April 8 coronavirus news

The New York State Department of Health’s Covid-19 website has been updated to include data on the victims, including their race, Melissa DeRosa, Secretary to Gov. Andrew Cuomo tweeted Wednesday.

The preliminary data, last updated yesterday, includes information on 90% reporting for New York State, excluding New York City, and information based on 63% reporting for New York City, as provided by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. 

Here's the breakdown of deaths across New York state, excluding New York City:

And here's the data from New York City, with 63% reporting:

New York City needs fewer ventilators than initially projected, Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters today during a press conference.

There has been a reduction in the number of new ventilators needed each day in New York City, he said, saying 100 or less new ventilators are needed each day this week, compared to 200-300 new ventilators that were needed each day last week.

There are 5,500 ventilators, including 500 from New York State delivered from New York state Tuesday, available throughout the city’s hospitals.

There is a small emergency reserve of 135 ventilators “in case something has to be quickly moved to a place where the need is greatest,” according to de Blasio.

JetBlue appears to be the first US airline to use new rules finalized yesterday that allow airlines operating at multiple airports in the same city to cut back on flights.   

The rules: The Department of Transportation rules allow airlines serving multiple airports in the same geographical area to consolidate service at a single airport. That allows airlines to cut back on duplicative ground operations — such as customer service agents and restocking planes — while remaining eligible for federal stimulus funds. To receive the funds, an airline must continue to provide at least one flight each week to the areas they currently serve.  

JetBlue will use that approach in five of its markets:

The airline said it would apply for waivers that would allow it to stop flying into other airports with very limited passengers. 

Other airlines are expected to make similar announcements.

JetBlue has cut its schedule by about 80%. 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, “It’s going to be a bad week for deaths.”

Speaking on Fox News, Fauci said in New York there is a decrease in hospitalizations, admissions to intensive care and intubations, but warned the increase of deaths is “sobering.” 

Fauci added, “Driving that and ahead of that is that fact that we are going to start to see the beginning of a turnaround, so we need to keep pushing on the mitigation strategies, because there is no doubt that’s having a positive impact on the dynamics of the outbreak.”

“As we get further on, beyond this week, we should start to see a turnaround which is a good sign,” he added. 

The Dow rose 330 points at the open after giving up all of a 900-point rally yesterday.

An absence of economic data has continued to make the stock market extremely volatile.

Despite yesterday's topsy-turvy session, the S&P 500 still has a chance today at entering a bull run. But it'll remain unclear for quite some time if the bear market is over.

Here's what happened at today's opening:

You can follow live updates on the market here.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the next two to three weeks will be defining for the course of the coronavirus pandemic in the country.

"We carefully study the experience of all countries that also faced the coronavirus threat, and that experience says the first four to five weeks into the epidemic are the most difficult,” Putin said in a televised government meeting today.

He added:

Russia has officially reported more than 8,600 cases and more than 60 deaths so far, according to country’s health authorities.

Twitter is struggling to combat misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, a new study from Oxford finds.

Researchers tracked 225 pieces of misinformation rated false or misleading by fact-checkers and found a majority, 59%, of those false claims had not been removed by Twitter – that’s despite pledges from the company to tackle potentially dangerous misinformation about the virus. 

Facebook and YouTube fare better with only 24% of the false claims still on Facebook and 27% on YouTube.

Responding to Oxford’s findings, Katie Rosborough, a Twitter spokesperson told CNN, “We’re prioritizing the removal of content when it has a call to action that could potentially cause harm. As we've said previously, we will not take enforcement action on every Tweet that contains incomplete or disputed information about Covid-19. Since introducing these new policies on March 18, we’ve removed more than 1,100 Tweets and challenged 1.5 million potentially spammy accounts targeting Covid-19 discussions.”

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy again stressed the importance of staying at home during the coronavirus pandemic, after he slammed “jackasses” this week who aren’t practicing proper social distancing.

Murphy told residents to avoid holding family gatherings during Passover and Easter. 

Murphy said the $2 trillion CARES Act is a start for the unemployed, but the state needs cash to allay the effects of the pandemic. 

“God knows, we need the Feds to come in in a big way,” he said. “We’re going to need another big slug of money to make sure we can stay above water and continue to serve the folks who need us most.” 

Murphy said the state doesn’t have enough beds and equipment right now, but is sourcing supplies from around the world and has opened a 500-bed field hospital.

Watch more:

There are 286 sailors aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt who have tested positive for Covid-19, a US defense official tells CNN.  

More than 90% of the crew have now been tested. 

There are 2,329 sailors who have been moved ashore. However, that is still behind the April 3 target of 2,700.