News Desk :
The death toll from coronavirus reached 1,16,090 while infected 18,75,305 in 210 countries and territories around the world and recovered 4,35,332, according to worldometer.
The United States may be ready to start gradually reopening next month, the government’s top infectious diseases expert said Sunday, as signs grew that the coronavirus pandemic was peaking.
President Donald Trump had earlier wanted the world’s largest economy to be “raring to go” by Easter Sunday, but most of the country remained at a standstill and churches took celebrations online to halt the spread of the virus that has killed more than 22,115 people while total cases 5,60, 433 in the US.
Trump has cast the decision on when to ease the lockdown as the biggest of his presidency as he faces competing pressures from public health experts and businesses along with some conservative allies who want a swift return to normality.
Anthony Fauci, the veteran pandemic expert who has quietly sought action to stem infections, said in a televised interview that parts of the country could begin easing restrictions in May-but was cautious.
“I think it could probably start at least in some ways maybe next month,” Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN.
“We are hoping by the end of the month we can look around and say, OK, is there any element here that we can safely and cautiously start pulling back on?” Fauci said.
“If so, do it. If not, then just continue to hunker down.”
Fauci said that regions would be ready at different times rather than the United States turning back on like a “light switch.”
Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told ABC he was “hopeful” about a reopening on May 1 but added: “I think it’s too early to be able to tell that.”
Unlike in many Western countries, lockdown decisions are primarily up to local governments, not the president, and leaders of a number of hard-hit, densely populated states have vowed to act as long as necessary.
“We want to reopen as soon as possible,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters. “The caveat is we need to be smart in the way we reopen.”
Neighboring New Jersey’s governor, fellow Democrat Phil Murphy, said that an economic recovery depended on a “full health-care recovery.”
If “we start to get back on our feet too soon, I fear, based on the data we’re looking at, we could be throwing gasoline on the fire,” Murphy told CBS.
Trump, for his part, wrote on Twitter Sunday: “We are winning, and will win, the war on the Invisible Enemy!”
The United States has been recording nearly 2,000 deaths a day from the coronavirus, disproportionately older people with weakened immune systems and ethnic minorities with less access to health care and teleworking.
Worst-hit New York recorded another 758 coronavirus deaths, Cuomo said.
“You’re not seeing a great decline in the numbers, but you’re seeing a flattening,” he said.
Fauci similarly said he was “cautiously optimistic” as admissions into hospitals and intensive care had begun to decline.
The United States, which has 4.25 percent of the world’s population, accounts for almost a fifth of the world’s nearly 110,000 deaths from COVID-19 since the disease first emerged in China late last year.
The New York Times, in an extensive article published Sunday, described Trump as failing to act quickly in part due to confidence in his gut instincts and his distrust of civil servants he brands as a conspiratorial “deep state.”
Trump slammed the paper’s story Sunday evening with his favorite insult: “Fake News!”
“The @nytimes story is a Fake, just like the ‘paper’ itself,” he tweeted.
“I was criticized for moving too fast when I issued the China Ban, long before most others wanted to do so,” he wrote, referring to the ban travel ban on the Asian power.
Fauci, who has advised six successive presidents, acknowledged when asked about the article that the US could have saved lives by shutting down public spaces when the disease’s seriousness became clear early in the year.
“But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then,” Fauci told CNN, without naming Trump.
Trump soon afterward posted an interview in which Fauci said that the United States “early on did not get correct information.”
Trump last week zeroed in on the World Health Organization to explain early difficulties, saying the UN body was overly reliant on China when cases first emerged in Wuhan.
Trump had been hoping to campaign on a strong economy as he seeks re-election in November.
Instead, some 17 million people have lost their jobs in a matter of weeks and his presumptive Democratic rival, Joe Biden, has been hammering him over his virus response.
Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy rose by 431 on Sunday, down from 619 the day before, and the number of new cases slowed to 4,092 from a previous 4,694.
The tally of deaths was the lowest daily rise since March 19.
The total death toll since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21 rose to 19,899, the Civil Protection Agency said, the second highest in the world after that of the United States.
The number of officially confirmed cases climbed to 156,363, the third highest global tally behind those of the United States and Spain.
There were 3,343 people in intensive care on Sunday against 3,381 on Saturday – a ninth consecutive daily decline.
Of those originally infected, 34,211 were declared recovered against 32,424 a day earlier.
Spain’s overnight death toll from the coronavirus fell to 517 on Monday from Sunday’s 619, bringing the total death toll to 17,489, the Health Ministry said, adding that it was the smallest proportional daily increase since tracking began.
The ministry said in a statement that overall cases rose to 169,496 from 166,019.
As of Sunday, the number of people who have died from the coronavirus in France totalled 14,393, representing a one-day increase of 561, down from Saturday’s 643, while serious cases decreased for the fourth straight day.
Daily deaths recorded in hospitals rose by 315 to 9,253 compared with 345 recorded on Saturday and 554 on Friday. Deaths in nursing homes increased by 251 to 5,140 since the epidemic started on March 1, according to the data released by the Health Ministry.
A total of 6,845 COVID-19 patients are being treated in intensive care units, down from 6,883 on Saturday. The decrease, for the fourth day in a row, gave the French health system small but much-needed relief.
In total, 31,826 COVID-19 patients are being treated in hospitals, up by 1,688 from a day before. Meanwhile, 825 more patients recovered, bringing the total recoveries to 27,186 since early March.
“These data confirm that the epidemic continues spreading in our country in a dynamic way and continues to hit hard,” the ministry said.
“We are seeing the start of a very high plateau but we must remain vigilant… We must not relax our efforts and continue to reduce the number of contacts every day to curb altogether the virus contagion,” it added, urging people to strictly respect movement restriction and rigorously apply barrier gestures and social distancing.
The death toll from COVID-19 has risen to 10,612 across hospitals in the United Kingdom after a recorded daily rise of 737, the health ministry said on Sunday.
The figures were as of 1700 BST (1600 GMT) on April 11.
The two previous daily increase figures were both above 900. On previous weekends since the outbreak began, figures have dipped, which can reflect longer delays in registering deaths.
