|  | | | | | | | | | Top Stories | | What you need to know about coronavirus today
Trump’s about-turn
Americans are still digesting the sharp about-turn by President Donald Trump who on Sunday extended his stay-at-home guidelines until April 30 and dropped a much criticized plan to get the economy up and running by the middle of next month. It is a measure of how things have evolved that Trump now describes an outcome of between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths in the United States as evidence of a “very good job” done in containing the fallout. The u-turn by Trump came as the U.S. death toll topped 2,460, according to a Reuters tally, with more than 141,000 cases, the most of any country in the world.
The spread
There are over 720,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide, with more than 57,000 cases added in the last 24 hours across 202 countries and territories. The United States reported over 18,000 new cases in the past day, roughly a third of all new cases. North America now accounts for 20% of all cases, and Europe 53%, though fatality rates in the latter are much higher than in the United States.
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| | |  | | | | | | | | Trump on Sunday bragged about the millions of people tuning in to view his daily press briefings on the coronavirus pandemic, saying on Twitter that his average ratings matched a season finale of “The Bachelor.” “Because the ‘Ratings’ of my News Conferences etc. are so high, ‘Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers’ according to the @nytimes, the Lamestream Media is going CRAZY,” Trump tweeted. | | | | | | | | Louisiana state has confirmed 3,540 cases since March 9 - among the world’s fastest-growing infection rates. That pace, Governor John Bel Edwards has said, signals that the state could become the next Italy, with overwhelmed hospitals forced to turn patients away. Frontline health workers scrambled to prepare for that grim prophecy as patients started to stream through their doors last week. The governor said on Face the Nation Sunday that the state has only a tiny fraction of the about 13,000 ventilators it will need, and that it has yet to receive federal approval to tap a national stockpile. | | | | | | | | Special Report: A prayer meeting kicked off the biggest cluster of COVID-19 in France - one of northern Europe’s hardest-hit countries - to date, local government said. Around 2,500 confirmed cases have been linked to it. Worshippers at the church have unwittingly taken the disease caused by the virus home to the West African state of Burkina Faso, to the Mediterranean island of Corsica, to Guyana in Latin America, to Switzerland, to a French nuclear power plant, and into the workshops of one of Europe’s biggest automakers. | | | | Breakingviews - Corona Capital: Soccer cuts, South Africa, China cars European soccer stars suffer a salary relegation, South Africa’s finance minister talks straight about a credit downgrade, and Chinese carmakers rev up their sales pitches. Breakingviews columnists across the globe tackle the latest financial fallout from Covid-19. | | | | | | | | | | | | | World | | Janitor Ritchie Estabillo was on his way to work when he was confronted by five men who poured bleach over his face, one of a growing number of hospital staff suffering abuse in the Philippines amid panic over coronavirus infections. Such stigma is something the Philippines could do without, with hospitals already struggling with a shortage of protective gear, manpower and testing capacity, adding to uncertainty about the extent of the virus spread. | | | | British heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles, who had tested positive for coronavirus, is out of self-isolation after seven days and is in good health, his spokesman said. Last week, his Clarence House office revealed that Charles, 71, had been tested after displaying mild symptoms of the virus and had been in self-isolation at his Birkhall home in Scotland where he had continued to work. | | | | | | | | | | | | | Exclusives | | American Airlines is in advanced talks to hire Guggenheim Securities co-chairman James Millstein for advice on tapping a $50 billion industry relief package available from the U.S. Treasury Department to cope with the coronavirus pandemic, people familiar with the matter said. 5 min read | | | | U.S. customs authorities have asked cocoa traders to report where and when they encounter child labor in their supply chains in top grower Ivory Coast, three industry sources said, following calls from American lawmakers to ban some imports. 5 min read | | | | | Business | | Crude oil fell sharply on Monday, with U.S. crude briefly dropping below $20 and Brent hitting its lowest level in 18 years, on heightened fears that the global coronavirus shutdown could last months and demand for fuel could evaporate further. 4 min read | | | | The Federal Reserve has offered more than $3 trillion in loans and asset purchases in recent weeks to stop the U.S. financial system from seizing up, but it has not yet directly helped large swaths of the real economy: companies, municipalities and other borrowers with less than perfect credit. 8 min read | | | | | | | | | | | | | Top Stories on Reuters TV | | | | | | | |
