Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Saturday that New York will receive 1,140 ventilators from China and Oregon.

The Chinese government has facilitated a donation of 1,000 ventilators that were expected to arrive at JFK Airport

"This is a big deal and it's going to make a significant difference for us. Also, the state of Oregon contacted us and is going to send 140 ventilators," Cuomo added.

"Which is I can tell you just astonishing and unexpected. And I want to thank Gov. Brown, I want to thank all of the people in the state of Oregon for their thoughtfulness."

New York has a total 113,704 Covid-19 cases, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Saturday during a press conference.

Also Friday, a record streak of job growth in the United States ended as the Labor Department said over 700,000 jobs were lost in March, showing the widespread economic impacts of the growing coronavirus pandemic.

And as the world surpassed the grim milestone of 1 million confirmed cases, there was a lingering but unanswered health question: Should Americans be wearing masks when they leave their homes?

There were more than 270,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. by 5 p.m. ET Friday, according to the Johns Hopkins University data dashboard. Worldwide, the death toll topped 58,000.

Fauci says all states should issue stay-at-home orders

Dr. Anthony Fauci said he doesn't "understand why that’s not happening" when asked why all states haven't issued stay-at-home or shelter-in-place orders restricting residents' movements.

Speaking at a CNN town hall on the new coronavirus Thursday, Fauci stopped short of calling for a federally-mandated national lockdown.

"The tension between federally mandated versus states rights to do what they want is something I don’t want to get into. But if you look at what’s going on in this country, I just don’t understand why we’re not doing that. We really should be," said Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

At least 38 states instituted some form of stay-at-home order as of Thursday and roughly 300 million citizens were under a state or city order to stay put.

Legal experts have said President Donald Trump doesn’t have the authority to impose a national lockdown as the heads of countries such as Italy, Spain, France and Britain have done. And in some cases, the difference between an order and a guidance might be mostly semantics.

New York to send National Guard to seize ventilators

After New York's most deadly night due to the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Friday he will call in the National Guard to take unused ventilators and supplies to redistribute them to the places of greatest need.

New York had a shocking 562 deaths overnight, an average of 23 deaths an hour, as the total number of deaths in the state due to COVID-19 hit 2,935, Cuomo announced.

In response, Cuomo said he will sign an executive order that will allow the National Guard to go to hospitals and health-care facilities to take unused ventilators and other medical supplies so they can be used in parts of the state in desperate need of more resources.

"I’m not going to let people die because we didn’t redistribute ventilators," Cuomo said.

Comfort has only 20 patients on board outside New York City

Just 20 patients were on board the USNS Comfort, a Navy hospital ship equipped with 1,000 beds and 12 operating rooms, New York State and local officials confirmed Friday morning.

The Comfort, with its 1,200-member crew, was expected to take non-coronavirus patients to alleviate the stress on New York City hospitals that have quickly become overcrowded.

Another Navy hospital ship, the USNS Mercy, docked in Los Angeles, had just 15 patients, officials told the New York Times.

The Pentagon on Friday announced less-stringent rules for accepting patients aboard the ship. Non-COVID-19 patients will be screened at the pier now instead of local hospitals to allow those facilities to deal with a crush of patients infected with the coronavirus.

Chicago’s temporary coronavirus facility ready with 500 beds

The alternate care facility inside North America’s largest convention center had 500 beds and the corresponding medical staff ready to accept coronavirus patients Friday, completing the first phase of an ongoing build-out.

The 2.6-million-square-foot McCormick Place Convention Center in downtown Chicago is expected to have 3,000 beds for COVID-19 patients with mild symptoms by the end of the month.

Passengers begin disembarking ill-fated cruise ships in Florida

Hundreds of passengers from two ill-fated cruise ships began disembarking Friday in Florida, the critically ill heading for local hospitals and the healthy passengers heading for the airport.

After being turned back from several South American ports for weeks, the two ships finally docked in Florida on Thursday after reaching an agreement with local authorities. The exodus from the MS Zaandaam and its sister ship the MS Rotterdam was expected to continue throughout the day. Some of the 14 critically ill passengers were wheeled off on stretchers.

Holland America said around 1,200 asymptomatic passengers were being allowed to disembark after passing a health screening and were leaving on a series of charter flights. Another 38 passengers who are Florida residents would receive private transportation home. A total of 107 passengers and 143 crew members had presented flu-like symptoms since March 22, according to a Holland America statement.

The bodies of two elderly passenger whose deaths were blamed on COVID-19 were removed from the Zaandam on Thursday.

Kushner draws backlash for 'our stockpile' comment at briefing

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner made a rare appearance during Thursday's coronavirus task force briefing, which drew backlash when he referred to the national stockpile of medical supplies as "our stockpile" and not one belonging to states.

Kushner, the president's son-in-law who doesn't often make public appearances, says he has been serving on the coronavirus task force at the direction of Vice President Mike Pence.

When asked about data showing states' need for equipment, Kushner said, "The notion of the federal stockpile is that it's supposed to be our stockpile. It's not supposed to be states' stockpiles that they then use."

Critics, including Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., Joe Lockhart, former press secretary for President Bill Clinton and former White House ethics chief Walter Shaub, pounced on Kushner's comments.

"It is for the American people...as the federal government's OWN strategic national stockpile website assures us!" Shaub tweeted.

FEMA says it has sent millions of respirators and ventilators to states

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it’s exhausting all resources to meet the demands of states seeking medical supplies to treat the coronavirus, adding that the national stockpile alone can’t fulfill the requests by state governments.

FEMA spokeswoman Janet Montesi said FEMA has delivered or sent states millions of N-95 masks, surgical masks, face shields and hospital gowns from the national stockpile.

As of April 2, the agency has shipped 11.6 million N-95 respirators, 26.3 million surgical masks, 5.2 million face shields and 8,100 ventilators, among other medical supplies.

Montesi also pointed to the agency's efforts to expedite supplies from the global market, including a flight on March 29, which delivered 80 tons of equipment from Asia to New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Additional flights landed in Chicago on March 30, Miami on March 31, Los Angeles on April 1 as well as in Chicago and Columbus, Ohio, early Friday.

US lost 701,000 jobs in March, breaking 10-year streak

The U.S. lost 701,000 jobs in March, breaking a remarkable string of uninterrupted payroll gains the past decade.

The unemployment rate rose to 4.4% from a 50-year low of 3.5%, the Labor Department said Friday.

The report reflects employers’ jitters early in the month over the unprecedented economic fallout from the pandemic. But it doesn’t capture the nearly 10 million laid-off and furloughed Americans who filed initial jobless claims the past two weeks as much of the nation’s economy was shut down to help contain the spread of the virus.

US stocks fall after huge jobless report

U.S. stocks fell Friday after the government reported huge job losses last month because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 60 points. The Standard & Poor’s 500 dipped 0.2%, as gains in energy shares offset broad losses elsewhere. Heading into Friday, the Dow was down 1% for the week while the S&P 500 had shed 0.6%. (Source: NBC News)

Lawmakers call on Trump administration to address Puerto Rico's vulnerability to COVID-19

Democratic lawmakers are calling on Vice President Pence, who leads the administration’s coronavirus task force, to provide information on how the administration plans to address unique obstacles Puerto Rico faces throughout the pandemic.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Reps. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) and Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) said in a letter to Pence that the administration was slow to provide the U.S. territory adequate aid after hurricanes Irma and Maria.

"As the COVID-19 pandemic hits Puerto Rico, these economic and public health risks will grow and risk exacerbating the crisis,” the lawmakers said, adding, "the Trump administration's actions to delay and impede the island's economic and health care disaster recovery will result in further grave harm to the island's residents amid the COVID-19 pandemic."

Puerto Rico is due to receive more than $3 billion appropriated by Congress as coronavirus relief, which is much more than other U.S. territories, but significantly less than states of similar populations. The lawmakers are asking for details on how the administration plans to allocate those funds.

The Democrats note that the island of over 3.2 million U.S. citizens has seen multiple natural disasters over the past two years that have severely damaged its infrastructure. According the Bureau of Health Workforce, more than 1.7 million Puerto Ricans live in officially designated Health Professional Shortage Areas.

Puerto Rico has reported 11 deaths and more than 280 confirmed cases. (Source: The Hill)

Pelosi presses case for more direct payments, other measures in new stimulus bill

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pressed the case Friday for another federal stimulus bill that would include more direct payments to individuals, additional small business loan funding and the extension of enhanced unemployment benefits.

“We don’t need a long time to figure out what we do next. We know,” Pelosi said during an appearance on CNBC in which she argued that the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill signed into law by President Trump was insufficient to address the growing economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Right now, I think that we have a good model. It was bipartisan, it was signed by the president,” Pelosi said. “But it’s not enough.”

People should wear simple cloth masks in public, CDC recommends

President Trump on Friday announced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that everyone wear a simple cloth mask while out in public. The debate about whether the public should wear masks came after increasing evidence that infected people without symptoms can spread the coronavirus. Medical masks should still be reserved for health-care workers.

For Americans overseas who want to come home, ‘the time to act is now,’ official says

The State Department is trying to arrange commercial flights to evacuate Americans stranded overseas as officials warned U.S. travelers abroad to return home soon or risk being stuck as the coronavirus pandemic spreads, officials said Friday.

About 22,000 Americans are still seeking help returning to the United States, said Ian Brownlee, head of the State Department’s task force on repatriating U.S. citizens from countries where airport and border closures have left few options. The department already has evacuated 37,000 Americans from about 60 countries, on U.S. government flights or specially chartered commercial planes, Brownlee said in a briefing to reporters.

Italy records 766 more deaths, but case numbers offer hope the outbreak is leveling off

An additional 766 people have died in Italy after contracting coronavirus, officials there announced Friday, as the nationwide death toll from the viral outbreak climbed to 14,681.

An additional 4,585 cases were confirmed in the past day, bringing the country’s total number of confirmed infections to 119,827.

The number of new infections announced Friday remains in the same range of daily increases as the last several days, lending hope that a national lockdown will prove to have a long-term slowdown effect on the infection rate. Although thousands of new cases are being confirmed each day, the recent daily increases are lower than earlier in the country’s outbreak.

France records its deadliest day so far, bringing country’s total death toll to 6,507

French health officials on Friday reported 588 new deaths in hospitals linked to the country’s coronavirus outbreak, marking the largest daily rise in French hospital deaths since the outbreak began. The country’s total number of confirmed deaths now stands at 6,507.

That toll includes deaths recorded in nursing and retirement homes, which until Thursday were not included in the country’s total count. Nursing home deaths now amount to more than 20 percent of all coronavirus-linked deaths confirmed in France.

Trudeau warns U.S.: ‘It would be a mistake’ to halt export of 3M masks to Canada

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday said “it would be a mistake” for the United States to stop 3M from exporting N95 respirator masks to Canada, which is scrambling to acquire critical medical equipment as supplies dwindle.

The comments came after the Minnesota-based manufacturing giant said in a news release that the White House had requested it cease exporting the respirators to Canada and Latin America, an ask it said would have “significant humanitarian implications.”

Trudeau said Canadian officials have been “forcefully” pointing out to their American counterparts that trade “goes both ways across the border.” Thousands of nurses in Windsor, he noted, travel to Detroit each day to work in hospitals there. (Several of them have since tested positive for covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.)

“These are things that Americans rely on,” Trudeau said, “and it would be a mistake to create blockages or reduce the amount of back-and-forth trade of essential goods and services, including medical goods, across our border.” (Source: The Washington Post)

Story Date: April 4, 2020