Coronavirus live updates: Vaccine race picks up, banks offer bills relief for millions of Americans

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 1,942,360
• Global deaths: At least 121,726
• US cases: More than 583,220
• US deaths: At least 23,654

The data above was compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Here’s one reason for self-employed people to start their 2019 tax return: The bank might want it when you apply for the Paycheck Protection Program.

The federal government’s $349 billion forgivable loan program opened to independent contractors and self-employed people on April 10, a week after the bumpy April 3 roll out to small businesses.

Just because the loan window is open to entrepreneurs doesn’t mean that they can easily tap the funds.

Currently, banks are asking small businesses to submit payroll expense documents, including payroll tax reports, plus health insurance premium and retirement plan funding data.

Lenders have also limited their PPP applicants to entrepreneurs who already have existing business accounts or loans with them.

This doesn’t sync with the way independent contractors operate – and it’s why some accountants are talking about pushing through tax returns for 2019. —Darla Mercado

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he will not engage in a fight with President Donald Trump as tension escalated between the two this week over who has authority to reopen the U.S. economy. Trump said he has “total” authority over the states.

“This is not time for politics and it is no time to fight. I put my hand out in total partnership and cooperation with the president. If he wants a fight he’s not going to get it from me. Period,” Cuomo said at a press conference in Albany, adding that Trump is “wrong on the law.”

On Monday, Cuomo announced a formal working group with several other Northeastern governors to coordinate the region’s Covid-19 mitigation efforts as well as any plans to reopen the states for business. Trump, later in the day, told reporters that only he had that power: “When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be,” which prompted a sharp rebuke from Cuomo. —Noah Higgins-Dunn

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said the U.S. does not yet have the critical testing and tracing procedures needed to begin reopening the nation’s economy, adding a dose of caution to increasingly optimistic projections from the White House.

“We have to have something in place that is efficient and that we can rely on, and we’re not there yet,” Fauci said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Fauci’s comments come as President Donald Trump and others in the administration weigh how quickly businesses can reopen and Americans can get back to work weeks after the fast-spreading coronavirus essentially halted the U.S. economy. Trump has floated the possibility of reopening some areas by May 1 and said he could announce recommendations as soon as this week.

Fauci said a May 1 target is “a bit overly optimistic” for many areas of the country. Any easing off the strict social-distancing rules in place in much of the country would have to occur on a “rolling” basis, not all at once, he said, reflecting the ways COVID-19 struck different parts of the country at different times. —Associated Press

There’s a reason you can’t get a refund from Ticketmaster for a postponed concert — the online ticket seller doesn’t have your money. The venue does.

“I think there’s a lot of misperception about Ticketmaster,” Joe Berchtold, the president of Live Nation, the company that owns Ticketmaster, said on CNBC’s “Squawk Alley.” “Ticketmaster doesn’t sell these tickets and sit on a mountain of cash. Ticketmaster sells tickets and gives the cash over to the venues where the events are held.”

Over the last week, Ticketmaster has faced backlash from consumers seeking refunds for postponed live events.

Berchtold explained that in order for Ticketmaster to issue refunds it needs to work with the event venues, but those venues are closed due to the coronavirus outbreak. —Sarah Whitten

Unilever, the London-based consumer products giant, is not benefiting overall from the coronavirus crisis even though many of its soap and hand-washing brands are seeing increased demand, CEO Alan Jope told CNBC.

“Coronavirus is not good news for Unilever. We’re seeing shift in demand for sure,” he said in a “Squawk on the Street” interview. “We’re seeing a big reduction in out-of-home food consumption of ice cream and restaurant products.”

Unilever makes Breyers and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream as well as Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Lipton and Pure Leaf teas. The conglomerate also makes consumer staples such as Dove and Lifebuoy antibacterial soaps.

“Yes, we’re seeing increases in demand in some of the hygiene products,” Jope said. However, the net effect of the outbreak for the company at large is “certainly not good news for us on a commercial basis,” he added.

Jope said panic buying and hoarding of supplies is largely an American phenomenon. “Only in the U.S. are we seeing this kind of dramatic pantry loading. I think the U.S. consumer has typically a bigger house and more appetite for credit card debt than elsewhere in the world.” —Matthew J. Belvedere

As the impact of the coronavirus pandemic hits businesses and their ad spend, advertising holding companies are preparing for a drop in demand, and some are telling their employees to expect staff cuts and furloughs. 

The advertising industry is bracing for a wider impact of any economic fallout on client spending, since marketing is often one of the first items that businesses cut during a financial downturn. Some brand advertisers have said they’ve already dramatically reduced spending.

In an internal weekly email to employees that was viewed by CNBC, Omnicom Group CEO John Wren wrote that the pandemic has had an impact on the economy, clients’ businesses, “and in turn, on ours.” He wrote that the company has solidified internal measures to meet the changing needs of its clients. The holding company operates agencies across the advertising world, including BBDO, DDB and TBWA. 

“Regrettably, this will include furloughs and staff reductions across many of our agencies,” Wren wrote. “We are doing everything we can to limit staff reductions, and to take care of those who are affected.” —Meg Graham

Apple shipped roughly 2.5 million iPhones in China in March, a slight rebound after one of its worst months in the country ever, according to government data published on Friday.

Smartphone companies are hoping for a strong recovery in demand in China, where the deadly coronavirus is subsiding, just as it spreads overseas and looks set to trigger a global recession.

Mobile phone shipments in China in March totaled 21 million units, according to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), a government think tank.

That was a more than three-fold increase from February, yet still down roughly 20% compared with March 2019. —Reuters

Johnson & Johnson is aiming to produce between 600 million and 900 million doses of its potential coronavirus vaccine by the end of the first quarter of 2021 if human trials scheduled to begin in September go as planned.

It plans to make 1 billion doses or more annually, J&J executives told investors during a post-earnings conference call.

The comments came shortly after the drugmaker raised its quarterly dividend and reported first-quarter financial results that beat Wall Street’s expectations.

The company also lowered its 2020 adjusted earnings forecast due to the coronavirus outbreak. It’s now expecting a range of $7.50 to $7.90 per share, from its prior estimate of $8.95 to $9.10 per share.

Late last month, the company said human testing of its experimental vaccine for the coronavirus will begin by September and could be available for emergency use authorization in early 2021. —Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

Coronavirus deaths are starting to level off in New York state at close to 800 per day with the total number of fatalities reaching 10,834 on Monday, a staggering number that nonetheless shows that shuttering nonessential businesses and keeping New Yorkers home is helping to curb the Covid-19 outbreak, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

“That is to me the most painful number and it has been the most painful number every day,” Cuomo said during a press conference in Albany. “Those New Yorkers are in our thoughts and prayers. If you look at the past few days of the number of lives lost, it’s basically flat at a devastating level of pain and grief.” —Noah Higgins-Dunn

A 99-year-old World War II veteran has raised more than £2.2 million ($2.8 million) for workers in the U.K.’s National Health Service during the coronavirus pandemic. 

With the help of a walking frame, Tom Moore has challenged himself to walk 100 lengths of his backyard, which is 25 meters (82 feet) long, before he turns 100 years old at the end of April. 

Moore is doing 10 laps a day in order to complete the challenge. 

He decided to take on the challenge after receiving treatment from the NHS for skin cancer and a broken hip, praising health-care workers for their “patience” and “kindness” in a TV interview. 

Moore smashed his original fundraising target of £1,000 ($1,257), receiving nearly $2 million in donations on Tuesday alone. –Vicky McKeever

Boeing customers canceled a staggering number of 737 Max orders last month, deepening the crisis the company faces amid the coronavirus pandemic and the continued grounding of its bestselling plane after two fatal crashes.

Boeing shares were down more than 3% shortly after the company posted the dismal figures, trading near session lows.

The company on Tuesday posted 150 cancellations of its beleaguered 737 Max jets in March. Brazilian airline Gol canceled 34 of the narrow-body planes, and leasing firm Avolon scrapped orders for 75, a move it announced earlier this month. Net cancellations in the month totaled 119. Boeing did receive 31 orders for wide-body passenger planes and military aircraft in the month.

Net cancellations for the first three months of the year reached 307 planes, a sharp turnaround for a company that just over a year ago was aiming to increase output of its planes to meet strong demand. –-Leslie Josephs

Seventy possible vaccines are now in development for Covid-19, up from to 44 on March 20, according to a document from WHO published Saturday. Scientists expect it to take between 12 and 18 months to get a vaccine approved for mass use. 

Of the 70 Covid-19 vaccines in development, only three are in clinical trials, meaning they are being tested on humans. Clinical trials are designed to assess the safety and efficacy of a new drug and consist of several phases, each involving more patients. 

China’s CanSino Biological, in partnership with the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology, is in the lead, with the only candidate vaccine currently in phase two trials. U.S. players Moderna and Inovio Pharmaceuticals are the other two developers testing vaccines on humans and both are currently in phase one. The remaining 67 potential vaccines are still only in the preclinical trial stage. —Julianna Tatelbaum 

Harvard University is implementing an immediate hiring and salary freeze, canceling or deferring discretionary spending and delaying some capital projects due to financial effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The university said the hiring and salary freeze is for “exempt employees” — those who are typically nonunion members and are not eligible for overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act. 

President Lawrence Bacow, Executive Vice President Katherine Lapp and Provost Alan Garber are taking 25% salary cuts, according to a joint email sent Monday to the university community. 

Senior school administrators, including deans, vice presidents and vice provosts, are also reducing their salaries to contribute to a support fund for employees experiencing financial hardships. —Jasmine Kim 

New York City will purchase 100,000 coronavirus test kits per week from a mix of local contractors and a Carmel, Indiana-based company as the city works to identify more Covid-19 cases, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday.

“For the first time, we’re going to have a truly reliable major supply of testing,” de Blasio said at a press conference.

Aria Diagnostics donated 50,000 test kits, de Blasio said, adding that the city will purchase 50,000 kits per week from the company starting next week. De Blasio said the city is also contracting through local companies to produce another 50,000 kits per week starting Monday. He described both commitments as “breakthroughs.” —William Feuer, Noah Higgins-Dunn 

Amazon fired two employees who were outspoken critics of the company’s labor practices, including, most recently, its treatment of warehouse workers during the coronavirus outbreak. 

The company confirmed to CNBC that it fired user experience designers Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa for “repeatedly violating internal policies.” 

“We support every employee’s right to criticize their employer’s working conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against any and all internal policies. We terminated these employees for repeatedly violating internal policies,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. 

Amazon’s external communications policy prohibits employees from speaking about the company’s business without approval from management.

The workers said they were fired on Friday and believe the action was in retaliation to their continued criticism of Amazon, according to The Washington Post, which first reported on the news Tuesday. —Annie Palmer 

For the 10,000 employees at Activision Blizzard around the world, one person they can call about their coronavirus concerns is CEO Bobby Kotick. 

“About a month ago, we sent out an email from my email address with my phone number and we encouraged every single employee that has a concern that relates to their health care to just contact me directly,” Kotick told CNBC’s Becky Quick on “Squawk Box.”

Kotick said “a few hundred” employees have reached out to him since that email. “But we’re fortunate. Very few actually tested positive so far for Covid-19.”

Activision Blizzard also partnered with organizations for additional mental-health care and for licensed child care, said Kotick, noting the company has made investments to support research on treatments for Covid-19. —Kevin Stankiewicz 

Stocks jumped Tuesday as investors grew more optimistic about the coronavirus outlook while bracing for the start of the corporate earnings season. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 510 points, or 2.2%. The S&P 500 climbed 2.2% while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 2.4%. Johnson & Johnson was the best-performing stock in the Dow while the S&P 500 was led higher by 2% rallies in tech, real estate and utilities. —Fred Imbert, Yun Li

Retail centers won’t reopen after the coronavirus pandemic subsides until weeks after commercial offices return, according to the owner of Hudson Yards in New York.

“My guess is we go back to offices first,” Related Companies CEO Jeff Blau told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on Tuesday. “I think retail is going to be a second step. I think retail is going to be much slower to come back. Just because people go to their offices, I don’t think they are going to rush out to congregate in restaurants.” 

Some of Related’s retail properties include Hudson Yards and The Shops at Columbus Circle in Manhattan. Related’s portfolio of real estate in the U.S. also includes office buildings and residential towers. 

Related is already testing a handful of temperature-scanning machines at construction sites, for example, which could be rolled out to office buildings and malls. —Lauren Thomas

GrubHub, DoorDash, Postmates and Uber Eats were sued on Monday for allegedly exploiting their dominance in restaurant meal deliveries to impose fees that consumers ultimately bear through higher menu prices, including during the coronavirus pandemic.

In a proposed class action filed in Manhattan federal court, three consumers said the defendants violated U.S. antitrust law by requiring that restaurants charge delivery customers and dine-in customers the same price, while imposing “exorbitant” fees of 10% to 40% of revenue to process delivery orders.

The consumers, all from New York, said this sticks restaurants with a “devil’s choice” of charging everyone higher prices as a condition of using the defendants’ services. 

Grubhub, whose businesses include Grubhub and Seamless, and Uber Technologies, which owns Uber Eats, declined to comment. DoorDash and Postmates did not immediately respond to requests for comment. —Reuters  

The global economy this year will likely suffer the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the International Monetary Fund said, as governments worldwide grapple with the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Washington-based organization now expects the global economy to contract by 3% in 2020. By contrast, in January it had forecast a global gross domestic product expansion of 3.3% for this year.

“It is very likely that this year the global economy will experience its worst recession since the Great Depression, surpassing that seen during the global financial crisis a decade ago,” IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath said in the latest World Economic Outlook report. —Silvia Amaro

The 10 U.S. states coordinating plans separately from the White House to reopen businesses shut by the coronavirus generated 38.3% of the total U.S. economic output in the fourth quarter of 2019, highlighting how much of the U.S. economy depends on its most populous states. 

On Monday, three states on the West Coast, led by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and seven on the East Coast, led by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, said they will develop coordinated regional plans. With the exception of Massachusetts, all are led by Democratic governors. —Reuters 

Global airlines will lose $314 billion in revenue due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 according to a forecast from the industry’s representative body IATA, which raised its estimate from the $252 billion figure given on March 24.

The $314 billion represents a 55% fall in passenger revenues compared with the previous year, on air traffic, which is seen being 48% lower, the International Air Transport Association said in a weekly online news conference. —Reuters

Sanofi and GSK have entered an agreement to jointly create a Covid-19 vaccine by the end of next year. 

The companies plan to start clinical trials in the second half of 2020 and make it available by the second half of 2021.

“As the world faces this unprecedented global health crisis, it is clear that no one company can go it alone,” Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson said in an announcement. “That is why Sanofi is continuing to complement its expertise and resources with our peers, such as GSK, with the goal to create and supply sufficient quantities of vaccines that will help stop this virus.” —Jennifer Elias

The number of new cases of Covid-19 is easing in some parts of Europe, including Italy and Spain, but outbreaks are still growing in Britain and Turkey, the World Health Organization said.

“The overall world outbreak, 90 percent of cases are coming from Europe and the United States of America. So we are certainly not seeing the peak yet,” WHO spokeswoman Dr. Margaret Harris told a briefing in Geneva.

In China, “the biggest threat is imported cases,” she said, referring to the latest data.

“We shouldn’t really be expecting to see the vaccine for 12 months or longer,” Harris added. —Reuters

Spain’s overnight death toll from the coronavirus rose to 567 from 517 a day earlier, while the country reported its lowest increase in new cases since March 18.

Total deaths climbed to 18,056, while confirmed cases of the infection rose by 3,045 to 172,541, the Health Ministry said in a statement. —Reuters

The World Health Organization has identified six criteria for countries looking to slowly lift lockdown measures, warning the way down from the peak of the outbreak is “much slower” than the way up.

The global public health crisis has meant countries around the world have effectively had to shut down, with many governments imposing draconian measures on the lives of billions of people. The social and economic restrictions, which range from school closures to social distancing and bans on public gatherings, were brought in to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

Some European countries have laid out plans to emerge from lockdown as soon as this month after enduring several weeks of stringent social and economic restrictions. 

WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus outlined a checklist that the United Nations health agency has devised for countries considering whether to lift some lockdown measures. —Sam Meredith

London’s Heathrow Airport said it expects passenger traffic to slump by 90% in April, as it announced that passenger numbers for March were down 52% year-on-year.

Heathrow said it moved to single runway operations on April 6 and in coming weeks will consolidate all operations into two of its four open terminals.

“The move will protect long-term jobs at the airport by reducing operating costs, helping Heathrow to remain financially resilient,” operators said in a statement, adding that the airport’s available capacity was now being used to prioritize cargo flights with medical supplies. —Chloe Taylor

The U.K. looks set to extend its lockdown measures into early or perhaps even late May, just as other European hot spots start to lift some restrictions on businesses.

The official number of deaths from the virus in the U.K. stands at 11,239 with the U.K. on the same trajectory as Italy, the government’s chief scientific advisor said on Monday.

Italy has seen over 20,000 deaths from the virus but has started to lift some lockdown measures, allowing bookshops and stationers to reopen. —Holly Ellyatt

More evidence emerged that the extent of deaths in the U.K. could be significantly higher than reported.

The Office of National Statistics reported that deaths in England caused by the coronavirus before April 3 were 15% higher than previously reported NHS numbers.

“The latest comparable data for deaths involving Covid-19 with a date of death up to April 3, show there were 6,235 deaths in England and Wales,” Nick Stripe, head of health analysis at the Office for National Statistics, said Tuesday morning, Reuters reported. 

“When looking at data for England, this is 15% higher than the NHS numbers as they include all mentions of Covid-19 on the death certificate, including suspected Covid-19, as well as deaths in the community.” 

The U.K.’s department of health put the latest hospital death toll from the coronavirus at 11,329 as of Monday, up 717 from the previous day. —Holly Ellyatt

Read CNBC’s coverage from CNBC’s Asia-Pacific and Europe teams overnight here: Moscow warns it could run out of hospital beds soon