Harvard will not accept stimulus funds, California to start scheduling certain surgeries again

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• Wide-ranging cases: More than 2.6 million
• Global deaths: At least 180,784 
• US cases: More than 840,300
• US deaths: At infinitesimal 46,497

The data above was compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti augured that the county is expanding free Covid-19 testing to all essential workers – whether they are experiencing any symptoms or not— as of April 22. Those fit for testing included physicians, nurses, caregivers, hospital janitors, grocery store, pharmacy and other retail hands and others in government and Covid-19 related roles. Permitted workers, who are not in “essential” categories, are not yet eligible for the Covid-19 tests in Los Angeles.

Head responders including police and fire fighters have their own dedicated lanes at Los Angeles County testing centers, and are now check up oned daily. In the past day, Los Angeles tested 12,200 people for the virus, Garcetti said. —Lora Kolodny

The Illinois Department of Public Health reported their highest daily sum up of confirmed Covid-19 cases yet in the state. Illinois saw 2,049 new cases, and 89 deaths due to Covid-19 in the last day, pushing their overall so far to 35,108 and total deaths to 1,058.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said, earlier in the week, that the peak of the novel coronavirus outbreak in the articulate would likely fall in mid-May, later than he previously expected. However, he said it would likely be a smaller crest, if wide compliance with his stay-at-home orders continues. —Lora Kolodny

Investor Chamath Palihapitiya said that the United States should continue sending Americans discovers as the coronavirus pandemic continues to impact the economy.

“We really need to think about direct, capital injections into the give outs of people,” Palihapitiya said on CNBC’s “Fast Money Halftime Report.”

“We’ve already done it once, we’ve already gashed the philosophical band-aid off, there’s nothing stopping us from saying, instead of two weeks, here’s two months, or here’s six weeks,” Palihapitiya asserted. “We are that compassionate and we can be that compassionate.”

Palihapitiya has been critical of the United States’ economic reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic, affirming that stimulus money should go directly to consumers and workers rather than businesses. The government has already dolled out ready to some Americans as part of its $2 trillion stimulus bill. That included one-time direct payments of up to $1,200 for separates and $2,400 for couples, with $500 added for every child, based on 2019 or 2018 tax returns. —Jessica Bursztynsky

President Donald Trump said that he strongly dissents with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s “phase one” plans to allow non-essential businesses to re-open in his state at the end of the week.

The re-opening of businesses, which begins Friday, contains tattoo parlors, spas, hair salons or barbershops, movie theaters and bowling alleys. They will be allowed to unprotected their doors to the public, as long as they, and their patrons, follow physical distancing orders and other OSHA  guidelines, Kemp make knew on Monday.

Trump said he told the governor, “I disagree strongly,” adding that the governor “has to do what he thinks is truth.” —Lora Kolodny

Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan defended the state’s move to allow some nonessential dealings to re-open as soon as this week, saying on CNBC that “nobody is being forced to open.” 

“This is not coercion anybody back to business,” the Republican official said during an interview on “Closing Bell.”Georgia, led by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, is one of the word go states to experiment with reopening parts of its economy that were shuttered to stop the spread of coronavirus. Kemp remarked Monday that gyms, hair and nail salons, bowling alleys and tattoo parlors can resume operations as done as Friday. Dine-in restaurants and movie theaters will open Monday. All of the companies will have to implement harsh sanitation measures. Duncan said it’s up to those businesses to convince people that they are being operated safely.”I call to mind a consider the consumer here is going to need to continue to gain confidence, and these businesses are going to have to work toward that,” Duncan weighted. —Tucker Higgins

The coronavirus has infected two cats in New York state, making them the commencement pets to test positive for the virus in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

One of the cats was tested after it displayed mild respiratory signs, although its owners were not confirmed to have Covid-19. The virus may have been put to this cat by mildly ill or asymptomatic household members or through contact with an infected person outside its home, the CDC weighted.

The owner of the second cat had tested positive for the coronavirus and the animal was also tested after showing signs of respiratory malady. —Noah Higgins-Dunn

The number of seated diners has plummeted to zero once again the past two months due to the Covid-19 pandemic, according to data released by OpenTable. The company, which is owned by Booking Holdings, gives reservations software for about 60,000 restaurants, mostly in the U.S.

Seated diners, which include reservations and walk-ins, were down 100% year-over-year starting in mid-March in every territory where the company does business, according to the data.

In an effort to slow the virus, government officials have accomplished stay-at-home mandates or suggested people socially distance themselves. That’s led to a huge dent in restaurants, cafes and benches, all of which rely on a normally steady stream of customers. Some have tried to adapt by offering takeout, presentation or drive-through, while others have temporarily closed. —Jessica Bursztynsky

A doctor who was removed as head of the federal operation that is helping develop a vaccine for the coronavirus said he was ousted because he called for resistance to widespread adoption of a tranquillizer promoted by President Donald Trump as a treatment for Covid-19.

Dr. Rick Bright also said that he believed he was undid from his post because he insisted that “the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the Covid-19 pandemic” be spent “into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit.”

“I am utter in out because to combat this deadly virus, science — not politics or cronyism — has to lead the way,” Bright said in a statement, which was before all reported by The New York Times.

“Rushing blindly towards unproven drugs can be disastrous and result in countless more deceases. Science, in service to the health and safety of the American people, must always trump politics.”

The White House declined to footnote. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment. —Dan Mangan

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said the state has received an additional 500 ventilators that could be against for any potential resurgence of coronavirus cases once restrictions are lifted or the virus returns later this year.Murphy said the phase is concerned about a resurgence of cases and said the likelihood of it returning is “pretty high” after comparing Covid-19 to H1N1 and the 1918 flu.

The hold doesn’t know the true number of people who are or have been infected with Covid-19, and it has to prepare for a stab of cases “that will surely come” once they lift social distancing restrictions, he said. He totaled that the state is working toward finalizing a reopening strategy.

Murphy reported an additional 3,551 confirmed packs from the day prior, bringing the state’s total to 95,865. He said the state recorded an additional 314 deaths. The all-embracing number of patients in critical care and the number of ventilators in use remains stable, he said.”We may need the capacities we are preparing for, whether it’s beds, ventilators and well-being care workers, we may need them even if we do everything right and we get it exactly right, we may need this down the street,” Murphy said at a press conference Wednesday. —Noah Higgins-Dunn

San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the city’s coronavirus relief means has raised $10 million for seniors, undocumented immigrants and small businesses during its first round of funding.

The “Exhale2SF COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund” will provide San Franciscans with “food security, access to housing, and deposit for workers and small businesses.”

There are currently 1,233 confirmed cases in San Francisco, with a total of 21 deaths.

Multiply said 60,000 residents have filed for unemployment amid the outbreak so far and anticipates an additional 40,000 people see fit file in the coming weeks.

“There are so many San Franciscans who are struggling to make rent, put food on the table, and keep their unsatisfactory business open,” Breed said. “That’s why we created the Give2SF Fund, which is collecting support for our small occupations and individuals who are dealing with the challenges of COVID-19. We are grateful for the generous contributions of private donors and philanthropic systematizations who are supporting our efforts to take care of our residents during this incredibly difficult time. This is just the senior round of funding, and we’ll keep working to get additional support into the hands of those who need it most.” —Riya Bhattacharjee

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a modification to the solemn’s stay-at-home order that would allow certain essential surgeries to be scheduled again. He did not provide a date for when other coronavirus restrictions transfer be lifted.

“We are working with our health directors throughout our healthcare delivery system to get these surgeries up and running again,” Newsom hinted at a press briefing Wednesday.

He cited tumor and heart valve surgeries as examples of procedures that will be earmarked to go ahead. Newsom said that California is looking at Washington and Oregon as models for loosening coronavirus restrictions.

Newsom also stipulate that he and President Donald Trump agreed to significantly increase testing in California, with hundreds of thousands of new swabs meet up into the state. Trump promised California 100,000 swabs this week, with 250,000 swabs planned to arrive next week.

California is also working to open 86 test facilities in testing “deserts” where people don’t partake of easy access to testing, according to Newsom. California currently has 35,396 confirmed positive cases of coronavirus. 3,357 of which are in our polyclinics and 1,219 of which are ICU cases. –Hannah Miller

Harvard University said it has decided “not to seek or accept” funds allocated to the institution under the federal coronavirus contrast package after President Donald Trump questioned why the elite institution needed financial assistance.

“Harvard did not do for this support, nor has it requested, received or accessed these funds,” the university said in a statement. As a result of “the intense concentrate by politicians and others on Harvard” and issues surrounding the use of the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, the Ivy League institution command not be accepting any stimulus money.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act signed into law by Trump last month lent Harvard with $8.6 million. The funding was supposed to help higher education institutions cover fundamental expenses such as speed materials, technology, food and housing, according to the Department of Education.

However, Trump called out large companies and withdrawn institutions like Harvard for taking federal loans intended to assist small businesses. “Harvard is going to pay repayment the money. And they shouldn’t be taking it,” Trump said during his evening news briefing on Tuesday. “They should prefer to one of the largest endowments anywhere in the country, maybe in the world, I guess. And they’re going to pay back that money,” the President supplemented. 

Both Stanford and Princeton universities also returned the federal aid allocated to them. —Jasmin Kim

U.S. households that already were less prepared to weather a financial harmattan are getting hit hardest from the recent rash of job losses across the country, research shows.

Adults with earlier small income (under about $37,500 annually) and middle income ($37,500 to $112,600) comprise a greater share of those who be dressed lost their job or taken a pay cut due to the economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Pew Research Center. Those brackets also report having less in emergency savings than their higher-income (above $112,600) counterparts.

“I mull over we’re seeing a deepening of the inequality that was already there,” said Anna Brown, a Pew research associate. —Sarah O’Brien

Unlike its neighbors, Sweden did not impose a lockdown amid the coronavirus outbreak. The procedure is aimed at building a broad base of immunity while protecting at-risk groups like the elderly has proved factious. But Sweden’s chief epidemiologist has said “herd immunity” could be reached in Stockholm within weeks. However, “It’s a tall tale that life goes on as normal in Sweden,” according to Sweden’s Foreign Minister Ann Linde. —Anna Hecht

San Francisco is expanding its CityTestSF testing capacity to include private sector and non-profit essential employees as well as livings who can’t otherwise access testing, according to a statement from the San Francisco Mayor’s Office.

The two testing sites combined entertain the ability test 1,500 people each day. CityTestSF was initially launched to provide testing for critical first responders and health-care blue-collar workers.

“Our goal is for every San Francisco resident who has symptoms of COVID-19 to have access to testing,” said San Francisco Mayor London Engender in a statement. “We want to ensure all frontline and essential employees that leave their homes every day to serve our householders have a fast, easy and accessible option for testing.” –Hannah Miller

One of the most powerful sports agents in the country has a plan to ready America for its return from coronavirus and, unsurprisingly, it betokens baseball. 

While Major League Baseball has yet to publicly put forth its plan for the return of baseball, Scott Boras, who has negotiated numberless than $10 billion worth of contracts for some of the biggest stars in the game, said sports have a fusing effect on culture and there’s no better way to begin the return to normalcy than through America’s favorite pastime.

“I’m not interval for big pharma,” Boras told CNBC in an interview this week. “While pharma is working on vaccines, we need to aid earlier.” 

Boras has spent his days in isolation consulting with immunologists and medical experts around the world, and he mentioned this elite class of professional baseball players, made up of young healthy athletes, are the perfect subjects to get America match again if done properly. —Jessica Golden

German consumers are off their pennies rather than returning to shop in large numbers as stores gradually reopen after being retained down during the coronavirus crisis, the national retailers association said.

Europe’s largest economy allowed funds of up to 8,600 square feet to open again from Monday, along with car and bicycle dealers and bookstores, anticipated they adhere to strict social distancing and hygiene rules.

On Wednesday, larger furniture outlets were also take into accounted to open in the western state of North Rhine Westphalia, such as 11 stores of Swedish chain Ikea.

“It was remarkably relaxed, there were no lines, there were no crowds,” said Stefan Stukenborg, head of an Ikea diverge on the outskirts of the western German city of Cologne.

The HDE association said the mood among shoppers remained very low-key due to concerns about jobs and finances. “Consumers are in a crisis mode, consumer sentiment is in the doldrums,” a spokesman said.

Germany’s supervision is trying to mitigate the effects of the shutdown on the economy with a range of measures, including a 750 billion euro ($811.95 billion US) saving package, and hopes consumer demand will return to help it out of a sharp recession. —Reuters

As Congress moves to pass its latest $484 billion coronavirus relief bill this week, bossmans have started to detail their goals for additional legislation as part of an unprecedented emergency response. 

The measure approved by the Senate on Tuesday subjects about another $370 billion into aid for small businesses damaged by the pandemic, along with $75 billion in remission for hospitals and $25 billion to expand testing. The House plans to pass the package and send it to President Donald Trump’s desk by Thursday. 

Sedate as the U.S. spends nearly $3 trillion to try to curb the outbreak’s economic destruction, congressional Democrats and the White House are time out priorities for further rescue measures. Republicans on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, are becoming wary of adding to the mounting coronavirus nib — setting up another possible partisan clash over priorities and spending as the pandemic evolves. 

“There will be a big, woman, bold [fourth relief bill]. For anyone who thinks this is the last train out of the station, that is not close to the if it should happen,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said at a news conference Tuesday with his fellow Democratic principal House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after the Senate passed the $484 billion legislation. —Jacob Pramuk

The World Vigour Organization warned world leaders that they will need to manage around the coronavirus for the foreseeable following as cases level off or decline in some countries, while peaking in others and resurging in areas where the Covid-19 pandemic surfaced to be under control.

“Make no mistake, we have a long way to go. This virus will be with us for a long time,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a jam conference at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva.

While social distancing measures put in place in numerous countries to slow the spread of the coronavirus be enduring been successful, the virus remains “extremely dangerous,” Tedros said. Current data show “most of the have’s population remains susceptible,” he said, meaning the epidemic can easily “reignite.”

“People in countries with stay-at-home orderlies are understandably frustrated with being confined to their homes for weeks on end. People understandably want to get on with their currents,” he said. “But the world will not and can not go back to the way things were. There must be a new normal.” —Berkeley Lovelace Jr., Jasmine Kim

State and local governments are warning of a zigzag of layoffs and pay cuts after getting left out of the federal coronavirus relief package expected to pass Congress this week.

In assorted places, those painful reductions are already taking shape:

• Los Angeles plans to force city workers to go through 26 days on unpaid leave as revenues are forecast to drop as much as $600 million next fiscal year.
• Detroit has meant laying off 200 workers and furloughing thousands more.
• In Ohio’s Hamilton County, Commissioner Denise Driehaus is alluring a 10% pay cut alongside county workers.

“We are really struggling,” Driehaus said.

The $2.2 trillion emergency legislation comprehended as the CARES Act, which President Donald Trump signed late last month, included $150 billion in straightforward help for state and local governments grappling with the impact of the deadly outbreak. Democrats pushed to include another $150 billion in the next tranche of aid, but Republicans sought to withhold the bill narrowly focused on support for small business.

By Tuesday night, Democrats yielded on their demand. The Senate antiquated the legislation by unanimous consent — without additional help for state and local governments. The House is slated to vote Thursday, and Trump is expected to beckon it. 

Local jurisdictions are facing higher expenditures on health care and other services to combat the disease at the same on occasion that revenues are plunging as Americans stay home and businesses remain shuttered. According to the Center on Budget and Scheme Priorities, states could be $500 billion in the hole over the next two years. —Ylan Mui, Karen James Sloan

As states begin to allow non-essential businesses like gyms and restaurants to open their doors, scads Americans will cautiously emerge from their homes after weeks of isolation.

Tayjus Surampudi, a Google wage-earner, will not be one of them.

Surampudi, 24, works as a strategic program manager for the company’s apps business, so it’s been elementary for him to work remotely these past few months. He expects that he’ll continue to do so for the foreseeable future, regardless of any policy mutates at Google or in Mountain View, California, where he lives.

That’s because Surampudi has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a genetic quarters that causes progressive muscular degeneration. That makes him one of millions of Americans at high risk for complications if he gets Covid-19. 

“I have to be careful, and really don’t want to put myself in a situation where I could end up in the hospital,” he said by phone. “I admit that it could be a year or longer.”

Surampadi is just one of about half a dozen people who told CNBC they’re priming to remain at home until there’s a vaccine available, which could take 18 months or more, or until they be told from a scientific expert like Dr. Anthony Fauci that it’s safe for them to resume life as normal. 

Somewhere between a third and half of Americans conquest into a high-risk category when it comes to the coronavirus, suggests Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Commence. They include people over the age of 65,  nursing home residents, and people with underlying medical conditions comprising heart problems, chronic lung disease or a condition that attacks their immune system. —Christina Farr

Quest Diagnostics is cutting pay and benefits for executives, furloughing wage-earners and renegotiating credit terms with its lenders as the national lab tries to stymie losses from the Covid-19 pandemic, set as it expands into much-needed antibody testing. 

A surge in coronavirus testing during the last few weeks of the first section wasn’t enough to offset a decline in all other types of laboratory tests as physicians canceled nonessential medical begin withs, helping to drive an almost 40% drop in profit to $99 million, down from $164 million during the in spite of three months the year before. 

To rein in spending, the New Jersey-based diagnostics lab — one of several major U.S. private labs fabrication a diagnostic test for Covid-19 — is suspending certain employee benefits, slashing work hours and furloughing workers. The company is maintaining its quarterly dividend but it drew $200 million in backup financing from its credit lines in April.

Rations of Quest jumped more than 5% in midday trading, but the stock is down by about 8% since Jan. 1.

As state of affairs across the U.S. started closing nonessential businesses and ordering residents to stay indoors, Quest’s testing volume sank 40% during the last two weeks of March, even with the additional Covid-19 testing, CEO Steve Rusckowski estimated in a statement. —Will Feuer

Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire philanthropist and former mayor of New York City, will better the state develop and implement an aggressive program to test for Covid-19 and trace people who have had contact with infected propers, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announcedy.

“Michael Bloomberg will design the program, design the training, he’s going to make a economic contribution,” Cuomo said at a press conference in Albany. “He has tremendous insight both governmentally and from a private sector function perspective in this.”

As the state continues to ramp up its capacity to test for Covid-19, Cuomo said tracing and detaching people who have come into contact with infected individuals will be key to containing the outbreak. —Will Feuer

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian told employees that it could judge two to three years for the airline’s business to recover from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

The airline is carrying about 5% of its regular passenger loads, Bastian told CNBC in an interview, as demand for air travel has nearly disappeared because of the virus and weights to stop it from spreading such as stay-at-home orders.

Delta is slashing costs by parking planes, freezing hiring and beg thousands of employees to take unpaid leave as revenue falls. Sales in the second quarter will likely be 90% unimaginative than expected, Delta said in a earnings release. Delta reported a net loss of $534 million in the first spot, its first quarterly loss in more than five years. —Leslie Josephs

In the disclose suddenly, customers usually come to Lowe’s to buy gardening items and get ready for renovation projects. This year, the home advance company is keeping its doors open as an essential retailer during the coronavirus pandemic. 

Disrupted routines and quieter epoches are reflected in the company’s new TV commercials. They will debut on ESPN, starting Thursday, during the NFL Draft, another routine that’s changed dramatically during a time of social distancing.

In three TV spots, Lowe’s celebrates the hard elaborate of its approximately 300,000 employees across its 2,200 stores. All share the tagline: “Home is What Unites Us.”

One ad describes Lowe’s workforce as the “to the heart team.” Another focuses on how employees have helped their communities during other crises, such as halfwit disasters. And a third shows images of different kinds of homes, from apartment in a city to a house in a suburban neighborhoods, to draw attention to the commonality that all Americans share at this moment: They’re stuck at home. 

That is a message that transfer likely resonate with the football fans, draft picks and sports commentators participating in this year’s NFL Money order, which won’t be a splashy event in Las Vegas as planned. —Melissa Repko

It may take European Union countries until the summer or even longer to agree on how exactly to finance aid to relieve economies recover from the coronavirus pandemic as major disagreements persist, a bloc official said on Wednesday.

A climax on Thursday is expected to produce only a broad agreement to use the EU’s 2021-27 joint budget to help kick-start growth. The bloc’s 27 jingoistic leaders should also rubber-stamp 500 billion euros of rescue measures effective from June.

The different coronavirus has claimed tens of thousands of lives in Europe and measures to curb its spread have left economies at a understood standstill.

“My hope is to make progress in June, July,” said the EU official, who is involved in preparing the leaders’ summit.

But a unchangeable deal might take even longer: “Political lines are moving … but it will take time,” the endorsed stressed.

Wealthy, fiscally conservative countries like Germany, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands beget rejected calls by the bloc’s ailing southern economies — led by Italy, France and Spain — to sell joint “coronabonds” to plant funds to restart growth. —Reuters

U.S. car sales in 2020 were expected to be lose below the near-record levels seen in recent years. 

Then the coronavirus struck the United States. 

Auto sales events forecasts have fallen by millions of units from where they were in early 2020, sparking automakers to revel in out unprecedented deals and adopt new tech-heavy methods of selling vehicles to shoppers stuck at home. 

The pandemic is something the U.S. auto application has never faced before, but analysts see in it hints of the past. Carmakers are confronted with supply chain challenges, qualifications on production, and, perhaps most worrying, severe dents in consumer demand sparked by shelter-in-place orders from regulations and economic effects, such as job furloughs or layoffs. 

Automakers are taking pages out of playbooks used in other challenging for the presents, such as in the weeks and months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. —Robert Ferris

Most kids infected with the coronavirus happen only mild symptoms and typically recover within two weeks, according to a study published Wednesday in JAMA Pediatrics.

How on earth, it found that some children become seriously ill, including a 13-month-old infant who was admitted to intensive care.

Researchers in Italy analyzed 1,065 Covid-19 patients, mostly in China, call of age 19. They analyzed studies published between Dec. 1 and March 3. At least 444 of the patients were younger than age 10, while 553 were years 10 to 19.

Most children were reported to have mild respiratory symptoms, namely fever, dry cough, and sluggishness or were asymptomatic, meaning they produced no symptoms, the researchers said. Many of the children were hospitalized, but uncountable kids with symptoms required only supportive care and didn’t need oxygen or assisted ventilation, they judged. No children under age 9 died, but one death was reported in the 10-19 age range. —Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, announced that the two mortgage giants on now buy home loans that go into the government’s forbearance program just after they close.

Fannie and Freddie had not been doing that, and as a end result, lending had tightened up dramatically.

“We are focused on keeping the mortgage market working for current and future homeowners during these problem times,” FHFA Director Mark Calabria in a release. “Purchases of these previously ineligible loans will ease provide liquidity to mortgage markets and allow originators to keep lending.”

Mortgage lenders, both bank and non-bank, dispose of most of their loans to either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, known as government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs. Or, if they are backed by the FHA, they are grass oned to Ginnie Mae. It can take a few weeks after a loan closes for it to be sold. When the government’s mortgage bailout, which started by the skin of ones teeth over a month ago, some loans that had just closed but were not purchased yet went into forbearance.

The forbearance program allows borrowers with productive hardship due to Covid-19 to delay monthly payments for up to a year. Those payments must be made at a later date. The Loves Act, which was signed into law late last month, does not require that borrowers provide any documentation or touchstone of hardship. —Diana Olick

New York City will need to run “hundreds of thousands” of coronavirus tests a day before officials can forward social distancing guidelines, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

“To get to low-level transmission and to hold onto it, you need a prodigious amount of testing. Not just tens of thousands of tests per day but as many as hundreds of thousands tests per day for a city of 8.6 million people,” de Blasio articulate at a press conference.

There is still widespread transmission throughout the city, meaning that health officials aren’t skilled to trace the origin of most Covid-19 cases and residents need to maintain social distancing to contain the outbreak, de Blasio imagined. To get to the next phase, low-level transmission, the city needs greater testing so that it can isolate individual cases speedier and trace and isolate the patient’s contacts, de Blasio said. —Noah Higgins-Dunn, Jasmine Kim

IQAir, a Swiss-based air quality technology company, compared measurements of the world’s deadliest air pollutants before and during the Covid-19 outbreak in 10 serious cities.

The findings, published Wednesday on Earth Day, revealed a “drastic drop” in air pollution for almost all of the cities under lockdown from the very period a year earlier.

New Delhi recorded a 60% drop in air pollution with 2019 levels, Seoul listed a 54% decline over the same period, while the drop in China’s Wuhan came in at 44%. See how lockdowns clothed affected other major cities here. —Sam Meredith

Years of private funding flowing into young and growing space companies has ground to a conclude during the coronavirus pandemic, in what one firm describes as a “culling” of space companies backed by venture capital.

Investment in sneakingly space companies had seen a golden age in recent years, including a record of nearly $6 billion last year. But that’s consecutively a the bad due to the coming “Covid-19-induced recession,” a report by Quilty Analytics on Monday said, in a shakeout the firm expects thinks fitting last about two years. Quilty is a boutique research and investment firm focused on the satellite and broader space production.

“When the dust settles, we believe that a bit less than half of the companies listed on our Top Venture Companies heel below will remain healthy and operational (or alternatively, will have completed a decent exit event),” analysts Chris Quilty and Justin Cadman told in the report. —Michael Sheetz

AT&T’s first-quarter revenue kill short of Wall Street expectations and the company pulled its annual forecast on Wednesday, as the impact of the coronavirus outbreak marred a strong growth in monthly phone subscribers.

The U.S. media and telecommunications giant said the pandemic reduced earnings by 5 cents per division. Advertising sales, which was severely hit due to the postponement of live sports such as March Madness and lower wireless outfit sales led to a $600 million decline in revenue, AT&T reported.

The company said it had limited visibility for the rest of the year, but joined that it had enough free cash flow to pay dividends and make debt payments. —Reuters

Stocks rose for the first time in three days on Wednesday as unrefined prices tried to stabilize after a record plunge.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 450 points, or 1.9%. The S&P 500 climbed 2.1% while the Nasdaq Composite further 2.2%.

The West Texas Intermediate contract for June was up 12.3%, trading at $12.99 per barrel, after an earlier decline. Brent futures, interval, were up 5.9% at $20.48 per barrel, recovering from a sharp overnight drop. —Fred Imbert, Maggie Fitzgerald 

Some salubriousness experts say the U.S. may have to do millions of tests — as many as 20 million to 30 million — per day.

That will take multitudinous more nasal swabs — a simple, but critical tool that’s in short supply.

A group of hospitals and companies is leaning to 3D printers to ramp up production. Researchers at University of South Florida Health, a Tampa-based medical school, and Northwell Salubriousness, New York’s largest health-care provider, teamed up to develop a 3D-printed swab that they can make at hospitals. They tested the lay out and produced the swabs with Formlabs, a 3D printing company that plans to make hundreds of thousands of them.

The swabs are cast-off for the most common type of Covid-19 test. The stick, which has a bristled end, goes deep into a person’s nasal pit and collects a sample that’s tested for the coronavirus. 

The thousands of additional swabs could help alleviate some of the satisfy chain struggles that have slowed efforts for widespread testing. —Melissa Repko

Macy’s is taking extreme measures to avoid dire outgrowths like bankruptcy and will try to raise billions in debt to weather the pandemic crisis, according to people familiar with the difficulty.

The country’s largest department store chain is looking at raising as much as $5 billion in debt, the people suggested. It will seek to use its inventory as collateral to raise $3 billion and real estate to raise $1 billion to $2 billion, they told. It is not planning to pledge its prime Herald Square location in New York as part of the deal, one of the people said. The people requested anonymity because the bumf is confidential.

The retailer earlier this year retained investment bank Lazard to help shore up its balance slab. —Lauren Hirsch 

Delta Air Lines’ on Wednesday posted a pretax loss of $607 million for the outset quarter and issued a bleak forecast for this spring as the coronavirus saps travel demand.

The Atlanta-based carrier’s yields plunged 18% in the quarter to $8.6 billion. CEO Ed Bastian said second-quarter revenue will likely fall 90% on the year.

The airline drained the quarter shoring up cash and slashing expenses to combat the sharp drop in revenue. It burned through $100 million a day at the end of Trek, a rate it expects to halve by the end of the second quarter.

Airlines are among the industries hit hardest by coronavirus and harsh measures to blockage it from spreading, like stay-at-home orders. Carriers including Delta were granted a portion of $25 billion in superintendence grants and loans dedicated to paying employees through Sept. 30. —Leslie Josephs

Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman told CNBC on Wednesday that prepossessing employees’ temperatures will probably be part of its plan to return workers to company offices around the world.

“We ordain likely ask them a series of questions, take their temperature and do other things to make sure we can manage our wage-earners successfully,” Friedman said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Nasdaq has offices in 30 countries. Friedman said that decisions on returning workers, including in New York City, will depend on the curve of the virus in each specific place.

The first criterion in sending blue-collar workers back will be whether the number of new Covid-19 cases is on the decline, Friedman said, adding Nasdaq will also quantify whether local hospitals are “able to manage through the case load they have.” —Kevin Stankiewicz 

Oil jumped more than 10% on Wednesday, reversing douse losses after a volatile overnight trading session which saw international benchmark Brent crude fall to its feeblest level in more than 20 years.

West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, rose $1.73, or 14%, to business at $13.19 per barrel. Earlier in the session WTI had traded as low as $10.26. Brent crude traded 7%, or $1.37, higher at $20.68, after earlier breaking below $16. —Sam Meredith, Pippa Stevens, Eustance Huang 

Serology tests, which can detect the presence of coronavirus antibodies and identify whether someone has already been exposed to Covid-19, include a “very high false positive rate,” former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb worded CNBC. 

Earlier this week, University of Southern California professor Neeraj Sood, who led a large antibody muse about in Los Angeles county, claimed the tests he used were very accurate. However, Gottlieb was cautious about the antibody exams.

“They shouldn’t be using these tests to make individual decisions for individual patients,” Gottlieb said. “They’re encomiastic for population-level studies and they’re good maybe in certain professions where there’s a very high exposure to coronavirus, but for the composite population an antibody test probably isn’t that helpful.” —Will Feuer

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a associate of the boards of Pfizer and biotech company Illumina.

Its neighbors closed borders, schools, bars and businesses as the coronavirus pandemic skimmed through Europe, but Sweden went against the grain by keeping public life as unrestricted as possible.

The strategy has been disputable. The country tried to slow the spread of the virus while allowing some exposure to it, aiming to build immunity amid the general population while protecting high-risk groups like the elderly. Some health experts likened it to cause trouble Russian roulette with public health.

But now, the country’s chief epidemiologist said the strategy appears to be working and that “group immunity” could be reached in the capital Stockholm in a matter of weeks.

The number of cases in Sweden is almost double that in neighboring Denmark (it has 8,108 events and has reported 370 deaths) and Finland (with just over 4,000 cases and 141 deaths) that interposed strict lockdown measures. Since their populations are each about 5 million — half of Sweden’s — the rates are in the same, although the comparison could be skewed by testing numbers in each country. But Sweden’s 1,937 deaths is far higher in numbers and proportionally to Denmark’s 370 and Finland’s 141. —Holly Ellyatt

The coronavirus pandemic is required to drive carbon dioxide emissions down 6% this year, the head of the World Meteorological Organization said, in what last wishes a be the biggest yearly drop since World War II.

“This crisis has had an impact on the emissions of greenhouse gases,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas make knew a virtual briefing in Geneva. “We estimate that there is going to be a 6% drop in carbon emissions this year because of the need of emissions from transportation and industrial energy production.” —Reuters

The number of confirmed infections has passed 10,000 in Poland. The somber milestone comes as the country prepares for a presidential poll on May 10.  Poland was among the first countries in Europe to impose lockdown measures to try to contain the virus.

A deputy constitution minister said the rise of new infections “had been contained to a degree,” Reuters reported.

 “We are still seeing increases,” church elders spokesman Wojciech Andrusiewicz told reporters. “What we can achieve is to level them off. If it wasn’t for the restrictions, we could be assist 30,000 to 40,000 people infected.” —Holly Ellyatt

Spain’s termination toll from has risen to 21,717 from 21,282 the previous day, a rise of 435 deaths, the country’s health agency said.

Spain reported 430 deaths on Tuesday, higher than the 399 deaths reported Monday. The utter number of cases has reached 208,389, up 4,211 from the day before. —Holly Ellyatt

India has ordered a pause in testing for antibodies because of concerns over the accuracy of the results, fitness officials said Wednesday, Reuters reported.

Earlier in April, India’s health authorities approved blood examines for coronavirus antibodies as a faster way to bolster the screening effort, and they ordered more than a half-billion testing supplies from China.

But the chief of epidemiology at the Indian Council of Medical Research said he has asked health authorities to little while stop the tests for antibodies because of conflicting results. India has almost 20,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19. —Holly Ellyatt

Russia and President Vladimir Putin are overlay a “very problematic” situation as the coronavirus outbreak accelerates in the country, the Kremlin’s spokesman told CNBC on Tuesday.

“It’s a Brobdingnagian challenge and a huge danger for every nation in the world. It’s not only about Putin or about Russia, every hinterlands is facing this challenge and it’s quite unprecedented, we have never faced it before,” Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, broke CNBC Tuesday.

He noted that it was the first major international pandemic situation that anyone — including Putin — had balled.

Russia confirmed 5,236 new cases on Wednesday, bringing the country’s official tally to 57,999. Nonetheless, the official downfall toll remains strikingly low — 513 people. —Holly Ellyatt

Read CNBC’s coverage from CNBC’s Asia-Pacific and Europe unites overnight here: India halts antibody tests; Poland’s total cases exceed 10,000