Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center link:
Worldwide graphs and totals updated frequently.
Interactive web-based map/tracker
I invite you to listen to the briefing yourself. I got the impression that the two doctors believed what they said.
Spain’s Interior Ministry has said that Spain will impose 30 day entry restrictions on most foreigners from midnight at ports and airports. Spanish nationals, foreign residents, air crew, cargo workers, health workers and diplomats will be exempted from restrictions.
Colombia’s prisons were rocked by riots and protests overnight, with inmates demanding better protection against the spread of Covid-19 in the South American country’s jails.
Shootouts were heard outside some prisons as videos circulated on social media showing fires and unrest.
One video appears to show armed riot police outside La Modelo prison in Bogotá, the capital, as shots and explosions can be heard inside.
Another video appeared to show a fire raging inside the same prison.
Colombia’s overcrowded prisons have long been hotbeds for organised crime, with violent power struggles between inmates and guards flaring up on occasion. Earlier this month, the government banned visitors to prisons in a bid to isolate inmates from the coronavirus.
“The authorities must urgently hand over an official report on the protests and riots that occurred last night in the country’s jails,” José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, tweeted on Sunday morning. “Many of the detainees demanded conditions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. They denounce several dead and wounded.”
The Justice Ministry said Sunday that the rioting left 23 dead and 83 injured in Bogota.
Prison authorities have not yet reported how many casualties resulted from the disturbances.
Bogotá’s mayor, Claudia López, joined the chorus calling for a report on Sunday morning, tweeting that if authorities don’t “face up and explain [what happened] to families of prisoners, there will be another riot, but of distressed families.”
The riots broke out on the same night that Colombia confirmed its first death as a result of Covid-19. On Sunday morning, confirmed cases stood at 231, with two people dying from the disease.
A nationwide quarantine - expanding on those currently in place in cities across the country, including Bogotá - will come into effect at midnight on Tuesday.
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said at a press conference that “Life shouldn’t feel normal right now, so if your life still feels entirely normal, ask yourself if you are doing the right things”
She also said that people shouldn’t go shopping except for essentials or gather at parties, celebrations or weddings. She said that gathering together in the park or at the beach should be avoided, because this is almost as dangerous as going to the pub.
360 new deaths in Lombardy, reports say
The death toll in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy’s virus outbreak, has risen by around 360 in a day to more than 3,450, a source has told Reuters.
The number of cases in the region, which includes Italy’s financial capital Milan, has increased by around 2,590 to more than 28,370. However, a number of results were still awaiting confirmation and it was not clear if they would be added later.
Sunday’s figures represented an improvement on Saturday, when the death toll in the region rose by 546 and new cases increased by 3,251. The national death toll is due to be released later on Sunday. The tally stood at 4,825 on Saturday - the highest in the world.
Guardian
@amsunshine, thanks for sharing the information about David Lat. I was aware of this because I follow a lot of law-related social media accounts (for my work). I’m very concerned about Mr. Lat.
Being reported on MSNBC right now: Rand Paul has announced that he has tested positive for COVID-19.
Maybe at some point but at an hour and 40 minutes in length, I’d rather have the Cliff Notes. 
Spain moves to extend state of emergency
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has said his government would ask parliament to extend for another 15 days until April 11 a state of emergency it imposed this month to try to curb the spread of the virus.
The nationwide state of emergency was first announced on March 14 and it bars people in the nation of around 46 million people from leaving home except for essential outings like buying food or seeking medical care.
Sanchez said the request to extend the state of emergency would be approved by his cabinet on Tuesday and he was confident the assembly would approve it.
“I know that is a drastic measure… but experts agree that it is an effective measure in the fight against coronavirus,” he told a news conference after holding talks via video conference with the heads of Spain’s regional governments.
The announcement comes after Spain announced 394 new deaths caused by the pandemic, raising to 1,720 the official death toll in Europe’s worst-hit country after Italy, a 30 percent increase over the previous day.
The number of confirmed cases of the disease rose by 3,646, or 14.6 percent, to 28,572, according to health ministry figures, straining Spain’s health care system.
Sanchez has said his country’s situation was now the most difficult since the 1936-39 civil war, and he warned that the outbreak would worsen.
“We must prepare ourselves emotionally and psychologically for very hard days ahead,” he told the nation in a televised address late on Saturday.
[“We must prepare ourselves emotionally and psychologically for very hard days ahead,” - same here! ]
Wow, they have really ramped up testing in NY. Worldmeters is showing 22,711 cases in NY right now (a jump of 12000 in the last day).
TSA officers in Orlando and New York test positive for coronavirus
From CNN’s Greg Wallace
Transportation Security Administration officers at the airports in Orlando and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport have tested positive for coronavirus, the agency said Sunday.
This brings the total to 22 TSA officers who have tested positive, according to TSA records.
The officer in Orlando is the fourth one to test positive there, according to the TSA, and most recently worked one week ago, in the morning and early afternoon of March 15.
Some context: The agency has previously reported three other cases at the Orlando airport. Those officers most recently worked March 16, March 11 and March 10.
A fifth security screening officer at JFK has tested positive for the coronavirus, TSA said Sunday.
The officer last worked overnight on Wednesday.
The other TSA screeners at JFK who tested positive worked their most recent shifts on March 15, 13 and 12.
The Canadian death toll from the coronavirus outbreak jumped almost 50% percent to 19 in less than a day, according to official figures released by the federal government on Sunday.
Ottawa said late on Saturday that 13 people had died from the respiratory illness caused by the virus, but by 9 a.m. ET (1300 GMT) on Sunday that number had grown to 19. The number of confirmed cases rose to 1,302 from 1,099, with a further 69 people listed as probably suffering from the highly contagious virus.
Canada has already closed its borders to all but essential travel, announced a C$27 billion aid package for the most affected by the health crisis and is urging people to practice self-isolation.
Health Minister Patty Hajdu said on Saturday that “Canadians need to understand this isn’t about two weeks of social distancing. This is about months of social distancing.”
Nova Scotia on Sunday became the latest of Canada’s 10 provinces to declare a state of emergency, closing its borders to non-residents and threatening to arrest those who did not practice self-distancing.
Premier Stephen McNeil told a news conference that despite warnings to avoid meeting in large groups, people were flocking to provincial parks and other common areas.
“We are dealing with a deadly virus and this behavior is unacceptable,” he said. (Guardian)
@“Snowball City”
I bet! I also assume that the public schools in your town are quite a lot different than the public schools in most of Miami-Dade and Broward Counties. The accepted wisdom on this forum often reflects a very limited understanding of how large swaths of the population actually live. Social distancing compliance - and the tolerance for social distancing measures - is going to be very different depending on the SES of the neighborhoods.
@bluebayou - Thanks for the additional information in post 9038. I could have been more clear. I meant that the 15% of the overall population estimate that Steve threw out as the “vulnerable” might need to be adjusted upwards to as high as 20%, not that only 20% of the over 65 crowd are vulnerable. Sure, I could imagine that 60-70% are vulnerable, which would imply maybe 10% of the overall US population for that group alone.
Placido Domingo has announced that he has tested positive. Fever and cough.
José Ameal Peña was just four years old when the 1918 flu tore through his small fishing town in northern Spain, its deadly path narrated by the daily ringing of church bells.
More than a century later, Ameal Peña – believed to be Spain’s only living survivor of a pandemic described to be the deadliest in human history – has a warning as the world faces off against Covid-19: “Be careful,” he said. “I don’t want to see the same thing repeated, it claimed so many lives.”
The 1918 flu, known as the Spanish flu after the country’s press were among the first to report on it, killed between 50 and 100 million people around the world.
In Ameal Peña’s town of Luarca, it claimed some 500 lives, or a quarter of the town’s 2,000 residents. He watched from his window as a steady stream of funeral processions made their way to the local cemetery.
In autumn 1918, he became the only one out of his seven siblings to catch the flu. “I still can’t figure out how I’m here,” he told Spanish newspaper El Mundo. “When I woke up, I could barely walk. I had to crawl on my hands and knees.”
As he wrestled with a relentless fever, a local doctor prescribed vapours of boiled eucalyptus and seaweed.
In recent weeks, he’s watched anxiously as another pandemic tightens its grip on the world. Spain has emerged as one of Europe’s hardest-hit by the coronavirus, with 1,720 people killed.
“He knows exactly what is happening with the coronavirus,” his daughter Anunciata told El Mundo. “Since he lived through all that, he’s having a hard time now. He’s afraid that something similar will happen again, even though we’re living in very different times.”
While the fear unleashed by both pandemics is similar, this time the battle is unfolding against a backdrop of scientific advances, allowing the virus to be isolated, antiviral drugs to be tested and complex medical treatments to be carried out.
Across the Atlantic, another survivor of the 1918 flu, 107-year-old Joe Newman, offered his perspective. “There are those of us who say, well, this too shall go away. And it will,” the resident of Sarasota, Florida told NBC news. “But at what cost, at what expense?”
Newman urged people to lean on each other for support. “You have to be my crutch. I have to be yours. It’s been that way through every crisis we’ve had,” he said. “And then we find – when we do look back – that is what got us through it.” (Guardian)
NYS numbers:
Number of cases:
NYS total
15,168 up by 4,812 (30% of those tested)
NYC 9,045 (+2,832)
Nassau 1,900 (+667)
Westchester 1,873 (+486)
Suffolk 1,034 (+373)
Rockland 455 (+193)
Orange 247 (+84)
Albany 123 (+35)
Dutchess 82 (+33)
Monroe 57 (+15)
Erie 54 (+16)
Number of tested:
15,915 tested yesterday:
6,9 K in NYC
2K in Westchester
little under 2K in Nassau
1.5K in Suffolk
So far NYS has tested 61,401 people
current hospitalization rate 13%
One of the world’s biggest airlines, Emirates, said it was suspending all passenger flights starting Wednesday. It’s a pivotal move that reflects the dramatic slowdown in traffic through the airline’s hub in Dubai, the world’s busiest international airport, due to disruptions caused by the coronavirus.
The state-owned carrier stressed in a statement on Sunday it will continue to operate cargo flights through its fleet of Boeing 777 freighters for the transport of essential goods, including medical supplies across the world. It also said the company would reduce salaries for the majority of its employees for three months, but will not cut jobs.
Fox News reports that the New York City Police Department is dealing with a sudden spike in coronavirus cases. According to NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, over 50 police officers have tested positive for the virus, but only one has been hospitalised. The 1st Precinct in Manhattan is the hardest hit, with 31 officers (17 percent of the workforce) calling in sick, forcing the NYPD to call the Movie and Television Unit to fill in.
The police union says that the NYPD has failed to provide adequate protective equipment for officers or cleaning supplies.
43 more deaths in the Netherlands
The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the Netherlands rose by 573, or nearly 16%, to 4,204, Dutch health authorities said in a daily update on Sunday.
The death toll in the Netherlands rose by 43 to 179, with victims aged between 57 and 97.
The Chinese billionaire founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba has sent coronavirus supplies to Africa. Jack Ma sent a cargo flight from Guangzhou in China containing more than 6m medical items, which arrived today in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. The supplies will be distributed to African countries in need of resources to battle the virus.
According to Ethiopian officials and the Jack Ma Foundation, the plane carried 5.4m face masks, 1.08m testing kits, 40,000 sets of protective clothing and 60,000 protective face shields. Ma has sent similar shipments of medical supplies to countries in Asia, Europe, North America and Latin America.
The virus has been slow to reach Africa but has now spread to at least 42 of the continent’s 54 countries.
Guardian
“Is Putin our president at all?” she wrote. “We have a shortage of doctors, they do not have protective equipment, they are sewing masks from gauze. How many times have we asked them to be provided. And then he sends help to Italy. Does he not care about his country?”
Putin is all for show and so are the stats from Russia. Even so, he is more helpful for the Italians than some of their EU buddies.
Sen. Rand Paul has coronavirus
CNN
Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, has tested positive for coronavirus, according to a tweet sent from his official account.
“He is feeling fine and is in quarantine. He is asymptomatic and was tested out of an abundance of caution due to his extensive travel and events. He was not aware of any direct contact with any infected person," the tweet said.
Sen. Paul’s Deputy Chief of Staff Sergio Gor expanded on the tweet saying in a statement, “He (Paul) expects to be back in the Senate after his quarantine period ends and will continue to work for the people of Kentucky at this difficult time. Ten days ago, our D.C. office began operating remotely, hence virtually no staff has had contact with Senator Paul.”
Paul Reid, Ireland’s top health service official, has said huge orders have been placed for coronavirus testing equipment and protective gear for staff. A total of 11m masks, 1m face shields and 1m goggles for workers are on order. Another 400,000 gowns and suits are also being purchased.
Almost 40,000 sample test kits are being distributed. Another 20,000 will be in Ireland by Wednesday, the health service said. The Irish Republic is at an advanced stage of negotiations with China to secure a further 100,000 and good progress is being made, it said.
The worldwide nature of the coronavirus pandemic means there is a lot of competition to secure supplies. On Saturday night, 177 people were in Irish hospitals with coronavirus, up from 151 on Saturday morning. Ireland usually spends €15m a year on personal protective equipment, the health service said. Its bill since January has already hit €60m. (Guardian)
Lupus Patients Can’t Get Crucial Medication After President Trump Pushes Unproven Coronavirus Treatment
tl;dr Plaquenil (hydroxychloroquine) is now facing a shortage due to a run on meds. Plaquenil is one of the ONLY treatments for lupus & RA. While I truly hope this IS a treatment, as of now it is not and it’s a scary time for those of us who rely on this med.
Or the US.
Croatia’s capital Zagreb was shaken by a series of earthquakes this morning that brought most of the population out onto the streets, just as social distancing regulations to prevent the spread of coronavirus had gone into place. The ill-timed quakes, the largest of which measured 5.3 on the Richter scale, have left one child in critical condition and damaged buildings across Zagreb, including the spire of the city’s main cathedral. The epicentre was about four miles north of Zagreb.
Photographs showed damage to a hospital in the capital, just as the country’s health system was gearing up for a potential surge in coronavirus cases. Mothers cradled their newborns on the street as a maternity ward was evacuated.
Croatian authorities on Saturday advised residents to stay off the streets, cut most public transport and demanded people pay heed to social distancing recommendations. The country has recorded 206 cases of coronavirus so far and one death.
Croatia’s interior minister Davor Božinović said on Sunday that the army was helping to clear up the rubble in Zagreb. He said authorities were working to manage both crises, but said the coronavirus was a more serious threat to the country than the earthquake. He urged those on the streets due to the earthquake to maintain social distancing norms.
Covid-19 could pose a threat to Africa’s endangered mountain gorilla, conservationists have warned. From AP:
Congo’s Virunga National Park, home to about a third of the world’s mountain gorillas, is barring visitors until 1 June, citing advice from scientific experts indicating that primates, including mountain gorillas, are likely susceptible to complications arising from the Covid-19 virus.
Neighboring Rwanda also is temporarily shutting down tourism and research activities in three national parks that are home to primates such as gorillas and chimpanzees.
Mountain gorillas are prone to some respiratory illnesses that afflict humans. A common cold can kill a gorilla, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature, one reason why tourists tracking gorillas are not normally permitted to get too close.
Paula Kahumbu, chief executive of the Kenya-based conservation group WildlifeDirect, told The Associated Press that every possible effort must be made to protect mountain gorillas because so few are left in the wild. She said:
We know that gorillas are very sensitive to human diseases. If anyone has a cold or a flu they are not allowed to go and see the gorillas. With coronavirus having such a long time of no symptoms in some cases, it means that we could actually put those gorillas at risk.
Even existing measures may not be enough to protect them.
Guardian
Great idea how to get more artificial ventilation capacity :
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8136299/Doctors-turns-one-ventilator-nine-genius-DIY-mechanics.html
Regarding Plaquenil, if indeed it turns out to be a life saver, I think stable lupus patients will have to wait a few weeks for the unstable pneumonia patients. In the hospital, we have a say " breathing comes first".