The PM announced he tested positive for the novel coronavirus on March 27. He said he was experiencing "mild symptoms" and would continue leading the country -- while self-isolating in his apartment in Downing Street. But 10 days later, the Downing Street announced the 55-year-old was not getting better and was taken to St. Thomas' Hospital in London. He was moved to an intensive care unit (ICU) the next day after his condition deteriorated.
"From what I gather -- and I wasn't there -- no one asked a doctor to mask up and physically examine him the whole time -- more than 10 days," Max Johnson said about the time his brother spent in self-isolation.
The PM spent three nights in intensive care and received "standard oxygen treatment," according to his spokesman, but did not require mechanical or invasive ventilation.
In a statement to CNN, Max Johnson said that while he was grateful for the care his brother received from the National Health Service, he wasn't pleased with the events leading up to his hospitalization.
"He'd tested positive so there was no doubt what he was dealing with. The word 'shambles' comes to mind," Johnson said. "What's the point of bodyguards when you can't have a doctor? The Office of Prime Minister needs better protection."
In response to Max Johnson's comments, Downing Street described the Prime Minister's health as a "private matter" adding it would be "inaccurate" to suggest Boris Johnson hadn't been physically examined by a doctor before entering hospital.
Officials around the PM have expressed gratitude for all the care he's had from his National Health Service doctors.
Johnson was moved out of the ICU on Thursday night. On Friday, a spokesperson said the Prime Minister was "able to do short walks" in between periods of rest, and waved his thanks to staff.
He "is in extremely good spirits," the spokesperson added.
Max Johnson said he was "massively relieved" by his brother's recovery, adding he hoped the PM would take time off to fully recover.
The strength with which Covid-19 struck the Prime Minister surprised many in the UK. Johnson is known for his lively persona, so the idea of the PM being incapacitated shook the nation. Well-wishes poured in from across the political scene, with even some of Johnson's old foes expressing their hope he'd recover swiftly.
Meanwhile, those leading the country's coronavirus response team said Johnson's hospitalization was a reminder of just how indiscriminate the virus can be and urged Brits to resist the good weather over the Easter weekend and stay at home.
As of Saturday, 9,875 people have died the UK after testing positive for coronavirus, according to a tally by the Department of Health and Social Care. Nearly 79,000 people have have tested positive.
A laboratory technician from Dr. Dangs Lab holds a coronavirus testing tube at a drive-through testing service on April 07, 2020 in New Delhi, India.
Stringer/Getty Images
The World Health Organization said it is investigating reports out of South Korea that some patients who had recovered from the coronavirus tested positive again after initially testing negative for COVID-19. On Friday, South Korea officials said 91 patients who were thought to have recovered from the coronavirus tested positive again.
Health officials in South Korea are speculating that these may be cases in which the virus was reactivated rather than people having been infected again. “While we are putting more weight on reactivation as the possible cause, we are conducting a comprehensive study on this,” said Jeong Eun-kyeong, director-general of Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “There have been many cases when a patient during treatment will test negative one day and positive another.”
The WHO said it was aware of the reports and wanted more information to try to figure out what they mean. “We are aware of these reports of individuals who have tested negative for COVID-19 using PCR (polymerase chain reaction) testing and then after some days testing positive again,” the WHO said in a statement. “We are closely liaising with our clinical experts and working hard to get more information on those individual cases. It is important to make sure that when samples are collected for testing on suspected patients, procedures are followed properly.”
According to the WHO guidelines, a COVID-19 patient can be discharged from the hospital after testing negative for the coronavirus in two separate tests given at least 24 hours apart. Some experts say that the key may be whether the patients have symptoms. “If you don’t have symptoms but have a positive test, it may be that you have dead virus that’s still being picked up, but you can’t transmit,” ABC medical contributor and infectious diseases physician Todd Ellerin said.
Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Friday that the government is looking into whether it would be a good idea to start granting certificates of immunity from the coronavirus. “I mean, it’s one of those things that we talk about when we want to make sure that we know who the vulnerable people are and not,” he said. “This is something that’s being discussed. I think it might actually have some merit, under certain circumstances.” Some experts warn though that it’s too early to be talking about immunity from the coronavirus. Although recovered COVID-19 patients appear to have antibodies for at least two weeks, it’s still not clear whether that would continue to be true in the future. “We simply don’t know yet what it takes to be effectively protected from this infection,” Dawn Bowdish, a professor of pathology and molecular medicine and Canada Research Chair in Aging and Immunity at McMaster University in Ontario, tells Scientific American.
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was well enough to watch 11 hours of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy this week, but his father warned his coronavirus-stricken son is “not out of the woods” yet after a bout in hospital intensive care — and said his experience with COVID-19 has been a wake-up call for Brits.
“I do think about this whole event of Boris going into intensive care, and now … coming out, it has actually served an amazing purpose,” Stanley Johnson, 79, told BBC Radio following his son’s release from the ICU at St. Thomas hospital in London. “In a sense it’s got the whole country to realize this is a serious event. If it can hit the prime minister, for heaven’s sake, well it does come close to home.”
The elder Johnson said his son will practice caution when he returns to parliament.
“To use that American expression, he almost took one for the team. We have got to make sure we play the game properly now,” he said. “He has to take time. I cannot believe you can walk away from this and get straight back to Downing Street and pick up the reins without a period of readjustment.”
Johnson, 55, announced his COVID-19 diagnosis on March 27 and was admitted to St. Thomas hospital on Sunday with trouble breathing. Doctors transferred him to the ICU on Monday to be near a ventilator should he have needed one, according to officials.
Johson’s pregnant fiancee, Carrie Symonds, said she is also recovering from coronavirus symptoms.
Symonds reportedly sends Johnson daily love letters and scans of their unborn baby, according to the Sunday Times.
“It’s been a very, very worrying time for Carrie,” according to a UK Sun source. “She has been urging Boris to get well for their unborn child.”
Well-wishers have mailed thousands of cards to Johnson’s office, a source told the Sunday Times.
“There are boxes and boxes in his outer office,” the source said. “They are really lovely and come from people of all ages and all over the country. I think when he sees them he will be tremendously grateful for everyone’s kind wishes.”
By the end of the week, Johnson’s condition improved, and he was reportedly well enough to walk the hospital halls, do puzzles and watch movies, including the ’80s British comedy “Withnail and I” and the three “Lord of the Rings,” officials said, according to the Sunday Times.
Johnson’s father praised his son’s supporters for the “tremendous outpouring” of concern.
Stanley JohnsonWiktor Szymanowicz/Barcroft Media via Getty Images
“I feel tremendously grateful obviously on behalf of the family, Boris’s family, my family, family members all over the place, and also, of course, amazingly thankful as well,” Stanley Johnson said.
Meanwhile, the death toll in Britain continues to climb. Friday saw the country’s steepest toll: 980, more fatalities than Italy, the hardest-hit European country, has seen in a single day.
Boris Johnson is continuing to make "very good progress" in hospital, where he is being treated for coronavirus, according to Downing Street.
The prime minister, 55, was taken to hospital on Sunday - 10 days after testing positive for the virus.
He had three nights in intensive care before returning to a ward on Thursday.
No 10 said he was receiving daily updates and pregnancy scans from his fiancee, Carrie Symonds, and had been passing the time with films and sudoku.
On Friday, No 10 said Mr Johnson had been able to take short walks in between periods of rest at St Thomas' Hospital in London, where he is being treated.
Ms Symonds, who is due to give birth in two months, has been self-isolating with coronavirus-like symptoms but has not been tested.
Downing Street said staff had uploaded films including British comedies Withnail & I and Love Actually to an iPad for the PM.
During the December general election, Mr Johnson scrawled campaign messaging on white placards while standing in a doorway, parodying a scene from the Richard Curtis film.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is currently in charge of running the government, with aides reportedly expecting Mr Johnson to be out of action for as long as a month.
Mr Johnson's father, Stanley Johnson, has called for his son to "take time" to get better.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Friday: "He must rest up. I don't think you can say this is out of the woods now.
"He has to take time. I cannot believe you can walk away from this and get straight back to Downing Street and pick up the reins without a period of readjustment."
Workers producing face masks for export at a factory in Nanchang in China’s central Jiangxi Province.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
China delays exports of ventilators and other crucial medical supplies.
The Chinese government has ordered that no more N95 respirators, ventilators, hospital gowns and other key medical supplies be exported until customs officials perform quality inspections on each shipment.
The new policy, announced by China’s General Administration of Customs on Friday, produced immediate delays to cargos on Saturday as manufacturers, freight agents and traders tried to understand how to comply. China is the world’s dominant producer of a wide range of medical supplies, and its manufacturing lead has widened in many sectors as it has engaged in a nationwide mobilization of medical supplies production since late January.
The Chinese customs agency said that it had previously checked whether medical supplies were accurately counted, whether they infringed foreign patents and other intellectual property, and whether they had fraudulent documents. But now the agency will also assess the quality of goods.
The agency gave no indication of how long the quality testing might take.
The policy comes after a series of complaints from Europe that medical supplies from China had problems. Chinese officials have countered that many of these supplies were industrial respirators that were not designed to meet medical standards and should not be expected to do so.
The new rules cover China’s exports in 11 categories: medical respirators and surgical masks, medical protective clothing, infrared thermometers, ventilators, surgical caps, medical goggles, medical gloves, medical shoe covers, patient monitors, medical disinfection towels and medical disinfectants.
With 2 hours’ notice, Turkey puts millions under a lockdown.
Turkey’s cities fell quiet on Saturday, a day after the authorities ordered a two-day curfew for 31 provinces, and as the country’s death toll from the coronavirus pandemic climbed above 1,000.
The lockdown, which came with two hours’ notice, affected Istanbul and Ankara, where international flights were halted and schools and bars closed three weeks ago.
“We urge all citizens who live in these 31 provinces to comply with this weekend’s lockdown without panicking,” Fahrettin Altun, the country’s communications director, said on Twitter.
Mr. Altun asked people to maintain their social distance in the time before the lockdown went into effect at midnight. But soon after the news was announced, hundreds of people rushed to late-night stores to shop for essentials in Istanbul, a city of 16 million.
Video posted to Twitter and Facebook showed the chaos as scores of densely packed crowds — some people wore no masks — jostled to enter a store and fights broke out.
The Interior Ministry said in a statement that bakeries, pharmacies and health facilities could operate during the lockdown. Certain energy companies, distribution firms and some gas stations were also exempted.
The number of cases of Covid-19 increased by 4,747 and 98 people died in the past 24 hours, raising the death toll to 1,006, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said.
As coronavirus cases rise, murder rates fall.
As countries contend with escalating body counts from the pandemic, some are experiencing an unanticipated decline in a different form of death: murder.
Lockdowns have reduced opportunities for homicides and other crimes, and the virus has taken some criminals out of action as they hunker down in their homes. Some gangs have even led efforts to impose curfews in neighborhoods where they hold sway.
The drop in murders is especially notable in Latin America, the region with the highest homicide rates in the world outside of war.
In El Salvador, for example, there were just 65 homicides in March, down from 114 in February. Neighboring Honduras has also seen a falloff in killings in recent weeks, as has Colombia and the most populous state in Mexico.
The pandemic is “taking people off the streets,” said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst in Mexico City. “The rule of thumb is: the stricter the lockdown, the bigger the effect on crimes committed against strangers on the street.”
The Paris suburbs were already tense. Now they’re simmering under lockdown.
Residents of Seine-Saint-Denis, France’s poorest department, did not have the luxury to relocate to the countryside when the French government announced strict confinement rules on March 16. Since then, families have been packed into apartments, forced to wait it out.
The combination of cramped quarters, acute economic stress and tough policing has made Paris’s poorer suburbs a center of tension during the pandemic. France reported over 13,000 deaths and over 100,000 test-confirmed cases on Friday.
Relations between residents and the police, with their undercurrent of racial discrimination, are often fraught even in the best of times. Residents have repeatedly compared the confinement rules to conditions in a prison, and they say that the police are taking advantage of their mandate to keep the streets clear by harassing and beating youths. Some are warning that the pressures are ripe to explode.
“We’ve got a lot of young people in big families, shut up in tiny apartments, and it’s difficult to close them up like that,” said Bilal Chikri, a filmmaker who lives in the neighborhood.
Outside the apartment blocks, small groups have begun to gather mostly at bus stops while wide streets are largely quiet.
Overall, people are respecting the confinement rules, said Hamza Esmili, a sociologist who has studied the Paris suburbs. “There isn’t a sort of collective indiscipline about it.”
But the illness has a potential to continue spreading, he said. The danger doesn’t come from people congregating outside, but from the cramped apartments where extended families are packed.
Apple and Google team up to track the coronavirus.
In one of the most far-ranging attempts to halt the spread of the coronavirus, Apple and Google said they were building software into smartphones that would tell people if they were recently in contact with someone who was infected with it.
The technology giants said they were teaming up to release the tool within several months, building it into the operating systems of the billions of iPhones and Android devices around the world. That would enable the smartphones to constantly log other devices they come near, enabling what is known as “contact tracing” of the disease. People would opt in to use the tool and voluntarily report if they became infected.
The unlikely partnership between Google and Apple, fierce rivals who rarely pass up an opportunity to criticize each other, underscores the seriousness of the health crisis and the power of the two companies whose software runs almost every smartphone in the world. Apple and Google said their joint effort came together in just the past two weeks.
Public-health authorities have said that improved tracking of infected people and their contacts could slow the pandemic. Such measures have been effective in places like South Korea that also conducted mass virus testing.
Yet two of the world’s largest tech companies harnessing virtually all of the smartphones on the planet to trace people’s connections raises questions about the reach these behemoths have into individuals’ lives and society.
“It could be a useful tool, but it raises privacy issues,” said Dr. Mike Reid, an assistant professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco, who is helping San Francisco officials with contact tracing. “It’s not going to be the sole solution, but as part of a robust sophisticated response, it has a role to play.”
South Korea plans to strap wristbands on quarantine violators.
South Korea said on Saturday that it plans to strap tracking wristbands on those who violate self-quarantine orders, as the country struggled to prevent its people from becoming complacent over the dwindling number of new coronavirus infections.
But officials admitted that they lacked a legal power to enforce the new rule for wristbands if people refuse to wear them.
South Korea has reported between 27 and 53 new cases per day this week compared with several hundred daily ones between late February and early March. That has raised hopes that the country is bringing its epidemic under control.
But health officials worry that some of the 57,000 people who are under orders to stay home for two weeks have slipped out, leaving behind smartphones equipped with government-issued tracking apps.
Yoon Tae-ho, a senior disease-control official, told reporters on Saturday that the new wristbands are designed to alert officials if wearers leave home or cut them off. He said the bands would be deployed within two weeks.
Those convicted of violating quarantine orders in South Korea face up to one year in prison or up to $8,200 in fine. Lee Beom-seok, an official from the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, indicated that people who agree to wear the wristbands could be considered for lighter punishment in such cases.
At 7 every night, New York City bursts into applause for essential workers.
For many New Yorkers, living amid the coronavirus pandemic will be defined by two sounds: ambulances sirens and the nightly 7 o’clock cheer for front-line workers, grocery clerks and delivery riders.
The collective cheering ritual started in Wuhan, China in January and spread across the globe in the virus’s wake. In America’s largest city, the applause is sometimes accompanied by the song “New York, New York,” and it gives people a way to connect from across terraces and fire escapes.
Here’s what else is happening in the United States:
The U.S. death toll surpassed that of Spain, with almost 18,400 fatalities related to the virus reported, as the total caseload approached 500,000.
Government projections, obtained by The New York Times, found that without any mitigation, the death toll from the virus could have reached 300,000 — and that it could reach 200,000 if the Trump administration lifts 30-day stay-at-home orders.
Citing the virus, the administration announced that it would issue visa penalties on countries that refuse to accept people the U.S. aims to deport.
The pandemic has slammed the brakes on segments of global trade.
So far this year, most of the disruptions to global trade have stemmed from factory shutdowns in China, a manufacturing hub for products like electronics and industrial machinery.
But the economic disruptions may soon intensify in other parts of the world. And that may come as a shock to companies and consumers who are used to shipping goods abroad with ease.
Across North America, Europe and elsewhere, workers are already in lockdown and factories — including those of major manufacturers like Volkswagen and Ford — have been idled. At some ports, goods are piling up, while elsewhere container ships sail empty. Dairy farmers are dumping their milk, while grocery store shelves have been picked bare.
Mike Jette, vice president of consulting services at GEP, which provides supply chain software and strategy for General Mills, Exxon Mobil, Macy’s, Walmart and other major companies, predicted that peak disruption for major companies with international supply chains would likely come on three months.
Ireland’s leader wins praise for heading to the coronavirus front lines — as a doctor.
Last month, Leo Varadkar, the caretaker prime minister, reactivated his registration as a medical doctor and said he would spend half a day each week fielding calls from people who believe they have contracted the coronavirus.
His decision to go back to work as a physician was motivated by a desire to help ease the burden on health care workers, his spokesman said. He also issued a plea for emigrant Irish doctors and nurses, and others who had left the field, to return to help with the surge of patients. So far, 60,000 have responded.
Ireland has not escaped the scourge of the coronavirus, with 263 deaths, 6,574 confirmed cases, and the expectation is that both numbers will spike in the coming weeks.
Although Dr. Varadkar, 41, was considered a spent force in Irish politics after his party finished last in a three-way Parliamentary race in February, he is now winning praise for his energetic handling of the crisis. He canceled St. Patrick’s Day festivities, oversaw an aggressive early testing program, closed pubs and schools earlier than other European leaders and has spoken to the public about the contagion in honest, humane terms — in other words, like the general practitioner he once was.
“He was at sixes and sevens after the election, but he is perceived as having gotten back on track,” said Pat Leahy, the political editor of The Irish Times. “There is a sense that he showed strong, quick leadership in getting to grips with it.”
To the extent Mr. Varadkar’s training has informed his response to the pandemic, analysts said, it has mainly been in his heeding of expert advice, particularly from Ireland’s chief medical officer, Dr. Tony Holohan. He also has a firsthand grasp of the importance of masks, surgical gloves and gowns.
Singapore bans teachers from using Zoom, citing security concerns.
Singapore has suspended the use of videoconferencing service Zoom by teachers following reports that two men made lewd comments and showed obscene images during a geography class for teenagers.
As Zoom becomes a staple of life during the pandemic, the company is scrambling to deal with a rise in trolling, graphic content and harassment by uninvited participants. Germany and Taiwan have already placed restrictions on its use, while Google has banned it from employees’ laptops.
Singapore’s Education Ministry said, without elaborating, that it was investigating what it called “very serious incidents” on the platform, news outlets reported on Friday. The city-state’s schools had closed this week and moved to home-based learning in an effort to curb coronavirus infections.
“As a precautionary measure, our teachers will suspend their use of Zoom until these security issues are ironed out,” Aaron Loh, an official in the ministry’s technology division, told reporters. The ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
In voluntary isolation, Austrian volunteers keep the lights on.
The global pandemic has forced countless people into isolation. In Vienna, for the sake of the entire city, 53 people volunteered.
They raised their hands to ensure that whatever else happens, the power plants that provide electricity to Austria’s capital and its 2 million people would keep running.
The 53 employees of the Wien Energie company have been holed up in four power plants since March 20, after volunteering to go into their own version of a lockdown until April 16. Depending on how things go, they could be asked to stay on longer.
“I didn’t even need a second to think,” Helmut Wallner said in a video call from the Simmering power plant. “I was together with my wife, and we knew within seconds that I had to go.”
The workers miss their families, but shrug off the idea that they are making a big sacrifice, pointing out that doctors, nurses and other health workers had it much tougher.
“We are just a cog in a much bigger wheel,” said Steven Sacher, 24, an engineer at the Flötzersteig plant.
Congo was on the brink of defeating Ebola, but one more case emerged.
In early March, health care workers celebrated what they hoped would be the last patient treated for Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Their fight to conquer the Ebola epidemic appeared to be almost over. If the African nation could just make it to Sunday — the equivalent of two incubation periods — without any more cases emerging, then the world’s second-worst Ebola outbreak in history would officially be declared to have ended.
But on Friday, the World Health Organization announced that a new case of Ebola had been confirmed in Beni. The news came as health care professionals had already begun to turn their attention to the arrival of the coronavirus in Congo.
The setback demonstrates just how hard it is to eradicate a virus.
Now, while medical workers push to stop any further resurgence of Ebola, they must also fight a flare-up of the coronavirus, in a region that has been overwhelmed for years with instability and violence.
“This is now a triple emergency,” said Kate Moger, a regional vice president with the International Rescue Committee.
Even with the setback, public health experts say the intensive campaign to defeat Ebola in Congo may offer some lessons for the world as it grapples with the coronavirus pandemic.
The response to Ebola has been complicated by some of the same challenges now undermining the battle against Covid-19 around the globe: feuds between government officials, lack of coordination among responding agencies and mistrust.
Nurses who travel from Canada to U.S. for work are called heroes — and potential risks.
For some nurses, commuting to work has gotten increasingly difficult because of the pandemic. That’s certainly true for Laurie Dufresne, who lives in Canada and works in the United States.
Ms. Dufresne is one of about 1,600 nurses and other health care workers who leave Windsor, Ontario, a city of 217,000, for daily work in Detroit, a metropolitan area of more than four million people.
While the infections in Windsor remain under control, Detroit, and its surrounding counties, has one of the most severe outbreaks in the United States, with 17,543 Covid-19 cases and 926 deaths. Across all of Canada, 20,748 people have been infected and 509 have died.
For many health professionals, crossing the border puts them in an uncomfortable position. Canadian officials have been blunt about the risks, and health workers have found themselves under scrutiny at home as potential vectors of the pathogen.
Officials in Windsor are facing a dilemma. “I think it is important that we do not abandon our neighbor in this difficult time,” said Dr. Wajid Ahmed, the medical officer of health at the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit.
“But we also need to make sure that we are taking every step that we can to protect our community, protect our health care workers and ensure that we are reducing the risk as much as possible,” he said.
The pandemic is bringing old internet dreams to life.
It’s been decades since utopian thinkers dreamed that cyberspace would miraculously fix societal woes. Yet the pandemic has prompted some to realize that social media — where we normally just promote ourselves — can be mobilized for building a sense of community.
In the United States, artists are singing opera, reading poetry and doing standup comedy on You-Tube and Instagram. These days, our reporter writes in The New York Times Magazine, online performances feel “as though they were really less about pure entertainment and more about serving a nation, a world even, that was suffering in isolation and fear.”
Healing practitioners have also made meditation sessions, yoga classes and other mental-health assistance available free online. And GoFundMe is a vehicle for distributing money to people hit hardest by the crisis, including sex workers and underinsured artists.
N.B.A., take note: Taiwan’s pro basketball league is still holding court.
In a place with fewer than 400 confirmed Covid-19 cases, the five teams in Taiwan’s five-team Super Basketball League are still playing. And as a health precaution, they’ve moved to gyms from arenas and barred fans entirely.
The only people allowed inside are reporters, referees, scoring officials and the odd camera operator. “The only noise is from your teammates,” said Charles Garcia, a Los Angeles native who played professionally in 11 countries before joining the S.P.L.
“When I get a dunk, you want to scream, but you can’t,” he added. “It’s pointless. So I just run back on defense.”
The Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James said recently that playing in an empty arena would be unacceptable for the National Basketball Association. Yet if conditions in the United States allow the resumption of the suspended season, the league may force him to do just that.
Reporting was contributed by Carlotta Gall, Keith Bradsher, Choe Sang-Hun, Jenna Wortham Kirk Semple, Azam Ahmed, Ian Austen,Andrew Higgins, Elaine Yu, Jason M. Bailey, Dan Bilefsky, Melissa Eddy, Ana Swanson, Adam Nossiter, Stanley Reed, Jack Nicas and Daisuke Wakabayashi, Abdi Latif Dahir and Ian Austen.
The US has become the first country in the world to record more than 2,000 coronavirus deaths in a single day.
Figures from Johns Hopkins University show 2,108 people died in the past 24 hours while there are now more than half a million confirmed infections.
The US could soon surpass Italy as the country with the most coronavirus deaths worldwide.
But experts on the White House Covid-19 task force say the outbreak is starting to level off across the US.
Dr Deborah Birx said there were good signs the outbreak was stabilising, but cautioned: "As encouraging as they are, we have not reached the peak."
President Donald Trump also said he expects the US to see a lower death toll than the initial predictions of 100,000 fatalities, adding: "We're seeing clear signs that our aggressive strategy is saving countless lives".
Turkey ordered a 48-hour curfew in 31 cities - including Istanbul and Ankara - to start at midnight. The announcement, made just two hours before the curfew was due to start, sparked panic buying and crowds of shoppers
Italy has reported 18,849 deaths while globally more than 102,000 people have died with the virus.
Researchers had predicted the US death toll would hit its peak on Friday and then gradually start to decline, falling to around 970 people a day by 1 May - the day members of the Trump administration have floated as a possible date to start reopening the economy.
"I want to get it open as soon as possible," Mr Trump said at a Good Friday briefing at the White House. "I would say without question it's the biggest decision I've ever had to make."
However, no action would be taken until the government knew the "country [was] going to be healthy", he said. "We don't want to go back and start doing it over again."
A city upended
By Nada Tawfik, BBC News, New York
The coronavirus has changed everything about life, and now it's upending the rituals of death.
New Yorkers have been shocked by the grim scenes: ambulances constantly blaring down eerily deserted streets, body bags being forklifted into refrigerated trucks outside hospitals and now new trenches being dug on Hart's Island for possible mass burials.
The remote cemetery, accessible only by boat, is a place regarded historically with sorrow because of its mass graves with no tombstones, just unclaimed bodies. The city's morgues can only handle so much before temporary burials for Covid-19 victims, once an absolute worst-case scenario, become necessary.
Funeral directors talk openly about how scared and depressed the spiking death toll has left them. Even before this week's record number of deaths, some families have had to wait a week or more to bury and cremate their loved ones.
Why might the outbreak start levelling off soon?
Dr Anthony Fauci, US infectious diseases chief, concurred that the country was "starting to see the levelling off and coming down" of cases and deaths. But despite the "important advance", he added, mitigation efforts such as social distancing should not be pulled back yet.
Also at the briefing, Dr Birx noted that the rate of increase appeared to be stabilising in hard-hit regions like New York, New Jersey and the city of Chicago.
She added that the US mortality rate was "significantly less than many of the other countries, when you correct them for our population". But she emphasised the nation had yet to see the peak of the outbreak.
"We need to continue to do what we did yesterday, and the week before, and the week before that because that's what, in the end, is going to take us up across the peak and down the other side."
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On Friday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the latest data showed the state was successfully "flattening the curve", but also cautioned that it was too early to relax social distancing measures. "Even though it's a grind, even though it's difficult, we have to stay with it."
The danger appears to be highest for America's minority communities, which have been disproportionately affected by Covid-19.
Dr Jerome Adams, the US surgeon general, said the trend was "alarming, but not surprising" given that minorities in the US generally had more chronic health conditions such as asthma, hypertension and diabetes.
"As a matter of fact, I have been carrying an inhaler in my pocket for 40 years out of fear of having a fatal asthma attack," continued Dr Adams, who is African-American.
But he caused controversy by urging minorities to stop drinking, smoking and taking drugs to reduce their risk. He was particularly criticised for his use of colloquial language, when he told them to respect social distancing guidelines.
"Do it for your abuela. Do it for your granddaddy. Do it for your Big Mama. Do it for your Pop Pop," Dr Adams said. He later advised all Americans to avoid alcohol, tobacco and drugs.
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In Friday's briefing, Mr Trump also said he had seen the drone images of coffins being stacked in a mass grave on New York's Hart Island. Officials there say the island, which has been used to bury people with no next of kin for over 150 years, is now burying bodies at five times the normal rate.
Earlier in the day, Dr Fauci told CNN that officials are currently discussing whether to adopt immunity certificates for Americans who have safely survived the coronavirus and have antibodies in their blood to prove it.
The certificates might "have some merit under certain circumstances", he said, adding that antibody tests would be available next week.
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Meanwhile, in Washington lawmakers are considering a "Covid-19 heroes fund" to provide direct payments to workers on the front line of the pandemic.
The Democratic-led proposal calls for a $13 (£10) hourly rate, on top of the pay that workers already receive from their employers. Payment would be capped at $25,000. The money would go towards nurses, doctors, grocery store clerks, transit workers and other workers deemed essential.
The US has become the first country in the world to record more than 2,000 coronavirus deaths in a single day.
Figures from Johns Hopkins University show 2,108 people died in the past 24 hours while there are now more than half a million confirmed infections.
The US could soon surpass Italy as the country with the most coronavirus deaths worldwide.
But experts on the White House Covid-19 task force say the outbreak is starting to level off across the US.
Dr Deborah Birx said there were good signs the outbreak was stabilising, but cautioned: "As encouraging as they are, we have not reached the peak."
President Donald Trump also said he expects the US to see a lower death toll than the initial predictions of 100,000 fatalities, adding: "We're seeing clear signs that our aggressive strategy is saving countless lives".
Turkey ordered a 48-hour curfew in 31 cities - including Istanbul and Ankara - to start at midnight. The announcement, made just two hours before the curfew was due to start, sparked panic buying and crowds of shoppers
Italy has reported 18,849 deaths while globally more than 102,000 people have died with the virus.
Researchers had predicted the US death toll would hit its peak on Friday and then gradually start to decline, falling to around 970 people a day by 1 May - the day members of the Trump administration have floated as a possible date to start reopening the economy.
"I want to get it open as soon as possible," Mr Trump said at a Good Friday briefing at the White House. "I would say without question it's the biggest decision I've ever had to make."
However, no action would be taken until the government knew the "country [was] going to be healthy", he said. "We don't want to go back and start doing it over again."
A city upended
By Nada Tawfik, BBC News, New York
The coronavirus has changed everything about life, and now it's upending the rituals of death.
New Yorkers have been shocked by the grim scenes: ambulances constantly blaring down eerily deserted streets, body bags being forklifted into refrigerated trucks outside hospitals and now new trenches being dug on Hart's Island for possible mass burials.
The remote cemetery, accessible only by boat, is a place regarded historically with sorrow because of its mass graves with no tombstones, just unclaimed bodies. The city's morgues can only handle so much before temporary burials for Covid-19 victims, once an absolute worst-case scenario, become necessary.
Funeral directors talk openly about how scared and depressed the spiking death toll has left them. Even before this week's record number of deaths, some families have had to wait a week or more to bury and cremate their loved ones.
Why might the outbreak start levelling off soon?
Dr Anthony Fauci, US infectious diseases chief, concurred that the country was "starting to see the levelling off and coming down" of cases and deaths. But despite the "important advance", he added, mitigation efforts such as social distancing should not be pulled back yet.
Also at the briefing, Dr Birx noted that the rate of increase appeared to be stabilising in hard-hit regions like New York, New Jersey and the city of Chicago.
She added that the US mortality rate was "significantly less than many of the other countries, when you correct them for our population". But she emphasised the nation had yet to see the peak of the outbreak.
"We need to continue to do what we did yesterday, and the week before, and the week before that because that's what, in the end, is going to take us up across the peak and down the other side."
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On Friday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the latest data showed the state was successfully "flattening the curve", but also cautioned that it was too early to relax social distancing measures. "Even though it's a grind, even though it's difficult, we have to stay with it."
The danger appears to be highest for America's minority communities, which have been disproportionately affected by Covid-19.
Dr Jerome Adams, the US surgeon general, said the trend was "alarming, but not surprising" given that minorities in the US generally had more chronic health conditions such as asthma, hypertension and diabetes.
"As a matter of fact, I have been carrying an inhaler in my pocket for 40 years out of fear of having a fatal asthma attack," continued Dr Adams, who is African-American.
But he caused controversy by urging minorities to stop drinking, smoking and taking drugs to reduce their risk. He was particularly criticised for his use of colloquial language, when he told them to respect social distancing guidelines.
"Do it for your abuela. Do it for your granddaddy. Do it for your Big Mama. Do it for your Pop Pop," Dr Adams said. He later advised all Americans to avoid alcohol, tobacco and drugs.
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In Friday's briefing, Mr Trump also said he had seen the drone images of coffins being stacked in a mass grave on New York's Hart Island. Officials there say the island, which has been used to bury people with no next of kin for over 150 years, is now burying bodies at five times the normal rate.
Earlier in the day, Dr Fauci told CNN that officials are currently discussing whether to adopt immunity certificates for Americans who have safely survived the coronavirus and have antibodies in their blood to prove it.
The certificates might "have some merit under certain circumstances", he said, adding that antibody tests would be available next week.
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Meanwhile, in Washington lawmakers are considering a "Covid-19 heroes fund" to provide direct payments to workers on the front line of the pandemic.
The Democratic-led proposal calls for a $13 (£10) hourly rate, on top of the pay that workers already receive from their employers. Payment would be capped at $25,000. The money would go towards nurses, doctors, grocery store clerks, transit workers and other workers deemed essential.
