis said decisions on which businesses and activities will be permitted when the statewide stay-at-home order ends on Thursday will be made “based on data, where trends are” during a news conference.

Orthopedic surgeon Wael Barsoum, speaking alongside the governor at Cleveland Clinic Florida in Weston, said any changes will be evaluated daily.

“I think that there is a lot of excitement about seeing what happens as we move forward, as we start slowly seeing changes with the requirements that we’ve had put in place,” Barsoum said. “But please recognize that we will learn every day, and we may have to step back from some of those decisions as a society.”

The state’s department of health released data on Saturday showing that 612 people have died from Covid-19 in south Florida – including Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties – an increase of 28 people from Friday.

Statewide, 1,055 people have died and 30,839 individuals have tested positive.

While many Los Angeles area beaches remain closed to the public due to Covid-19, a handful are permitting visitors in a limited capacity amid California governor Gavin Newsom’s pleas to practice social distancing.

One such beach is in San Clemente, where the local council voted to reopen the beach for recreational activity such as walking, running, swimming and surfing, but it also said residents should not bring a blanket and hang out.

The early returns have been mixed. According to the Orange County Register:

This weekend, with a heat wave hitting the region, will be a test to see if keeping the beach open is possible. Will people be able to keep moving and use the sand and surf just for exercise, as San Clemente requires? Can they remember to space out 6-feet away from others to adhere to social distancing rules?

Newport Beach had tens of thousands of beachgoers Friday afternoon as the hot weather hit, an influx that concerned residents who worry about out-of-towners and careless beachgoers flooding into the tourist town.

The sentiment from residents was mixed – some griping on social media that the sand looked like a hot summer day or the Fourth of July holiday with careless crowds disregarding stay-at-home orders — while others said beachgoers seemed to be mindful of other people’s space and, for the most part, adhered to the rules.

“It was extremely crowded, it was the biggest crowd we have seen since last summer,” said Brian O’Roarke, Newport Beach Lifeguard Battalion Chief. “With the boardwalks and parking lots closed, it’s kept the activity more to people on the beach.”

With closures of other beaches in Los Angeles, San Diego and next door in Laguna – as well as regular visitors from inland, the crowds have been “pretty thick,” he said.

“We’re getting people coming from other counties, without a doubt,” O’Roarke said. “Our message is that the beaches are open, we are encouraging social distancing and discouraging gathering points — that’s why the parking lots, the Wedge and boardwalks and piers are closed.

“We want people to follow Gov. Newsom’s stay-at-home order, go out and get exercise, jump in the water, but we’re saying it’s essential to keep up with our social distancing.”

Lifeguards are beefing up staffing for the weekend, though a thick, cool coastal fog on Saturday may help ease crowds. Authorities are approaching groups of six or more to remind them about social distancing, he said.

“They understand what’s going on,” O’Roarke said.

Mike Pence’s office has announced the vice president will lead a White House coronavirus task force meeting at 4pm today in the Situation Room, suggesting there will be no press briefing today.

According to reports, Trump is planning to ‘pare back’ the daily briefings after falsely claiming his suggestion to inject cleaning products had been ‘sarcastic’. Yesterday’s presser offered one of the strangest twists of the pandemic so far: the president gave a short pre-written statement and then exited the stage without taking a single question.

Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has said the country’s economy should not reopen until there is enough personal protection equipment for workers.

“I don’t think we should be reopening any sector of the economy until we have enough material to protect Canadians and ensure that we are stopping the spread of Covid-19,” said Trudeau during a press conference on Saturday.

The prime minister said he expected “plane loads” of PPE to arrive next week. “We know we have to take a gradual and progressive approach and be very careful about reopening the economy,” he said.

Canada had recorded 2,350 fatalities from Covid-19 as of Saturday morning.

Donald Trump has dipped his toes into Twitter, boasting about the US’s testing program. “We have now Tested more than 5 Million People. That is more than any other country in the World, and even more than all major countries combined!,” he wrote. That’s not quite right. Russia, Italy and Germany alone have issued more than 5.5m tests.

Trump also went back to an old theme: China’s place in the pandemic. “The Do Nothing Democrats are spending much of their money on Fake Ads. I never said that the CoronaVirus is a “Hoax”, I said that the Democrats, and the way they lied about it, are a Hoax. Also, it did start with “one person from China”, and then grew, & will be a “Miracle” end!,” he wrote.

Trump is correct when he says he did not refer to the virus as a “hoax”. However, as Snopes reports, he “likened the Democrats’ criticism of his administration’s response to the new coronavirus outbreak to their efforts to impeach him, saying ‘this is their new hoax.’”

Miami is considering how it will handle a planned easing of restrictions in the city next week, according to a story in the Miami Herald. Some parks are expected to reopen but measures will be in place to maintain social distancing. For example, people will be able to shoot baskets on basketball courts but not play full games, while tennis will be allowed but only if people play singles rather than doubles. Enforcement of the new rules will require huge amounts of manpower, and security staff from Miami’s sports stadiums could be used, reports the Herald.

Stadium workers have found themselves out of jobs during the shutdown, which has effectively suspended professional sports in the US. You can read some of the workers’ stories here:

Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, eased some of the state’s lockdown measures on Friday. That included the reopening of nail salons and barber shops. Keisha Lance Bottoms, the mayor of Atlanta, clearly does not agree with that policy and tweeted out statistics on death rates in Georgia on Saturday, along with a message for people to stay home. “If you’re getting your nails done right now, please share these noon numbers with your manicurist #StayHomeGeorgia,” the mayor wrote.

New Jersey has the second-highest death toll from Covid-19 for any state other than New York. The state’s governor, Phil Murphy, reported 249 deaths over the last 24 hours, bringing the total deaths in New Jersey to 5,863 since the start of the pandemic. However, Murphy said the number of deaths now appear to be flattening.

“We need to see more progress and more slowing before we can begin implementing any effort to get ourselves on the road to the new normal that awaits our state on the other side of this pandemic,” he said. “Those curves are all going largely in the right direction.”

He also called the state’s efforts against the virus “a war”. He wrote on Twitter: “We’ve lost more New Jerseyans to coronavirus than we lost in World War I, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War COMBINED. When we say we’re in a war, we mean it. This is literally a war.”

Some have debated how useful war metaphors are during the pandemic. Here’s our own Marina Hyde on language and coronavirus:

The global death toll for Covid-19 has now passed 200,000. The Coronavirus Resource Center, run by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, shows that the global death toll stands at 200,698 as of Saturday.

The figures for infections are likely to underestimate the true scale of the pandemic due to suspected under-reporting and differing testing regimes.

You can read more on developments around the world in our global Covid-19 liveblog: