The Latest on the coronavirus pandemic. The new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms for most people. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness or death.
WASHINGTON — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has new guidance for essential workers as it takes a small step toward reopening the country.
The guidance applies to essential workers, such as those in the health care and food supply industry, who have been within 6 feet of a person who has a confirmed or suspected case of the new coronavirus.
CDC Director Robert Redfield says the employee can return to work as long as they take their temperature before they go to work, wear a face mask at all times and practice social distancing while they are at work.
Redfield said the employees should continue to stay home if they are sick.
He also said employers in those critical industries should take the temperatures of a worker before allowing them to come back to work.
Redfield announced the new guidance during the daily White House briefing on the U.S. efforts to stop the spread of the virus.
The new guidelines will be posted on cdc.gov.
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WASHINGTON — Vice President Mike Pence says Philadelphia is emerging as a potential hot spot for the coronavirus and urged its residents to heed social distancing guidelines.
Pence says he spoke to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, and he says Pittsburgh is also being monitored for a possible rise in cases.
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WASHINGTON — U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement is reporting an increase in the number of detainees in its custody who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
ICE says there are 32 confirmed cases. It reported 13 cases on Tuesday. The biggest concentration is at a detention center in San Diego, where five detainees have tested positive. The agency says not all of those who have tested positive remain in custody.
The U.S. holds around 35,000 people in immigration custody. Immigration advocates have been calling for the release of immigration detainees because of the risk to the people in custody as well as detention staff and the health care system in nearby communities.
ICE says 11 of its employees working in detention operations have tested positive.
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WASHINGTON — The general who heads the Army Corps of Engineers says communities are running out of time to build new medical facilities for any overflow of coronavirus patients that local hospitals can’t handle.
Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite tells reporters he believes the Corps will be done starting new projects in about a week. He says government leaders “have to think through the worst case and get ahead of it while they have time.”
If a city thinks they’ll see a peak of virus patients around April 24, and they haven’t made a decision yet to build more rooms, it may be too late, he says.
So far, 17 facilities, with about 15,000 beds, have been built, and another 17 have been planned by the Corps and developed by local communities and contractors. Another 23 facilities are pending, but it’s not clear how many of those may actually be built.
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PORTLAND, Ore. — Gov. Kate Brown says Oregon’s K-12 schools will remain closed though the end of the academic year due to the coronavirus outbreak, placing the state’s more than 550,000 students and their teachers in uncharted territory as districts with vastly different resources plan for weeks of remote learning.
Seniors who had passing grades and were on track to graduate when the state’s stay-at-home order began in mid-March will be able to graduate, said Brown.
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PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron had a video conference call with the leader of the World Health Organization on Wednesday.
In a conversation with Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Macron reaffirmed “his belief that the WHO is key to respond” to the coronavirus crisis, following criticism by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Macron tweeted that they also discussed the evolution of the pandemic, strategy to face it in France and in the world, research on vaccination and the preparation of an initiative for the African continent.
At the White House on Tuesday, Trump first said the United States would “put a hold” on WHO funding, and then revised that to say, “We will look at ending funding.”
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SEATTLE — Washington Gov. Jay Inslee says a Department of Defense field hospital that had been set up by the football field where the Seattle Seahawks play will be returned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency so it can be deployed to another state facing more of a coronavirus crisis.
Late last month Inslee announced 300 soldiers from the 627th Army Hospital at Fort Carson, Colorado, had deployed to Seattle to staff the hospital, which was expected to create at up to 250 hospital beds for non-COVID-19 cases.
Inslee says the decision to send the field hospital elsewhere was made after consulting with local, state and federal leaders.
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BELGRADE, Serbia — Serbia’s president says his older son has been hospitalized following an infection with the new coronavirus.
President Aleksandar Vucic says on Instagram that his 22-year-old son Danilo has been admitted at the Clinic for Infectious Diseases in Belgrade.
Vucic says “my first son has been infected with the coronavirus and his clinical condition is such that he has been hospitalized” at the clinic. Vucic adds “son, you will win this.” No other details were immediately available.
Danilo Vucic is the Serbian president’s son from his first marriage. Vucic also has a daughter and another son.
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MINNEAPOLIS — Gov. Tim Walz is extending Minnesota’s stay-at-home order until May 4, saying the original order has bought the state needed time to slow the spread of the coronavirus but needs to be continued.
Walz’s original order was scheduled to end Friday. But while Walz said Minnesotans have responded well, he notes in his new emergency executive order that confirmed cases of COVID-19 are rapidly increasing in Minnesota, and community spread of the disease also is increasing in the state and nation.
Walz’s new order also extends the closure of bars, restaurants and other public accommodations through 11:59 p.m. on May 3.
The Minnesota Department of Health reported 85 new cases Wednesday, raising the state’s total to 1,154, and it reported five new deaths for a total of 39.
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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine says he spoke with mayors Wednesday who continued to express concerns about some churches not following the state health director’s stay-at-home order.
The Republican governor says he’s not going to violate people’s First Amendment rights by banning worship, but he also says he’s not aware of any religion that supports putting others in danger.
“We’re not going to draw a line, we’re not going to put someone who will stand in a door and stop people from going into a church,” DeWine said. “We just ask everyone to love your neighbor.”
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ROME — Public health officials in the virus-ravaged Lombardy region are pushing back against accusations they made a series of early errors in containing the outbreak that cost lives.
Lombardy’s chief health care official Giulio Gallera says in a letter he was “stupified and embittered” by the seven-point memo published earlier this week by the association of doctors in Lombardy.
The doctors had blasted what they said was a lack of data about the true number of people infected, the lack of tests for doctors and nurses, and the inadequate distribution of protective equipment and masks for medical personnel.
Lombardy has been the epicenter of Europe’s COVID-19 outbreak, registering more than 50,000 of Italy’s infections and nearly 10,000 of Italy’s 17,669 dead.
Gallera notes that many of the doctors’ complaints concerned issues that are out of the region’s control and reflected decisions taken by the national government. He is defending Lombardy’s handling of the outbreak and urging the association to work with the region and not against it.
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MADRID — Authorities in Madrid say at least 4,260 of 4,750 people who lived in the region’s nursing homes and died since the coronavirus began spreading there had the COVID-19 disease or its symptoms.
The figures for the hard-hit Spanish capital shed light on the gap between deaths linked to the virus and actual numbers reported by health authorities, which are confirmed by positive tests.
For Madrid, the confirmed number of elderly COVID-19 deaths was 781 as of Wednesday, meaning that the rest of the elderly who showed symptoms before dying but weren’t tested are not showing up in the national toll. The Health Ministry said the country’s total was 14,555 on Wednesday.
The ministry’s daily figures are being scrutinized to track the epidemic’s impact — and plan its response.
“The figures are much higher than in an ordinary month, because when the virus penetrates in a nursing home it creates havoc,” said Ignacio Aguado, the No. 2 in the Madrid regional government. “These are devastating data that we are fighting against.”
The loopholes in the accounting of the pandemic also had been questioned in the tracking of the contagion tally because Spain’s laboratories have been unable to conduct widespread tests beyond hospitals and nursing homes. Positive infections recorded on Wednesday rose to 146,000.
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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico announced it will broaden its classification of COVID-19 deaths to include suspected cases that were never confirmed — addressing a problem of undercounting also seen around the world.
The U.S. territory has faced heavy criticism for not implementing widespread testing and for relying on limited data to implement a strict curfew and produce estimates of when the peak of coronavirus cases might occur.
Health Secretary Lorenzo González says doctors can classify a death as related to COVID-19 without having to wait for lab results.
Authorities in several countries have acknowledged that deaths from COVID-19 have been undercounted for lack of testing, a problem that has been noted especially in deaths at nursing homes in Europe. The issue also is sensitive in Puerto Rico, where officials eventually acknowledged 2,975 people had died as a result of Hurricane Maria in 2017, vastly more than figures in the low hundreds that were initially reported.
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NICOSIA, Cyprus — Cyprus’ health minister says enough chloroquine has been procured for use on as many as 240,000 people — roughly a quarter of the island nation’s population — if they’re infected with the coronavirus.
Constantinos Ioannou says the amount has been reserved from the five tons of the drug that Cyprus and Israel jointly purchased from India.
He says Cyprus is one of the first countries to approve prescription of the anti-malaria drug to treat coronavirus patients exhibiting mild-to-medium symptoms who are convalescing at home.
Chloroquine hasn’t yet been officially approved for fighting COVID-19 and scientists say more testing is needed before it’s proven safe and effective against the virus.
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VALLETTA, Malta — The small Mediterranean island nation of Malta has recorded its first death linked to the coronavirus.
The country’s health minister identified the victim as a 92-year-old woman who suffered from renal and cardiac complications, and was also diabetic. She died in the hospital on the island of Gozo.
Malta has confirmed 299 cases of the coronavirus — including a 1-month-old — since March 7.
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ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey’s health minister says the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has increased by 4,117 in the past 24 hours, raising the total number of infections to 38,226.
Fahrettin Koca also reported 87 more deaths in the last 24 hours, bring the country’s death toll to 812.
The minister said 1,492 COVID-19 patients are currently in intensive care, including 995 who are intubated. At least 1,846 patients have recovered, according to figures Koca posted on his Twitter account.
The figures released Wednesday came as the World Health Organization expressed alarm over the “dramatic increase in virus spread” in Turkey over the last week.
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GENEVA — The World Health Organization chief sought to rise above sharp criticism and threats of funding cuts from U.S. President Donald Trump over the health agency’s response to the coronavirus, quipping: “Why would I care about being attacked when people are dying?”
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus admittedly dodged questions about Trump’s comments a day earlier, but said the agency was made up of humans “who make mistakes,” and said his key focus was saving lives, not playing politics.
“Please quarantine politicizing COVID,” he said, alluding to the COVID-19 disease linked to coronavirus infections. He made a heartfelt appeal with personal narrative and story-recounting to make his point.
“Without unity, we can assure you, every country will be in trouble,” said Tedros. “Unity at national level — no need to use COVID to score political points. You have many other ways to prove yourself.”
Trump on Tuesday accused WHO of being “China-centric” and criticized its alleged missteps, notably faulting WHO recommendations against travel bans to help stop the spread.
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LONDON — Britain’s Treasury chief says Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s condition is improving in the intensive care unit of a London hospital.
Rishi Sunak says Johnson has been sitting up in bed and engaging with his doctors at St. Thomas’ Hospital.
Johnson was admitted to the hospital on Sunday, 10 days after being diagnosed with COVID-19. He was transferred to the ICU on Monday when his condition deteriorated.
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