COVID-19 News from Around the Web

States on the country's East and West coasts are forming their own regional pacts to work together on how to reopen from the stay-at-home orders each has issued to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. The first such group to be announced came Monday on the East Coast. Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his state, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island and Massachusetts each plan to name a public health and economic official to a regional working group. Later on Monday, the West Coast states of California, Washington and Oregon also announced they are joining forces in a plan to begin incremental release of stay-at-home orders. The announcements by the West and East coast governors on Monday appeared to be an effort to preempt pronouncements coming from the President, who has said he will likely introduce his "Opening the Country" economic task force during his briefing on Tuesday.

Every day, a team of public health officials turns up in the White House briefing room to lay out measures being taken to contain the coronavirus pandemic. A different team, expected to be formally announced as early as Tuesday, has begun meeting behind closed doors in the West Wing to tackle another matter paramount to President Donald Trump: how to begin reopening the American economy. The council, which is not expected to include health officials, could bring to the forefront the push-pull tensions within the White House between economists and public health officials over how quickly to reopen the economy vs. proceeding cautiously to ensure the virus doesn’t spike again.

New York’s coronavirus death toll topped 10,000 and the worldwide number of confirmed cases hovered around 2 million on Monday, even as the lack of fresh hot spots globally yielded a ray of optimism and fueled discussions about how some places might begin to reopen. The brunt of the disease has been felt most heavily in New York, Italy, France, Spain and the United Kingdom, but grim projections of a virus that would spread with equal ferocity to other corners of America and the world have not yet materialized after more than a month of measures meant to blunt its impact.

The World Health Organization has identified six criteria for countries looking to slowly lift coronavirus lockdown measures, warning the way down from the peak of the outbreak is “much slower” than the way up. He went onto outline a checklist that the United Nations health agency had devised for countries considering whether to lift some lockdown measures. First, transmission of the coronavirus must be controlled. Second, that health system capacities are in place to detect, test, isolate and treat every case and every contact. Third, that outbreak risks are minimized in special settings like health facilities and nursing homes. Fourth, that preventive measures are in place in workplaces, schools and other essential places. Fifth, that importation risks can be managed. And sixth, that communities are fully educated, engaged and empowered to adjust to the “new norm.”

The term points to the need for a monumental effort to ramp up testing speed and capacity, as well as an extensive — if not ubiquitous — tracing program. Epidemiologists believe that if it is properly employed, testing and tracing can allow the U.S. to open some businesses and relax social distancing requirements. But it will almost certainly need to be a slow and methodical process or else the country risks undoing the good from the initial wave of lockdowns.

New York lost another 758 lives over a 24-hour-period, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during his daily news conference on Sunday. "Every one is a face and a name and a family that is suffering," Cuomo said. "This is truly tragic news." It's the sixth straight day of losses of more than 700 per day. "That's the one number that I look forward to seeing drop as soon as I open my eyes in the morning," Cuomo said. "It has been flattening, but flattening at a terrible high level."

The United States needs to ramp up testing for the coronavirus as the White House considers when and how to lift stay-at-home restrictions and lockdowns triggered by the pandemic, U.S. health experts said on Sunday. More than 2 million tests have been done in the country so far, but the tests are not available to many who need them, said Dr. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. President Donald Trump last week played down the importance of testing, saying, “It’s not necessary but it would be a good thing to have.” Top experts on the White House coronavirus task force have made it clear testing is important, however, particularly as the country takes its first steps toward reopening, a move the Republican president has said he wants to make as soon as possible. “Further ramping up testing, both diagnostic as well as the antibody tests, will really be necessary as we move beyond May and into the summer months and then into the fall,” Hahn said.

As the coronavirus pandemic throws millions out of work and devastates economies worldwide, governments are struggling with the dilemma between keeping people safe from a highly contagious virus and making sure they can still make a living. The decisions are more complicated because each nation is on its own coronavirus arc, with places like Britain, Japan and parts of the United States still seeing increasing deaths or infections; France and New York hoping they are stabilizing at a high plateau of deaths; and hard-hit nations like Italy and Spain seeing declines in the rates of new deaths and infections.

Gilead Sciences Inc.’s experimental drug for patients with severe Covid-19 infections showed promise in an early analysis, raising tentative hope that the first treatment for the novel virus may be on the horizon. The report published in the New England Journal of Medicine tracked 53 people in the U.S., Europe and Canada who needed respiratory support, with about half receiving mechanical ventilation and four on a heart-lung by-pass machine. Eight additional patients were left out of the analysis: one due to a dosing error and seven because no information was available on how they fared. Over 18 days, 68% of the patients improved, with 17 of the 30 patients on mechanical ventilation being able to get off the breathing device. Almost half of the patients studied were ultimately discharged, while 13% died. Mortality was highest among those who were on a ventilator, with 18% of them dying.

The New York governor signed an order to bring in additional funeral directors as the number of coronavirus cases in the state outpaced all countries except the United States. Gov. Andrew Cuomo's executive order will make it easier for licensed funeral directors from other states to practice in New York. At least 16,686 people have died of coronavirus in the US -- nearly half of them in New York. Of the 466,299 total confirmed cases nationwide, about 162,000 are in New York, data from Johns Hopkins University shows. The US is set to reach its highest daily number of deaths on or around Sunday, according to models by the prominent Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been moved out of the intensive care unit where he was being treated for the coronavirus, a spokesperson said Thursday. "The prime minister has been moved this evening from intensive care back to the ward, where he will receive close monitoring during the early phase of his recovery," the spokesperson said. "He is in extremely good spirits." Johnson, 55, was admitted to London’s St. Thomas' Hospital on Sunday after "persistent" COVID-19 symptoms. He was moved into intensive care the next day.

Another 6.6 million people filed for unemployment benefits last week, according to the US Department of Labor, as American workers continue to suffer from devastating job losses, furloughs and reduced hours during the coronavirus pandemic. It was the second largest number of initial unemployment claims in history, since the Department of Labor started tracking the data in 1967. Altogether, more than 14 million American workers have sought aid in the form of jobless benefits since mid March.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in New York has reached 151,598, according to NBC News' tracking, outpacing any country except the United States as a whole.

The Strategic National Stockpile is nearly out of the N95 respirators, surgical masks, face, shields, gowns and other medical supplies desperately needed to protect front-line medical workers treating coronavirus patients. The Department of Health and Human Services told The Associated Press Wednesday that the federal stockpile was in the process of deploying all remaining personal protective equipment in its inventory. The HHS statement confirms federal documents released Wednesday by the House Oversight and Reform Committee showing that about 90% of the personal protective equipment in the stockpile has been distributed to state and local governments.

Things are still getting worse. The US death toll crossed 14,000 on Wednesday, with a record 1,858 deaths reported just on Tuesday. Since the outbreak started, about 425,000 cases have been diagnosed in the US. And researchers say the peak has yet to come. But the main model used by the White House and pretty much everyone else was updated Wednesday to show far fewer projected US deaths from Covid-19 -- down to 60,415 people by August, from the 82,000 the model showed on Tuesday (which was already lower than previous projections). New data on the pandemic's trajectory -- from the United States and around the world -- has been fed into the model almost every day, driving the changes. And the downward adjustment suggests that social distancing may be working better than expected in some places.

In a first, small step toward reopening the country, the Trump administration issued new guidelines to make it easier for essential workers who have been exposed to COVID-19 to get back to work if they do not have symptoms of the coronavirus. Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced Wednesday at the White House that essential employees, such as health care and food supply workers, who have been within 6 feet (1.8 meters) of a confirmed or suspected case of the virus can return to work under certain circumstances if they are not experiencing symptoms. The new guidelines are being issued as the nation mourns about 15,000 deaths from the virus and grapples with a devastated economy and medical crises from coast to coast.