Coronavirus live updates: Trump-backed malaria drug doesn’t help patients; cases outside NY accelerate

Governments and health officials are trying to strike a balance between reopening economies and staving off a second wave of infections. Both South Korea and Hong Kong have successfully eased pandemic restrictions without seeing a resurgence in cases by data sharing, using targeted testing and contact tracing. But other parts of Asia that have reopened without doing those three things and seen another spike in cases. Drugmaker Moderna received a “crucial” Food and Drug Administration approval for phase 2 trials of its vaccine candidate. Another 3.17 million Americans filed for unemployment last week. 

This is CNBC’s live blog covering all the latest news on the coronavirus outbreak. All times below are in Eastern time. This blog will be updated throughout the day as the news breaks. 

• Global cases: More than 3.7 million 
• Global deaths: At least 264,111
• US cases: More than 1.2 million
• US deaths: At least 73,431

The data above was compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced that counties will be allowed to enter the first phase of the state’s reopening plan on May 15 as long as they meet certain requirements.

Counties will have to demonstrate that hospitalizations have decreased over the past 14 days and that they have a sufficient number of tests and contact tracers, among other criteria.

In phase one of the plan, restaurants can reopen sit-down dining as long as they implement safety measures including spacing tables six feet apart and requiring employees to wear face coverings. Personal care services can also resume under certain restrictions. —Hannah Miller

The Pentagon’s global supply chain arm, the Defense Logistics Agency, has executed more than 6,000 contract actions and invested $667 million for the coronavirus effort. The multi-million dollar war chest has supplied more than 4.5 million N95 respirator masks, 95 million exam gloves as well as 2.5 million isolation and surgical gowns.

The military’s U.S. Northern Command, which is responsible for the Pentagon’s coronavirus efforts, has deployed approximately 13,700 people, including 2,400 medical personnel.

Efforts began on the evening of April 10, when the Pentagon received approval from the White House Task Force to execute the first coronavirus project under the Defense Production Act Title 3. —Amanda Macias

Covid-19 patients who took hydroxychloroquine didn’t appear to fare any better than those who didn’t take the anti-malaria drug, according to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study looked at 1,376 patients. Nearly 60% of them received the drug within 48 hours of arriving to an emergency room and were found, on average, to be more severely ill than those who didn’t receive the drug, according to the observational study. The researchers added the study’s findings didn’t find any potential benefit or harm from the drug, adding a rigorous, randomized clinical trial is needed.

Observational studies aren’t considered as conclusive as randomized, controlled trials because doctors can prescribe a variety of other drugs to treat an infection. The less formal process, however, can yield faster results and help with the approval process of some treatments. —Berkeley Lovelace Jr. 

Prime Minister of Norway Erna Solberg said the country aims to reopen most of its public and private institutions by mid-June after closing them down on March 12 to curb the spread of the coronavirus, Reuters reported.

The Nordic country started relaxing some restrictions in late April once the outbreak got under control. Kindergartens and primary schools opened in late April, but middle schools and high schools will resume next Monday.

Bars and amusement parks could reopen on June 1, while private gatherings of 20 people will be allowed on starting on Thursday.

“Thanks to our common efforts since March, we have brought the contamination under control,” Solberg told a news conference. “We can therefore, over time, lighten the toughest measures.” —Jasmine Kim

The California Department of Motor Vehicles announced it will open 25 locations around the state on Friday. The offices will have normal hours and help those who need to make an in-person visit to the department. The DMV encouraged residents to continue using its online services for transactions like license and registration renewals. —Hannah Miller

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the current coronavirus pandemic can be likened to a trial run for worse, future viruses.

“At some point there probably will be a pandemic with a high mortality rate, something that’s killing a lot of 20-year-olds, let’s say. This is kind of like a practice run for something that might in the future might have a really high mortality rate,” Musk said in an interview with comedian Joe Rogan.

The WHO warned last month that more young people are becoming critically ill and dying from the coronavirus. —Jessica Bursztynsky

As the coronavirus outbreak slows in some parts of the country, it’s rapidly gaining speed elsewhere.

New York state, the hardest-hit part of the country, has cut its peak of more than 10,000 new cases a day in half to under 5,000 in recent days, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. However, even as cases fall in the nation’s epicenter, the national numbers remain stubbornly high, giving the illusion that the nation’s epidemic has peaked and is plateauing.

Excluding New York’s data, overall cases in the country are on the rise.

“It’s a transfer of the outbreaks from one area to another,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, infectious disease epidemiologist and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “We’re seeing many epidemics all across the country. As some are slowing, others are increasing, so if you look just at the national numbers you won’t see the full picture.” —Will Feuer

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said it’s “absurd” to argue over how many deaths are worth reopening the state and added that he is not willing to trade people’s lives to reopen the state’s economy.

“This is not a situation where you can go to the American people and say, ‘How many lives are you willing to lose to reopen the economy?’ We don’t want to lose any lives. You start to hear these, to me, what are absurd arguments,” Cuomo said at his daily press briefing. 

The governor’s remarks come after President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that reopening parts of the country’s economy now will inevitably cost some Americans their lives, but benefits would outweigh the costs. —Jasmine Kim

Facebook plans to announce that it will allow most of its employees to work from home until the end of 2020, a company spokeswoman told CNBC.

 The company is planning to reopen most of its offices on July 6 so that employees who need to come in for their jobs to do so. Others who choose to return to their offices will also be allowed to do so. 

Facebook is still in the process of determining which employees will be asked to come back on July 6. —Sal Rodriguez

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that the state will have a $54 billion budget deficit as a result of the negative economic impact of the coronavirus, the Associated Press reported.

The state had a $21 billion surplus last year. At the beginning of 2020 the state had an unemployment rate of 3.9%, now, Newsom said, the state will have a jobless rate of 18%. —Hannah Miller

In a Thursday interview on “Squawk on the Street,” Raytheon CEO Gregory Hayes told CNBC’s Jim Cramer that Americans would soon become antsy to travel again as the nation slowly reopens amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“The fact is, people can only binge on Netflix for so long,” Hayes explained. “Zoom is fun but you can’t experience the Eiffel Tower from a Zoom meeting. You can’t take your kids to Disneyland on Zoom, so, people will get back. They will start flying again, they will recover,” he added.

The aerospace defense firm chief said that in his discussions with airlines and other industry partners, assuming there was not a resurgence in Covid-19 cases, the recovery process for the commercial aerospace sector would begin this summer. —Amanda Macias

The National Institutes of Health does not expect coronavirus to mutate as rapidly as seasonal flu, according to Dr. Francis Collins, director of the institution. 

That’s despite a recent study from the Los Alamos National Lab which found the virus has mutated at least 14 times since first emerging four months ago. The dominant strain appears even more contagious, according to the study. 

“We don’t think it will have this very rapid seasonal change that we have to deal with influenza, which means last year’s vaccine is maybe not the one you want this year,” Collins said Thursday during a hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. —Berkeley Lovelace, Spencer Kimball

A valet who assisted President Trump with his food, clothes and other personal needs has tested positive for coronavirus. The White House said Trump and Vice President Pence have since tested negative. 

The valet, a member of the military, did not a wear mask around the president, according to a White House official who spoke with NBC News. 

The White House declined to state whether Trump would self-quarantine and also would not comment on whether the First Lady, their son Barron, and Pence’s wife Karen have since been tested. —Spencer Kimball, Dan Mangan

The Covid-19 epidemic has all but destroyed air travel demand but things are looking up for cargo airlines.

They’re reaping the rewards of strong demand to speedily get medical supplies, perishable food and a host of other goods around the world quickly, while capacity falls.

Passenger airlines have parked about two-third’s of the world’s fleet as they cancelled thousands of flights, removing that aircraft-belly capacity from the cargo market.

Shares of cargo carriers Atlas Air and ATSG are up 50% and 17% respectively so far this quarter, while the largest U.S. passenger airlines have each lost more than 20%. —Leslie Josephs

As American states grapple with the complexities of balancing the reopening of businesses and combating of the coronavirus pandemic, the varying results of countries across Asia to fight the virus offers insight into proven methods of driving down the spread and returning to a semblance of normalcy.

From travel restrictions and data sharing to targeted testing and tracing, each country pursued its own strategy. While South Korea and Hong Kong have been hailed for their success, Singapore, Japan and China continue to grapple with re-surging outbreaks.

Public health specialists and epidemiologists across the region who spoke with CNBC expressed concern that U.S. policymakers are not taking advantage of the opportunity to glean lessons from Asia. Each of them predicted a long and persistent struggle with Covid-19 in the U.S. —Will Feuer

The National Institutes of Health has set an ambitious goal to make millions of “accurate and easy-to-use” coronavirus tests available by the end of summer. 

NIH Director Francis Collins cautioned this is a “stretch goal that goes beyond what most experts think will be possible.” Still, Collins told a Senate committee hearing that Americans need tests which can accurately deliver results in hours and can also integrate with mobile devices to transmit data. 

“Such tests sound like science fiction but are scientifically possible,” he said.

The NIH has called on scientists to develop rapid testing technology that can scale quickly across the nation. Collins said promising technologies will move into Phase I, in which the NIH will award funding to the inventor and help with technical clinical experts.  —Spencer Kimball, Berkeley Lovelace

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city will offer 140,000 free antibody tests to residents, in addition to 140,000 anitbody tests to health-care workers, to determine the prevalence of Covid-19 in the area.

He said that priority will be given to people in communities near five testing sites initially, although the city plans to add more sites soon. “This is to benefit you as an individual but also to get us information on what has been happening with this disease so we can fight it,” de Blasio said.

He said the testing is in partnership with BioReference. Residents will be able to schedule an appointment through a dedicated hotline starting Friday. —Noah Higgins-Dunn

How will contact tracing work during the coronavirus pandemic? What are the privacy implications?

At 12 p.m. ET on Facebook Live, CNBC will be talking to two experts in the field: Ed Bugnion, former founder and chief technology officer of VMWare and a professor at EPFL in Switzerland, and Aneesh Chopra, former CTO for the Obama administration and the president of health-care analytics firm CareJourney.

Have a question on contact tracing? Leave it in the comments of the Facebook post, and we’ll get to ask many as we can. CNBC’s health-tech reporter Chrissy Farr hosts. —Laura Edwins

After President Donald Trump was mocked mercilessly for suggesting that ultraviolet light could be used to kill Covid-19, one former NASA scientist says now he’s found a way to do it.

Fred Maxik, founder and chief scientific officer of Healthe, claims he has created the first UV light technology that can be used to combat coronavirus. Far-UVC is a type of UV light, and exposure to ultraviolet light at specific frequencies has been known to cause harmful side effects as skin cancer and blindness.

But a study by Columbia University showed that Far-UVC’s narrow band of wavelengths is short enough to stop it from damaging human cells, but still penetrate and kill small viruses and bacteria on surfaces and in the air.

Maxik believes this technology could be radiated from doorways in hospitals and other places that tend to the sick, decontaminating the hair, skin and clothes. —Terri Cullen

Hospitals saw a decline of more than 60% in patient volumes in early April, due to the cancellation of non-emergency procedures, but analysts at Transunion say there are signs last month may have marked the bottom.

Payment data shows outpatient hospital visits rose 4% during the first two weeks of April, the modest bump marks the first increase in patient volumes since Covid-19 was declared a pandemic.

“We’re starting to see that tick back up because of the states opening up their economies, the shelter-in-place orders being lifted, and elective procedures start to be put back on the box,” said Jonathan Wiik, a principal in TransUnion’s health care strategy unit. He said it could take three months or more for hospitals to work through the backlog of delayed procedures and get back to normal non-Covid patient volumes.

Four out of 10 patients Transunion surveyed say they plan to reschedule procedures as soon as providers resume operations, while nearly one in four say they’ll wait until they believe the risk of contracting the coronavirus has passed. —Bertha Coombs

As the economic strain on families worsens, some colleges have vowed to keep tuition for all students unchanged for the coming year.

The College of William & Mary, Delaware Valley University in Pennsylvania, Kansas City University and Central Michigan University, among other schools across the country, recently announced measures to freeze undergraduate tuition and fees.

Still, a tuition freeze may not be enough to entice students as financial concerns become paramount. A growing number of undergraduates are saying that remote learning is just not worth the cost. –Jessica Dickler

A 17-page report created by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team with step-by-step advice to authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places was shelved by the Trump administration, the Associated Press reported.

The document was supposed to be published last Friday, but scientists were told the report “would never see the light of day,” a CDC official told AP. Generally, it is the CDC’s role to offer state and local officials guidance and science-based information during public health crises.

Former U.S. Food and Drug Administration chief and CNBC contributor Dr. Scott Gottlieb that the shelving of the report was ironic, saying, “Irony around CDC not issuing it’s reopen guidance, whatever the reason, is a lot of business literally can’t reopen without it because CDC is a de-facto regulator in a public health crisis. CDC must publish its umbrella document to publish more detailed industry specific guidance.” —Terri Cullen

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a member of the boards of Pfizer and biotech company Illumina.

Stocks rose in early trading as investors bet on the U.S. economy reopening soon. The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded 304 points higher, or more than 1%. The S&P 500 gained 1.5% along with the Nasdaq Composite. The tech-heavy Nasdaq also turned positive for 2020.

Read updates on U.S. markets activity by CNBC’s Fred Imbert and Thomas Franck. —Melodie Warner

IAG — the parent company of British Airways, Vueling and Iberia — and AirFrance-KLM withdrew their earnings forecasts for the year because of uncertainty about when travel will return to normal.

“We are planning for a meaningful return to service in July 2020 at the earliest, depending on the easing of lockdowns and travel restrictions around the world,” IAG CEO Willie Walsh said in a statement.

“However, we do not expect passenger demand to recover to the level of 2019 before 2023 at the earliest.” 

AirFrance-KLM also warned that it will take “several years” to return to pre-coronavirus passenger demand. 

Read more on AirFrance-KLM and IAG’s quarterly results from CNBC’s Silvia Amaro. —Melodie Warner

Another 3.17 million Americans filed initial claims for unemployment support last week, bringing the total number of claims across seven weeks to more than 33 million. 

Economists polled by Dow Jones expected a tally of 3.05 million. Read more on the jobless claims data from CNBC’s Jeff Cox. —Sara Salinas

Kohl’s announced it will reopen stores across an additional 10 states on Monday, having reopened already in four states — Arkansas, South Carolina, Utah and Oklahoma — earlier this week. CEO Michelle Gass said about 25% of Kohl’s stores will be open by next week if everything goes as planned.

Operating hours until further notice will be reduced to 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., the company said, and there will be dedicated shopping hours in place for at-risk individuals, including pregnant customers, each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, from 11 a.m. to noon. The retailer will be shutting all fitting rooms until further notice.

Kohl’s also said it will still be accepting Amazon returns — a program it rolled out to all locations last year — in a separate part of each store.

Kohl’s joins a growing list of retailers including Macy’s, Nordstrom and Gap that are putting plans in place to get stores back up and running shutdowns in mid-March. It remains to be seen if shoppers are ready to get back. —Lauren Thomas

The Food and Drug Administration approved a Covid-19 vaccine candidate from drugmaker Moderna to enter a phase 2 trial. 

The trial will involve 600 participants and is a “crucial step” toward potential full clearance of a first batch as early as 2021, the company said. Shares of Moderna surged on the news. 

Read more about Moderna’s announcement and forthcoming trial from CNBC’s Will Feuer. —Sara Salinas

German officials have warned that the coronavirus crisis is not over yet, despite efforts to increasingly open up the economy and public life as the number of new infections trends downward.

“We are not living after the pandemic now — rather we are living in the middle of a pandemic, one that will be with us for a while — at least for this year and that’s being very optimistic,” Helge Braun, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff, told Deutschlandfunk radio, according to a Reuters report.

Germany has recorded 168,162 cases of the virus, and 7,275 deaths, far fewer fatalities than other Western European countries including France, Italy, Spain and the U.K.

Lars Schaade, vice president of the Robert Koch Institute, warned that it’s possible that the country could see a second wave of infections as restrictions are lifted and “when human behavior becomes relaxed again so that there is a higher number of transmissions.”

Germany started to lift restrictions several weeks ago, allowing smaller shops to reopen. Schools reopened earlier this week. Merkel has launched an “emergency brake” mechanism allowing for renewed restrictions in case infections pick up again. —Holly Ellyatt

Read CNBC’s coverage from CNBC’s Asia-Pacific and Europe teams overnight here: Russia posts record daily new cases, UK economy could shrink 14% this year