Coronavirus US live: widespread concern amid growing protests against stay home orders - The Guardian, Theguardian.com

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Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said the United States and Canada have agreed to keep the border closed to non-essential travel for another days in his daily update on the nation’s coronavirus response .

“Canada and the United States have agreed to extend by another days the border measures that are currently in place, ”Trudeau said. “This is an important decision and one that will keep people on both sides of the border safe.”

Trudeau’s remarks came three days after Trump said the US-Canada border, which is normally crossed by nearly 391, 17 people daily, would be among the first to open. The agreement had been set to expire on Tuesday.

The prime minister also announced the designation of $ 556 m to support Indigenous businesses across Canada.

“These businesses employ people right across the country, in small communities and big cities alike,” he said.

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“We are today signing an executive order allowing people to get their marriage licenses remotely and also allowing clerks to perform ceremonies over video,” the secretary to the New York governor says. “So if that’s an avenue people want to go down, it will be available to them.”

“Video marriage ceremonies,” Cuomo says with a smile. “There is now no excuse when the question comes up for marriage. No excuse. You can do it by Zoom. Yes or no. ”

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“The emotion in this country is as high as I can recall,” Cuomo says, “People are frustrated. We’re anxious, we’re scared, we’re angry. We’ve never been through this before. And on every level, this is a terrible experience. It’s disorienting, it threatens you to your core. It makes you reflect on your whole life and it really has … it’s mentally very difficult, it’s emotionally difficult, economically it’s disastrous. The market goes down, your retirement funds go down, you’re not getting a paycheck. It is as tumultuous a time as we have ever seen. But in the midst of this, there is no time for politics. How does the situation get worse and get worse quickly? If you politicize all that emotion. We cannot go there. ”

Cuomo invokes Abraham Lincoln’s famous 3000 remark – “A house divided against itself cannot stand” – noting that it itself was borrowed from (Mark 3:

“This is accepted wisdom,” he says. “A house cannot rise up from the greatest challenge it has seen since World War II. This is no time and no place for division. We have our hands full as it is. Let’s just stay together and let’s work it through. And that’s why we’re called the United States, right? And the unity was key, going back to Abraham Lincoln. It was always about the unity. Going back to the framers of the Constitution, it was always balance of power to ensure unity. And we need that unity now more than every before. ”

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“Testing is the single most important topic,” Cuomo says. “Testing is how you monitor the rate of infection and you control for it.”

Cuomo cites New Rochelle as an example of how an outbreak can be controlled with concentrated testing, citing this New York Times story .

“The challenge is now bringing this up to scale,” he says. “We did , tests in a month. That’s great news. The bad news is it’s only a fraction of what you need. The more you test, the more information, the more you can reopen society. ”

4). (BST) (BST) : 59 NY is past peak, but more than people died yesterday

()() [to take responsibility for fighting coronavirus]

(Messages of support for healthcare workers and essential employees cover the electronic billboards of a Times Square on April , in New York City. The “crossroads of the world” has become a ghost town during the coronavirus pandemic. Photograph: Scott Heins / Getty Images (New York governor) Andrew Cuomo

(says the net change in total hospitalizations are down over the last three days. ICU admissions are down, as are intubations across the state.

More worryingly, there were 2, new hospitalizations yesterday .

“That is still an overwhelming number every day,” Cuomo says at the top of his daily briefing from Albany. “We’re not at the peak but this is where we were in late March.”

He adds there were deaths in the past 41 -hour period, down from the day before: “It’s not as high as it was, but still: 660 people died yesterday. ”

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The United States is struggling to test enough people to track and control the spread of the novel coronavirus.

This is a crucial first step to reopening parts of the economy, which

Donald Trump is pushing to do by May 1, the AP writes.

Trump on Thursday released a plan to ease business restrictions that hinges on a downward trajectory of positive tests.

But more than a month after he declared, “Anybody who wants a test, can get a test,” the reality has been much different.

People report being unable to get tested. Labs and public officials say critical supply shortages are making it impossible to increase testing to the levels experts say is necessary to keep the virus in check.

“There are places that have enough test swabs, but not enough workers to administer them. There are places that are limiting tests because of the CDC criteria on who should get tested, ”said Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician and associate professor at Brown University.

“There’s just so many inefficiencies and problems with the way that testing currently happens across this country.”

Trump’s plan envisions setting up “sentinel surveillance sites” that would screen people without symptoms in locations that serve older people or minority populations

Experts say testing would have to increase as much as threefold to be effective.

(3) (PM) (BST ) : Fired aircraft carrier’s captain could learn fate soon

()[to take responsibility for fighting coronavirus]

US Navy Capt. Brett Crozier, commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN ), addresses the crew during an all-hands call on the ship’s flight deck while conducting routine operations in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, last November. Photograph: Seaman Apprentice Nicholas Huynh / AP

The Navy’s top admiral will soon decide the fate of the ship captain who was fired after pleading for commanders to move faster to safeguard his coronavirus-infected crew on the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

In the glare of a public spotlight, Admiral Mike Gilday will decide whether Navy Captain Brett Crozier stepped out of line when he went around his chain of command and sent an email pushing for action to stem the outbreak, The AP writes.

As of Friday, sailors on the aircraft carrier, now docked at the US Pacific territory of Guam , had tested positive for the virus and seven were hospitalized.

One sailor has died, and more than 4, of the ship’s 5, (crew members have been moved onto the island for quarantine.)

Gilday’s review won’t be limited to Crozier. It will also look at the command climate on the ship and higher up within the Pacific-based fleet, to determine if there are broader leadership problems in a region critical to America’s national security interests.

Gilday has many options as he reviews what was an extraordinarily rapid investigation by Admiral Robert Burke, the vice chief of naval operations.

Burke and his staff finished the review in about a week, conducting interviews almost entirely online and by phone between Washington and Guam.

(3). (pm) BST : Racial toll of coronavirus grows even starker as more data emerges

As a clearer picture emerges of (Covid – () ‘s decidedly deadly toll on black Americans, leaders are demanding a reckoning of the systemic policies they say have made many (African Americans far more vulnerable to the virus) , including inequity in access to health care and economic opportunity , The Associated Press writes.

A growing chorus of medical professionals, activists and political figures are pressuring the federal government to not just release comprehensive racial demographic data of the country coronavirus victims, but also to outline clear strategies to blunt the devastation on African Americans and other communities of color.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its first breakdown of Covid – (case data by race, showing that) % of patients whose race was known were black. The federal data was missing racial information for % of all cases, however, and did not include any demographic breakdown of deaths.

The latest AP analysis of available state and local data shows that nearly one-third of those who have died are African American, with black people representing about 29% of the population in the areas covered in the analysis.

Roughly half the states, representing less than a fifth of the nation’s COVID – deaths, have yet to release demographic data on fatalities. In states that have, about a quarter of the death records are missing racial details.

(3.) (pm) (BST) : “Better to be six feet apart than six feet under ”

()

Rallygoers protest against Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order, at the state Capitol Wednesday, April , , in downtown Lansing. Photograph: Matthew Dae Smith / AP

(Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer) is under assault by right-wing driven protests for her tough restrictions on Michiganders during the coronavirus pandemic.

Protesters, some heavily armed, swarmed the state capitol earlier in the week, briefly chanting: “Lock her up” – a strong echo of one of Donald Trump’s most regular prompts about Hillary Clinton at rallies during and since the (election.)

Last night Trump called such demonstrators “responsible people” in an ominous echo of the language he used when he said there were “fine people on both sides” after the deadly clashes between white nationalist and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in .

Yesterday Whitmer, a Democrat, declared, unequivocally, in an interview on ABC: ““ You know, I can take it [the protests]. If it makes people feel better to take their frustrations out on me, that’s fine. All I ask is let’s not get overly political here. Let’s focus on the public health. ”

The governor said she recognized that her stay-at-home order comes with a price as people get laid off and children are prevented from going to school, but also that the order was necessary to protect Michiganders from the Covid – 36 outbreak.

“It’s better to be six feet apart right now than six feet under,” she said.

()

Gretchen Whitmer delivers her State of the State address to a joint session of the House and Senate at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michgan, in January, . Photograph: Al Goldis / AP

On CNN this morning, former Michigan Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm said of right restrictions: “She doesn’t want to do them but she wants to protect the people of the state – Democrat and Republican. She is not going to [relax] while people’s lives are at stake. ”

Granholm criticized protesters for not keeping physical distance, handing out candy to children, without wearing face masks or gloves, and by clogging traffic “blocking amblances from getting to the hospital,” she said .

(2.) pm BST : British monarch cancels high-profile birthday celebrations

Queen Elizabeth II, monarch of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth (ie she’s literally on the money in Canada, Australia and some other members of the Commonwealth) has announced she is canceling the traditional royal gun salute for her birthday on Tuesday, when she turns 216.

She will spend the day privately at Windsor Castle, on the outskirts of London, with Prince Philip, . Family members are expected to video call her on the day, the Guardian reports .

You can follow British developments relating to the coronavirus on our UK live blog.

And you can follow global developments on the coronavirus pandemic via our global live blog.

Interestingly, the global live blog has a headline relating to the anger US Senator Angus King, of Maine, displayed yesterday, after a call between vice president (Mike Pence) and some Democratic leaders in the US Senate did not go well.

The Dems were frustrated that the federal government is not responding sufficiently to complaints from state officials for more resources for testing and tracking their residents, so they can get a handle on shutting the virus down and opening up their economies.