Coronavirus updates: More states easing lockdowns as U.S. deaths near 55,000

Health authorities in Spain are urging parents to be responsible and abide by social distancing rules a day after some beach fronts and city promenades filled with families eager to enjoy the first stroll out in six weeks.
  
Fernando Simón, head of Spain’s health emergency coordination center, said Monday that rules to keep a 6.5-foot distance from other families and for going outdoors only once a day, for one hour, and at most three children at a time accompanied by one adult, were generally respected on Sunday.
  
But he said that some images of crowds were “concerning.”
  
“The impact in the epidemic can be a step backwards that can be much harder than what we have seen until now,” Simón warned.

To help control the spread of the coronavirus, Afghanistan‘s President Ashraf Ghani ordered the release Monday of 12,399 prisoners from prisons across the country. The release will happen as soon as possible, with prisoners being identified for release based on their crimes.

Those eligible will have been convicted of crimes including corruption and other offenses that are deemed to make them a minimal threat to the public, according to Rashid Totakhil, Afghanistan’s prisons director. He urged the soon-to-be released detainees and their families to quarantine themselves for 14 days following the releases.

The Afghan government is also taking precautionary measures to prevent major outbreaks inside prisons, including testing prisoners to identify any possible COVID-19 patients. According to Totakhil, a 50-bed hospital will be inaugurated soon inside Kabul’s central prison to treat any COVID-19 patients. He said more hospitals for prisoners are under construction and will soon be available.

President Ghani had previously ordered the release of 10,000 prisoners to stop the spread of the virus, and 6,000 have already been released.

According to the director of prisons, there are about 36,000 people detained in Afghan prisons. None of the prisoners set to go free are among the 5,000 detainees set to be released under the separate U.S.-Taliban peace agreement.

– Ahmad Mukhtar

Coronavirus-related staffing shortages at chicken processing plants will lead farms in Maryland and Delaware to destroy nearly 2 million chickens. 

The Baltimore Sun reported Friday that the plants are unable to keep pace with the number of birds that are ready for harvest. They had been placed into poultry houses as chicks several weeks ago. The chickens will not be processed for meat. 

The trade group the Delmarva Poultry Industry said that every poultry plant on the Delmarva Peninsula has struggled with a reduced worker attendance. The reasons include workers being sick with the virus and people following guidance to stay home if sick.  

When it unveiled an unprecedented order last month to swiftly expel virtually all unauthorized migrants from the U.S. southern border, the Trump administration said potentially infected foreigners could spread the coronavirus in the U.S., prompt outbreaks in immigration jails and strain public health resources along border communities. But in a paradoxical twist, Guatemala fears the U.S. is exporting the virus there through its deportation policy.

Guatemala has been the largest source of migration to that border in recent years.  

At least 99 migrants recently deported to Guatemala by the U.S. had tested positive for coronavirus as of Sunday, according to the nation’s public health ministry. Deportees from the U.S. make up nearly 20% of the 500 coronavirus cases in Guatemala, which has had 15 pandemic-related deaths. Click here to read more.

Wuhan, the city at the center of China’s coronavirus outbreak, has no more hospitalized patients after the last 12 were discharged Sunday, the Hubei province health commission said.

Hubei’s remaining patients were all in Wuhan, the provincial capital where the outbreak took the heaviest toll in China. The 3,869 people who died in the city account for more than 80% of the country’s reported deaths.

“It is a historic day,” said a report in a newspaper owned by the Wuhan government and posted on the city’s website.

Hubei has no more suspected cases in its hospitals, though 1,728 people who had close contact with an infected person remain under medical observation, the province’s health commission reported Monday.

Patients remain hospitalized elsewhere in China, including 67 in Shanghai and three in Beijing. Many cities have seen an influx of cases from overseas, prompting the government to curtail international flights and entry sharply.

After seeing its plants across Europe and North America shuttered for almost a month and a half amid the coronavirus pandemic, Volkswagen Group is slowly resuming vehicle production at its headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany.

The world’s largest automaker has been burning through about 2 billion euros every week in costs with its factory floors  silent. But on Monday it brought 8,000 employees back to work in Wolfsburg after reworking its production line to allow for social distancing.

The manufacturing site, which is the size of Monaco and is usually staffed by almost 70,000 people, will initially operate at just 10% to 15% of its capacity, with only about 1,400 vehicles expected to come off the assembly lines this week.

Employees have been asked to take their temperatures every morning before coming to work, and several hundred hand washing facilities have been installed throughout the plant.

Volkswagen’s decision to restart production will be a boost to the wider European auto industry, as some 2,600 supplying companies, most of them also German, ramping up their own facilities to provide parts for VW.  

Deaths from the coronavirus in the U.S. continue to climb, but things are slowly improving. As CBS News’ Dean Reynolds reports, at least 20 states are set to bring back business in some way in the coming days — but it will be far from business as usual. 

Selling Girl Scout cookies is normally a foolproof business model, but the coronavirus outbreak cooled sales of the treats in Alaska.

The Girl Scouts of Alaska sought assistance, and the organization got a federal recovery loan to help compensate for lost cookie sales.

First National Bank Alaska facilitated the federal Paycheck Protection Program loan, The Anchorage Daily News reported Sunday.

Leslie Ridle, head of one of two Girl Scouts councils in Alaska, said fears of girls becoming infected with COVID-19 forced the organization to cut its six-week sales season in half. Click here to read more.

Ellis McKennie III’s dream of becoming a professional football player didn’t come true this weekend, but his prayers had already been answered. His father, Ellis McKennie Sr., was discharged from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) after fighting the coronavirus for nearly a month.

The man McKennie describes as his superhero was wheeled out of the hospital to thunderous applause, then took his first steps after surviving COVID-19. Click here to read more.

The latest data from Johns Hopkins University researchers shows that as of Monday morning, more than 2.98 million people have tested positive for the new coronavirus disease across the globe, with almost a third of those cases — 965,933 patients — recorded in the United States.

The death toll in the U.S. also dwarfs those reported by all other countries, at 54,877 as of Monday morning. While the true number of fatalities from COVID-19 is feared to be much higher in virtually every corner of the world, the overall global death toll confirmed as of Monday morning was 206, 640.   

Of the nearly 1 million people to test positive for the virus in the U.S., Johns Hopkins says more than 107,000 are known to have recovered.

The prime minister of Great Britain returned to work Monday after fighting off COVID-19 to deliver his country a message of hope as it endures its fifth week of lockdown.

“Everyday I know that this virus brings new sadness and mourning to households across the land and it is still true that this is the biggest single challenge this country has faced since the war,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said outside his office at 10 Downing Street in London. 

He said the virtually complete shutdown of Britain’s economy had helped deliver the nation close to “the end of the first phase of this conflict,” successfully preventing a crippling epidemic like the ones seen in Italy and Spain, where national health services were overwhelmed.

“We have so far collectively shielded our NHS” from such an inundation of COVID-19 cases, Johnson said, adding that Britons had “collectively flattened the peak” of the outbreak in the country.

He warned the nation, however, that everyone must continue to respect the lockdown measures set to remain in place for another two weeks, or risk facing a new wave of disease that could quickly undo all the gains made over the last month.

With millions of people filing for unemployment due to the effects of the coronavirus outbreak, many are looking for jobs and wondering where they might find them.

Essential services, remote jobs and quick gigs are prevailing right now as millions of furloughed employees search for work, CBS New York reports.

“Temporarily, you should be willing to take a job below your level,” career counselor Eileen Sharaga told the station.

Sharaga said now more than ever, finding work is about tailoring the skills you already have to the jobs that are available.

“The important thing is how to translate your area of expertise so that it lends itself to a teleconferencing remote situation,” Sharaga said. “You need to revisit your LinkedIn profile because that LinkedIn profile needs to be adjusted to the world out there.”

Read more here.  

Ecuador is seeing one of the world’s worst coronavirus outbreaks, with possibly thousands dead. But that hasn’t been enough to convince the president of Latin America’s largest country, Brazil, to take the threat seriously.

Manuel Bojorquez reports in the video below:

The White House released a schedule Sunday night that shows there will be an on-camera Coronavirus Task Force briefing at 5 p.m. ET on Monday, April 27.

It’s unclear if President Trump will be in attendance.