Over the weekend, President Donald Trump extended the White House's national guidelines on social distancing from March 31 to April 30 in an effort to keep the projected death toll to the lowest estimates. The White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx stated that the projected death toll for Americans is between 100,000-200,000 in a best-case scenario.
Trump stated that he hopes the country will be able to recover by June 1. At the same time, may other countries have prolonged their lockdown periods, with the United Kingdom going as far as saying their period can last up to six months.
Total Global Cases: Over 784,000
Total Deaths: At Least 37,000
Total Recovered: At Least 164,000
Growing Pains
Italy and Spain have become the second and third countries to surpass China's total confirmed cases. Italy on Monday also became the second country to report over 100,000 cases, only behind the United States.
As cases continue to overload the Italian health care system, the nation's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte issued a warning to the European Union as many have become critical of its aid to the bleeding nation.
"If the E.U. does not live up to its vocation and its role in this historical situation, will citizens have more confidence in its or will they permanently lose it?...Nationalist instincts, in Italy, but also in Spain and elsewhere, will be much stronger if Europe is not up to the task," Conte told the El Pais in an interview.
Comfort and Mercy
In a scene not seen since September 11, 2001, the USNS Comfort has docked outside of New York City to help offload the burden on the city's health care system.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo welcomed the arrival of the Navy hospital ship, tweeting: "We will fight every way we can to save every life we can."
The ship can provide about 1,000 hospital beds and 1,200 personal to New York City. It will be used as another hospital to treat patients in need of care outside of COVID-19; the ship is there to relieve the burden on overcrowded medical center.
The USNS Comfort's sister ship, the USNS Mercy, has been sent to Los Angeles to assist the growing outbreak on the West Coast.
In addition to the medical ships, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has sent refrigerator trucks to NYC to serve as temporary mortuaries for those who have died from the virus.
NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio stated that the city is preparing for a "horrible increase in the number of deaths."
Governor Cuomo also on Monday called on health care workers across the United States to travel to help the state with the outbreak. At his daily press conference, Cuomo stated, "Help New York. We are the ones who are hit now...tomorrow it is going to be somewhere else...it is going to work its way across the country."
Race for the Cure
The World Health Organization announced on Monday that early data shows that some drugs may have an impact on COVID-19, but more research will need to be done before reaching a conclusion.
Executive Director of WHOs Health Emergencies Program Dr. Mike Ryan said that there is "some preliminary data from non-randomized studies, observational studies, that indicate some drugs and some drug cocktails may have an impact...Some of [the drugs in the study] may impact the length of disease, some may impact the severity of disease and the dosages of those drugs when they're given to what patients at what state of the disease has not been standardized."
Nonetheless, President Trump has pushed for the use of Hydroxycloroquine, stating: "Hydroxychloroquine is something that I have been pushing very hard. I think we're going to have a good idea [about its effectiveness] over the next three days because its being used in New York at my request--1,000 people. Its being used. I think thats better than testing it in a laboratory. But the doctors tell me no."
Adding to the growing number of studies, Johnson & Johnson
