Around seventy coronavirus vaccines are in development, with three being tested in human trials, the World Health Organization said. The outbreak has stabilized across the U.S., according to the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Bloomberg reports.
New York state passed 10,000 deaths over the weekend, plateauing as the daily number fell below 700, Governor Andrew Cuomo said. Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, said it could be summer or fall before the city can start returning to normal.
New York City may be close to seeing a decline in new coronavirus infections after having hit a peak, but Mayor Bill de Blasio says a lack of universal testing means it could be summer or fall before the city can start returning to normal.
“What we need is much more widespread testing,” de Blasio said Monday at his daily virus briefing. “This is the crucial need if we’re going to transcend to the next level.”
The city has a shortage of testing swabs, the mayor said. New York can’t sustain a level of low transmission without a federal commitment to supply millions of testing kits, he said.
Meanwhile, the head of the World Health Organization said he hopes funding from the U.S., the group’s biggest donor, will continue and that the two have a “very good” relationship. President Donald Trump suggested Friday he might suspend on contributions this week. The men last spoke two weeks ago, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press briefing in Geneva, Bloomberg adds.
“We are going to have to change our behavior for the foreseeable future,” said Mike Ryan, the head of the WHO’s health emergencies program. Countries should lift lockdowns slowly and only when they have enough capacity to track the disease, WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove said, warning it would be a mistake for Europe to lift them all at once.
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