US Coronavirus Death Toll Nears 25k As European Slowdown Continues: Live Updates

As groups of states on the West and East Coast promised to release plans for reopening the economy in the coming days, while President Trump continued to insist that the decision of when to reopen the economy rests with him alone. Last night, we shared a detailed timeline developed by Morgan Stanley illustrating how the bank’s analysts expect the reopening will unfold.

Tensions between the President and the press reached a new breaking point last night, as Trump jousted with a CBS News reporter and insisted that “everything we did was perfect” and that he had “total authority” over when to reopen the economy, which he said would happen “ahead of schedule.” Meanwhile, Dr. Fauci insisted he didn’t mean to imply that the administration should have ordered a lockdown in mid- or late-February, a time when even Dr. Fauci was cautioning the public that the most strict measures weren’t necessary – at least not yet.

All the while, US deaths are nearing 25,000, as the total number of confirmed cases in the country near 600k.

Meanwhile, over in Europe, Italy and Spain are beginning to let more workers return to their shops and worksites while French President Emmanuel Macron last night warned that France still had a long way to go, before extending the French lockdown until mid-May while acknowledging that “we weren’t prepared”.

This week’s Bank of America fund manager survey discovered that fund managers are sitting on more cash right now than at any time since 9/11.

As millions of Americans clamor for bringing more of the medical supply chain back under the control of the US, now that the world has seen what relying too heavily on China-based supply chains can lead to, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that there would be a meeting of alliance members to discuss moving more production of critical medical supplies out of “non-member” countries.

“We have to look into issues like supplies of medical equipment, protective suits, medicines…and also ask questions about whether we are too dependent on production coming from outside, whether we need to produce more of this equipment from our own countries,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

In the UK, the FT reported that more deaths were recorded in England and Wales during the week ending on April 3 than in any week since comparable estimates started 15 years ago, the Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday.

Global cases of the virus increased by 71,572 yesterday, the 4th day in a row that the number of newly infected around the world has fallen. Still, the pace of increases brought the total number north of 1.9 million.

Meanwhile, with the IMF and World Bank annual meetings slated to begin later this week, the IMF has said it would supply grants to some of the poorest nations in Africa and Asia.

Vladimir Putin now officially has reason to panic as Russia records 2,774 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, a third consecutive record daily increase. Russia now has 21,102 cases of the virus, and 170 people have died from the disease. Russia’s outbreak has soared over the past 2 weeks, as numbers have doubled roughly every 4 days. China, meanwhile, reported 89 new cases, a slight drop.

Following warnings that first emerged late last week, Iran is set to kick off its privatization push to save its economy from the coronavirus: To accomplish this, Iran will sell off 10% of Shasta, the investment arm of the Social Security Organization of Iran – which is one of the state’s crown-jewel assets.

As cases in Europe continued to slow, Germany reported 2,082 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, the lowest number in more than three weeks, and an increase of under 2%. Germany has confirmed 125,098 cases so far, according to official data from the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin. Spain also reported a less-than-2% (1.8%) jump in new cases, its slowest rate since the beginning of the outbreak, according to the Washington Post.

In the US, the US Department of Ag will reportedly unveil as much as $15.5 billion as part of the first phase of coronavirus aid to the farming industry on Tuesday. Meanwhile, late yesterday, Florida’s surgeon general reportedly said that social distancing should continue until a vaccine has been developed. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has requested a roughly 3-month delay on all US census field operations. The administration also asked Congress to postpone the deadline for delivering key data that will affect redistricting.

As millions of religious Americans continue to skip worship-related gatherings like Church, several pastors in California are suing the state and local officials over their stay-at-home edicts prohibiting in-person services, claiming these rules violate the 1st Amendment. And finally, more than 2,100 US cities are bracing for serious budget shortfalls.