Coronavirus live updates: Fears fuel sell-off, CDC unveils new test kits, online grocery orders surge

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• Total confirmed cases: More than 83,700
• Total deaths: At least 2,859

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who was earlier this week put in charge of the administration’s coronavirus response, said on Friday that only one American patient is still in the hospital for the coronavirus. “In every case, people are being treated and by all accounts are doing well,” he said during a live-streamed news conference with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The vice president’s remarks were referring to only the 15 confirmed cases in the U.S. that are not repatriates, a spokesperson told CNBC. There are a total of 62 confirmed cases in the U.S. as of Friday afternoon, including passengers of the Diamond Princess cruise ship and evacuees from Wuhan, China. —Lovelace, Reuters

The Trump administration plans to release guidelines “very soon” that will expedite the commercial development of test kits, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told reporters in front of the White House on Friday. “Private labs throughout the country will be able to come forward and get very streamlined access to approval by the FDA to be able to use that test to really enhance the capacities that we have here in the United States on testing,” he said. Earlier in the day, the CDC announced it would roll out new test kits for state and local labs. The announcements come after California officials and epidemiologists raised concerns about limited testing capability in the U.S. —Feuer

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it’s increasing coronavirus testing capabilities at state and local labs after California officials criticized the agency for delaying testing on a state resident who has COVID-19. Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, announced Thursday on a conference call that the agency has released a new diagnostic test for COVID-19. The CDC, she said, also rolled out guidelines for how state and local health labs can correct previously faulty test kits sent out by the CDC. The changes, she said, will improve the country’s ability to quickly identify and treat COVID-19 patients. “Our goal is to have every state and local health department online, doing their own testing by the end of next week,” she said. —Feuer

FreshDirect is seeing an increase in orders that the company thinks could be driven by coronavirus. The New York-based online grocer said on its website that it is experiencing delays with deliveries because of the high volume. “We have experienced growth across the board, particularly in high-trust categories including fresh seafood, fresh chicken, baby food, baby and family health products as well as household cleaning and disinfectant items,” Scott Crawford, chief merchant officer, said in a statement to CNBC. “Anecdotally, we believe the increase in demand may be related to COVID-19 (coronavirus) media reports and preparedness and as a result, customers are opting for online grocery shopping.” —Miller

Billionaire and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said the coronavirus may be the ‘once-in-a-century pathogen we’ve been worried about.” “I hope it’s not that bad, but we should assume it will be until we know otherwise,” Gates wrote in an article published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced Feb. 5 it would donate $100 million to help find treatments and expand testing for the virus, particularly for poorer populations. —Higgins-Dunn

France on Friday reported 19 new confirmed coronavirus cases, taking the total to 57, and French Health Minister Olivier Veran recommended that people refrain from shaking hands in order to prevent infection. He also said that several schools in the Oise area north of Paris would remain closed after holidays end on Sunday in order to halt the spread of the virus. —Reuters

A Google employee has tested positive for the coronavirus at its office in Zurich, the company confirmed.
“We can confirm that one employee from our Zurich office has been diagnosed with the coronavirus. They were in the Zurich office for a limited time, before they had any symptoms,” a Google spokesperson confirmed to CNBC’s Deidre Bosa. —Elias

Amazon has started restricting employee travel in the U.S. as the coronavirus continues to spread, a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC. “We’re asking employees to defer non-essential travel during this time,” the spokesperson said. —Palmer

Apple CEO Tim Cook said that he believes that China is getting the situation related to the COVID-19 coronavirus under control. “I mean, if you look at the numbers, they’re coming day by day by day. So I’m very optimistic there,” Cook said in an interview with Fox Business. Although the majority of COVID-19 cases have been in China, officials have started to report declines in new cases in recent days. —Leswing

White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney suggested Friday that Americans ignore the media’s coverage of the coronavirus, arguing that journalists are ratcheting up fears to try to hurt President Donald Trump politically. Mulvaney, who also heads the Office of Management and Budget, also said that there will “probably” be school closures and transportation issues due to the impact of the virus. “Are you going to see some schools shut down? Probably. May you see impacts on public transportation? Sure,” Mulvaney said as he attempted to assure his audience that the Trump administration was on top of the virus. He was interviewed Friday morning by Stephen Moore, Trump’s onetime nominee for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland. Mulvaney claimed that the media has only started paying close attention to the coronavirus because “they think this is going to be what brings down the president.” — Breuninger

A dog in Hong Kong has tested positive for the coronavirus that’s killed at least 2,859 humans across the world over the last two months, World Health Organization officials said Friday. Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the technical lead of WHO’s emergencies program, said that the canine tested “weakly positive,” meaning low levels of the virus were found in test results. Hong Kong scientists aren’t sure if the dog is actually infected or if it picked up the virus from a contaminated surface, she said, adding that it is working with local authorities and scientists who tested the animal. —Higgins-Dunn

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker on Friday said that the state had “successfully contained” the coronavirus to two confirmed cases, with both patients recovering fully and returning home. Even so, as the deadly outbreak continues to stoke global fear, Illinois will expand its testing capabilities to two additional labs beyond Cook County in central and southern parts of the state. —Reuters

Production of vehicles in North America is “proceeding at pace” without any “evidence of major supply chain disruptions” resulting from the coronavirus outbreak, according to National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow. Kudlow warned impacts “may be ahead of us,” however there’s nothing currently causing major disruptions. “I’m not trying to say nothing’s happening, and I think there will be impacts,” he said. “But to be honest with, at the moment, I don’t see much.” Automakers have been aggressively monitoring the coronavirus’ impact on their supply chains, including identifying potential alternative solutions if there is a threat to their production outside of China, specifically North America, where many automakers produce high-profit SUVs and trucks. —Wayland

Hospitals across the world are not prepared to handle the coronavirus outbreak that is migrating from Asia to continents across the world, World Health Organization officials said Friday. Health systems, even in more advanced countries, are “just not ready” for a COVID-19 epidemic in other countries, said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s health emergencies program. “We’ve already seen in countries, and quite sophisticated countries, who’ve had a rapid rise in cases in the last week are having trouble coping with the clinical case loads,” he said during a press briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. —Feuer

National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow on Friday urged calm as global fears about the deadly coronavirus sent stocks plummeting once again. President Donald Trump’s top economic advisor said in a Fox Business interview that investors shouldn’t “rule out more optimistic options.” There’s no guarantee cases of the disease will “skyrocket” in the U.S., Kudlow said. —Breuninger

Wharton School professor Jeremy Siegel said the coronavirus outbreak would cause a one-year hit that could drag down earnings by as much as 30%, but that markets should rebound next year. Siegel, speaking on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” as the stock market extended its dramatic sell-off, said the odds are “overwhelmingly yes” that the economy and stocks will bounce back in the next couple of years, despite the outbreak. “I see this as a very severe one-year shock, and then a bounce back that could be extremely rigorous,” Siegel said. —Pound

The Food and Drug Administration said the pharmaceutical industry reported the first shortage of a drug due to the coronavirus outbreak that has spread to 44 countries in a matter of weeks. The FDA, which declined to identify the drug, said the shortage is related to a manufacturing site impacted by the outbreak in China. “The shortage is due to an issue with manufacturing of an active pharmaceutical ingredient used in the drug,” the agency said in its notice dated Feb. 27. “It is important to note that there are other alternatives that can be used by patients. We are working with the manufacturer as well as other manufacturers to mitigate the shortage.” —Lovelace

World Health Organization officials are increasing their risk assessment of the coronavirus, which has spread to at least 49 countries in a matter of weeks, to “very high” across the world. “We have now increased our assessment of the risk of spread and the risk of impact of COVID-19 to very high at global level,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, said during a press briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. Outside of China, there are 4,351 cases across 48 countries, including 67 deaths as of Friday morning Tedros said.”He said health officials are seeing “linked epidemics of COVID-19 in several countries, but most cases can still be traced to known contacts or clusters of cases.” —Lovelace

World Health Organization officials are holding a press conference Friday to update the public on the coronavirus outbreak. On Thursday, the WHO said COVID-19 had spread substantially beyond China and was circulating in over 44 countries. Epidemics have emerged in Iran, Italy and South Korea, where the number of cases are rapidly rising every day. “We’re at a decisive point,” WHO’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters on Thursday. “The epidemics in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Italy and the Republic of Korea demonstrate what this virus is capable of.” Watch the live press conference here.

United Airlines said it’s reducing service throughout Asia as the spread of coronavirus drives down demand. The air carrier has more service to Asia than any other U.S. airline. United is lowering capacity on flights to and from Tokyo, Osaka, Singapore and Seoul, South Korea. Delta Air Lines said earlier this week it would cut its weekly flights to Seoul to 15 from 28. South Korea has more cases of coronavirus outside of China than any other country. United also said it will extend its suspension of service to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong through April 30. —Josephs

Moscow authorities are deporting 88 foreign nationals who violated quarantine measures imposed on
them as a precaution against coronavirus, the RIA news agency said, citing Moscow’s deputy mayor. Hundreds of people have been quarantined in Russia to stop the virus from spreading. Moscow authorities have carried out raids on potential carriers of the virus — individuals at their homes or hotels — and used facial recognition technology to enforce quarantine measures. —Reuters

New York City is testing a person who recently returned from Italy for the COVID-19 infection after the CDC expanded its testing guidelines Thursday. The U.S. expanded its testing criteria include Iran, Italy, Japan and South Korea, the NYC Health Department said in a tweet. “The spread of the virus from person to person in other countries around the world has raised our level of concern. But rest assured we are deploying all the tools at our disposal to keep New Yorkers healthy,” NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot said in a video posted on the agency’s website. —Kopecki

Mexico’s health secretary confirmed the country’s first two cases of the coronavirus. Hugo Lopez-Gatell said one of the patients is in Mexico City and the other in the northern state of Sinaloa, and neither is seriously ill. At least five family contacts of the first patient have been placed in isolation. He said one of the men had contact with someone who had traveled to the northern Italian region where there has been an outbreak. Brazil on Wednesday confirmed Latin America’s first confirmed case of the new coronavirus in a man who traveled to Italy this month. —Associated Press

It’s unclear how many people in the U.S. are circulating with the virus, senior director of New York City Health’s system-wide special pathogens office Dr. Syra Madad said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” She said the possible case of community transmission earlier this week in California was a “wake up call.” Cities across the country need to begin to prepare to control an outbreak and treat patients, she added. “We need to ramp up diagnostic capabilities,” she said. “The more you wait, the more human toll is going to mount.” —Feuer

Yum China, which operates Pizza Hut and KFC in China, said it is gradually reopening restaurants when possible to do so. Some reopened stores will only be partially operational. Yum China had closed about 30% of its stores in response to the outbreak and introduced contactless delivery and pickup for its food. Shares of the Yum Brands operator were down amid broader market losses. —Lucas

If the coronavirus spreads further in the U.S., that could mean bad news for U.S. mall owners, according to new survey data. Fifty-eight percent of people say they are likely to avoid public areas, such as shopping centers and entertainment venues, if the virus’ outbreak worsens in the U.S., a poll by Coresight Research found. It surveyed 1,934 U.S. consumers 18 and older on Tuesday and Wednesday. Roughly 27.5% of respondents said they were already beginning to cut back visits to public areas, Coresight’s survey said. Data suggests malls “will be hit hard,” it said. —Thomas

Five more countries on Friday reported their first cases of the coronavirus, with the deadly flu-like illness now reported in every continent except Antarctica. The five are Azerbaijan, Belarus, Lithuania, New Zealand and Nigeria, which became the first known case of the coronavirus in sub-Saharan Africa. On Thursday, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus cautioned that the international spread of the virus showed it had “pandemic potential.” —Meredith

Iran’s health ministry confirmed that 34 people have died because of coronavirus infections, Reuters reported Friday, citing an announcement on state television. The total number of infections in the country has climbed to 388, the ministry added. Iran is at the epicenter of the outbreak in the Middle East, having recorded the highest number of coronavirus fatalities outside China. —Meredith

Read CNBC’s coverage from the Asia-Pacific overnight: New Zealand, Nigeria report first cases, China’s death toll over 2,700

— CNBC’s Hannah Miller, Jennifer Elias, Annie Palmer, Kif Leswing, Leslie Josephs, Sam Meredith, Saheli Roy Choudhury, Christine Wang, Weizhen Tan, Sara Salinas and Fred Imbert contributed to this report.