WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump and the White House coronavirus (COVID-19) task force held the daily briefing Wednesday afternoon.
The task force holds a press conference each day to provide an update on the country’s response to COVID-19.
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Watch the briefing below (or click here):
Read a COVID-19 update from the Associated Press below:
The Chinese city at the heart of the global pandemic, Wuhan, reopened Wednesday after 76 days in lockdown. Elsewhere, the economic, political and psychological toll of fighting the new coronavirus grew increasingly clear and more difficult to bear.
New York endured one of its darkest days so far, with the virus death toll surging past the number killed on 9/11. It recorded 731 new coronavirus deaths, its biggest one-day jump yet, for a statewide toll of nearly 5,500.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the first major world leader confirmed to have COVID-19, spent a second night in intensive care.
WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY:
— The pressures on intensive care units in Italy and Spain may have eased in recent days as new cases decline. But the psychological toll the pandemic has taken on the doctors and nurses who work there is only now beginning to emerge. Already, two nurses in Italy have killed themselves.
— President Donald Trump has lashed out at the World Health Organization while defending his own widely criticized early steps during the crisis. Trump threatened to freeze U.S. funding to the WHO, saying the international group “missed the call” on the pandemic.
— The head of the European Union’s top science organization has resigned in frustration at the height of the coronavirus crisis. The sudden resignation of Mauro Ferrari and his stinging criticism was bound to add pressure on EU institutions, which have been accused of not working together to battle the global pandemic.
— Mounds of harvested zucchini and yellow squash ripened and then rotted in the hot Florida sun. Juicy tomatoes were left to wither — unpicked — in farmers’ fields. Thousands of acres of fruits and vegetables grown in Florida are being plowed over or left to rot because farmers can’t sell to restaurants, theme parks or schools nationwide that have closed because of the coronavirus.
— The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering changing its guidelines for self-isolation to make it easier for people who have been exposed to someone with the coronavirus to return to work if they are without symptoms. The public health agency and the White House are considering an announcement as soon as Wednesday.
— The coronavirus outbreak poses a dilemma for tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers working inside Israel who can no longer travel back and forth from their homes in the occupied West Bank. They can stay inside Israel, where wages are much higher but where the outbreak is more severe, or they can return home to quarantine and unemployment in the West Bank.