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Sunday, April 5, 2020

FEMA sending 1,700 ventilators to hot spots: coronavirus briefing

FEMA will be sending 500 additional ventilators to New Jersey, 200 to Louisiana, 300 to Michigan, 600 to Illinois and 100 to Massachusetts, President Trump said at the White House coronavirus task force briefing.
The state of Washington has returned 400 ventilators.
It will also be setting up a federal medical station in Washington, DC, to help the city deal with the coronavirus pandemic, he said.
The U.S. has purchased “a lot of hydroxychloroquine,” he said. “We have purchased and stockpiled 29M pills (doses).”
Update at 7:18 PM: Trump said he’ll take care of the airplane and airline industries.
“We’re starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. Things are starting to happen,” he said.
Today was the first day that the deaths from COVID-19 are fewer than the previous day — “perhaps that’s a good sign.”
7:20 PM: He adds that the legislation to provide relief to individuals and business is very successful. “We may have to make it larger.”
7:25 PM: S&P 500 futures are up 1.6%.
Worldwide, there are 1.27M confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 69,309 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University; in the U.S., there are 335,524 confirmed cases and 9,562 deaths.
7:30 PM: Rear Admiral John Polowczyk said that the government is directing supplies to impacted areas’ public , VA and private hospitals, and nursing homes and acute care facilities.
“We’re also working to push out millions of doses” of hydroxychloroquine to impacted areas, he said.
VA hospitals will make hospital beds at its facilities available to some of the hardest hit areas.
7:35 PM: “We’ve seen a trend of some leveling” in talking with governors, Vice President Mike Pence said. “We’re beginning to see losses and cases and hospitalizations beginning to stabilize.”
7:43 PM: Speaking about health-care workers who are facing great risks, “we’re talking about doing something for them,” Trump said, but he wants to wait until “this is over.”
(Some people have suggested that health-care workers should get hazard pay.)
7:54 PM: Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force response coordinator, said she’s seen another model where the number of deaths in the U.S. comes closer to 100K; about a week ago, models were projecting 100K-240K deaths.
8:00 PM: Trump said he would impose tariffs on foreign oil if he had to to save the U.S. oil industry. “Yeah, I’d do tariffs, very substantial tariffs,” he said.
Related tickers: XOM, COP, CVX, OXY, APA
8:04 PM: Part of the reason Trump would like to do an infrastructure plan is because interest rate are almost zero, he said.
He also said he likes the idea of additional stimulus checks.
8:10 PM: Pence said there are about 18,000 machines already around the country that that can conduct the Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT) 15-minute coronavirus tests; FEMA has purchased 1,200 of the devices, which will be distributed across the country, he said.
8:18 PM: When asked how the task force warning that this week will be one of the worst weeks in terms of coronavirus deaths squares with seeing a “light at the end of the tunnel,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explains that there’s a lag between cases leveling off and the number of deaths.
What happens this week reflects what was happening about two weeks ago, he said.
8:22 PM: Briefing ends. S&P futures are up 1.6%.
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3558463-fema-sending-1700-ventilators-to-hot-spots-coronavirus-briefing

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