This is cnn tonight. I am don lemon. We have the latest on the coronavirus for you now. More than 1,038,000 cases in this country. Worldwide more than 3. 2 million and more than 225,000 deaths. Dr. Anthony fauci expressing optimism today about a study of the antiviral drug remdesivir saying that the data shows that the drug has a clearcut significant positive effect in speeding up recovery from the virus. Tonight a source at the white house telling cnn the Trump Administration is launching a project called warp speed to accelerate the development of a potential vaccine. The projects goal is to have one available by the end of the year. No vaccine has been created yet but multiple projects are in the works around the world and President Trump said we will see social distancing guidelines fading out as States Reopen despite warnings from medical experts that coronavirus cases will spike if States Reopen too soon. Joining us now john harwood and daniel dale. Regulars on the program. Always happy to have them. Good evening. John. Reuters is reporting that President Trump said today in an interview that chinas handling of the coronavirus is proof that beijing will do anything they can to make him lose in november. Is he suggesting that they wanted there to be a Global Pandemic that would cost more than 227,000 lives all because of him . I think that is what he is trying to suggest. President trump has been shaken by the very bad poll numbers. He would lose the election to joe biden if it were held today. He is looking for a way to deflect responsibility for his political situation. He has been saying multiple times in recent days that china is responsible for the situation that we are in as opposed to how he managed the pandemic. And by then saying well, this is happening because china wants me to lose the election. That is an attempt to try to create a story that is the analogue to 2016 and russia was trying to help donald trump win. Now he is trying to say that china is trying to help joe biden win and to see if he can sell that argument. It is not an effective rebuttal to his own handling of the situation, but it is something that he appears to want to try. More than 60,000 deaths and President Trump is saying that the virus is going away and he is talking about 25,000 person rallies. He doesnt seem to get the nature of what the virus does and how dangerous that it is. More than most people donald trump is trapped in his own head. He understands he is in trouble now and he is thinking back to just a few months ago, i had this great economy. I was go to see alabama play lsu and there were 100,000 people there. Just a short while ago i was able to have the big rallies and cheering crowds. Wishing he can put himself back in the situation. Middle Age High School quarterback. Glory days. It is aspirational in the sense that we all know he was talking about opening the country at easter. Of course he didnt do it. Said it was an aspirational goal. This does not appear anymore realistic than that, the idea that any time soon he will have rallies with 25,000 people but that does not mean he may not make it happen. President trump continues to say testing is not a problem in the united states. What hear the facts . Don, we heard Public Health experts to republican governors to Corporate Executives that a significant increase in the quantity of testing conducted is necessary to slow the spread of the virus and to safely reopen the economy. But the president keeps suggesting and has in recent days that even talking about testing is some sort of media or partisan conspiracy to damage him. He described it as a media trap and a media dream. I thought Something Interesting happened today. He was at a roundtable of Corporate Executives and said nobody should be talking about testing and the ceo of hilton made his own comments. Listen to those backtoback. You dont hear about ventilators or masks and you shouldnt be hearing about testing. That is the last thing they can complain about. If you did 2 million tests they say how come not three. They want the government to focus on testing so that they understand what real mortality rates are. This wasnt like a reporter getting in the president s face saying you are wrong. But effectively the ceo of a Major Company was making clear that what the president is saying is nonsense. Listen to what the president said about reopening the economy. One Restaurant Owner came up to me saying sir you are going to be opening up, but if i distance too much. 50 of the restaurant. I said you will have a worse atmosphere. We want to be back where we can have we want it to be the way it was. Whats the deal with these sir stories again. I cant tell you the story is made up, but the president has a history of telling a story in which the president has an unnamed man come up to him and call him sir and almost always something in that story if not the whole story is significantly inaccurate. Thank you all. John, by the way i had a friend who was a big baseball player back in high school. You know, glory days. Thats just me. You may be thinking about that song. Thank you gentlemen. Need a laugh now and then. I want to brings in the codirector of the cardiac program at washington hospital. You know that song. Good evening to you. Bruce springsteen person. Thank you for joining us. Dr. Fauci, putting his credibility on the line saying that remdesivir has a positive effect in treating coronavirus. You say it is a big moment for science. Explain that, please. Yeah. I think today was a hopeful day. We had so many days that seemed so dark and so long. The last two months have seemed like five years. Today i think was a day filled with hope. I watched dr. Fauci at 79 looked like he was 35 today. When i was a medical student in the early 1980s, this new disease came on the horizon affectingly primarily young men in places like San Francisco and started killing them. For seven years there was nothing to treat them with. In 1987 the first effective antiviral drug azt came on the market and that was a tide changer. Dr. Fauci mentioned that today. I think it was a similar moment. The first time that we have identified a compound that has real, identifiable antiviral activity. I feel like we have been on the defensive getting pummelled in places like new york and that today i think we looked like we were going to go on the offensive and have promise. This is promise. Everyone cautions that this is not the end all, be all drug. This is something that you can build upon. It is the first thing that works on the virus. Totally. Not power to look at mortality. But it almost did. It almost reached statistical significance with a 27 reduction in mortality. We will see how that pans out when the trial is finally published and adjude indicated and we will see what the other studies show. The results really do suggest that in patients treated with remdesivir, outcomes are better. Not a vaccine. Not a vaccine, right. This is not a vaccine. Antiviral. Therapeutic for people that have the disease. I want to make that clear for the audience. Very promising. All of the doctors to come on and say it gives you a direction to go in because you see what the virus, what effect it has on the virus. Lets hope it works out. As states begin to consider reopening many are focused on it is showing how much the virus is spreading in a population. How does this work . It is basically the reproductive coefficient for the virus. It is basically a number that we use to suggest how infectious that the virus is. And it is affected by a few things. By how intrinsically contagious the virus is. It is affected by how long the virus stays contagious in the host and it is also affected by something that is not a biologic process. It is affected by how often the virus encounters a new vulnerable host. And that is what we has been affecting by social distancing, by reducing the opportunity for an infected person to transmit the virus to a noninfected person we have been able to reduce the break it down and simplify it even more. This is a 101. If the arnot is one they have infected one other person . When the virus burned through the city it was over 2. That meant the index person passed the virus on to two people and those two passed it on to two people. That is four people. Then you can see how you go from one person infected with the virus in late january to 1 Million People infected just a few months later. So, when you employ social distancing. When you start to create these firebreaks when a person that is infected does not encounter someone that he or she can pass the virus on to the reproductivibility drops. Once it is below one, that is when you can contain the virus. Finally below one in places like new york. In wuhan it is now down to about. 3. By social distancing. By doing the things we have done successfully we can continue to drop it and reduce the infective ability of the virus. That is how we get back to more of a normal society by continuing to do what we are doing in places where the virus is still active. Doctor, take a look at the map of the coronavirus cases in new york. Why do you think we are seeing this plateau in cases. What we have done is that we have flattened the curve. It will take a long time to come down. The upswing in the country was very, very steep. A lot of people hope the down side would be just as deep. What social distancing has done is that it spread out the back end over a longer period of time. Unless we backtrack it will continue to go down. Very severe social distancing after the virus came at the end of february. When they loosened it on march 18th the virus came back and they recently reconstituted social distancing. If you let go the smart things you are doing, the virus can come back. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Now to erica hill with the latest on states plans to reopen. Florida, ready to reopen. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. The new phase starts on monday, may 4th and for the time being will exclude Miamidade County excluded. Haircuts in georgia. In california any professional trims are months away. A striking example of just how different the next steps will be. We have significantly less cases than two or three weeks ago and it is time to enter a more sustainable phase. More than half the states in the country announcing plans to ease restrictions. Meantime new hope for a treatment. Remdesivir has a clearcut significant positive effect in diminishing the time to recover. A drug can block the virus. The next big retail experiment comes on friday when malls and Shopping Centers will reopen in eight states. Restaurants in georgia and tennessee welcoming diners. It is not clear that americans are ready for the changes. New polling shows 8 in 10 thinks opening restaurants for onsite dining is a bad idea. Nearly 2 3 shows the same without testing and 85 say students shouldnt go back to School Without more testing and if they do return it is likely to look much different. Not back to normal. Modified. Staggering school times for different cohorts of kids, the recess period being radically modified, cafeteria being shut down. People getting food around their desk. Deep sanitation. The economy continuing to take a hit. First quarter gdp down 5 . The president using the defense production act to keep the countrys Meat Processing plants open. More than 20 facilities closed over the last two months because of positive cases and at least 20 workers have died according to the Union Representing many of them. They are critical and essential to the Food Supply Chain but you have to protect them. It may slow down the line or requires them to expend resources for protective equipment but this is essential work for the country and essential workers and deserve adequate protection. Employees that choose not to return may lose government bids. It is a voluntary quit so they would not be eligible for the unemployment money. Farmers unable to process livestock creating a damaging Ripple Effect as the need for Food Assistance skyrockets. You know, our neighbor, she is alone too. That is why we appreciate it. This is an experience, you know, the kids it is hard for them. Lines were stretching for miles and Many Americans turning to food banks for the first time in their lives. In little rock a planned fourhour Food Distribution ran out in just 1 hour, each box offering families the equivalent of 40 meals. Erica hill, cnn, new york. People are clamoring for antibody tests. Some tests have really terrible accuracy. Can we count on them . We are going to ask an expert next. Announcing planning to ramp up testing for coronavirus antibodies. One study is shedding light on how unreliable those tests are. One researcher saying the accuracy of those antibody tests is really terrible. Here to discuss two authors of the report. Thank you so much for joining. Walk us through what you have found out about how effective these tests really are. Yes. Let me start by framing this. I understand that everyone feels the urgency to have a clearcut answer wanting to know if the tests tells us who is immune and safe from reinfection. These tests became available rapidly in response to a crisis and now we are just going through and testing the tests. The first set of tests is to tell us do these reliably tell us if someone that has been infected has antibodies in the blood and we will have to do further studies to see if they are protected from reinfection. What we saw when we test the tests we see a range. Some are promising. Some are seeming less promising. Patrick, of the 12 tests you tested one gave false positives more than 15 of the time and three more 10 of the time. Why are false positives so dangerous . We conducted the study because we realized that there were over 100 antibody tests on the market but there hasnt been a systemic and rigorous evaluation of how their sensitivity and specificity would look and that is what we set out to do in this work. I think that the importance of very specific tests comes in several cases. Clinical diagnosis. If you go into a hospital and you feel ill or several days or a week after the beginning of the illness. That is really when the molecular tests are less sensitive. The antibody tests can be more accurate. However, during the time if you get a false positive it is important that people do not think that because they have a positive antibody tests they had been exposed to the virus and that they can go back and not socially distance. It is important to realize that there is no evidence that a positive antibody tests necessarily mean that you have protected immunity, right. Many researchers around the world are trying to connect those dots. There is a lot of intense work to try to understand that. Let me follow up. In in the accuracy of the results were even worse for samples from patients known to have known coronavirus and in other words people you knew and the tests still were not accurate. The samples that we use, we have positive and negative samples in the study. The positive were taken from pcr positive that had been seen in San Francisco hospitals. Three weeks out after the beginning of symptoms we saw 7 of 10 of these rapid tests were over 90 positive. For the negative samples we took them from the blood donors that gave blood before august 18th, before the covid19 outbreak. In that case we found at least three tests were 98 specific. The others had unacceptably high false negatives. I think that highlights the importance of our work that we need to do rigorous validation of the tests. On top of inaccurate antibody tests we dont even know how long immunity lasts. How do the huge knowledge gaps affect our ability to reopen. I think that we are racing at an incredible speed to answer questions that are going to take time. We are going to need systemic studies to get reliable tests and further tests that are starting now. They are happening quickly. People are racing to come together to ask the next steps. Do the antibodies protect cells from virus and more important the study in people to see if the people that have antibodies are protected. We will get the answers. It will take time and rigorous studies. Interesting conversation. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time. Thanks for having us on. Absolutely. Experts say the u. S. Would have to conduct 5 million tests per day by june to be able to open safely. Want to brain better . Unlike ordinary memory supplements neuriva has clinically proven ingredients that fuel 5 indicators of brain performance. Memory, focus, accuracy, learning, and concentration. Try neuriva for 30 days and see the difference. When it comes to parenting, youre a pro. You know reflexes are key. You know your kid doesnt step around puddles. And wet shoes, not cool. You know what else isnt cool . Those cheap leaky diapers. Because with luvs, you get the prolevel leak protection youre looking for. Luvs, parent like a pro we were paying an arm and a leg for postage. I remember setting up shipstation. One or two clicks and everything was up and running. I was printing out labels and saving money. Shipstation saves us so much time. It makes it really easy and seamless. Pick an order, print everything you need, slap the label onto the box, and its ready to go. Our costs for shipping were cut in half. Just like that. Shipstation. The 1 choice of online sellers. Go to shipstation. Com tv and get 2 months free. Shipstation. The 1 choice and. L music fades in . Hey hi President Trump tonight contradicting his own guidance on testing claiming widespread testing is not necessary as states move to reopen. Astonishing numbers. I dont remember all of that is even necessary. You have some governors that love the tests. You have others that like doing it a different way, Old Fashioned way. Some testing. Going maximum testing. With the truth about testing, cnns drew griffin. Good evening to you. You have been following testing from the beginning. Have you spoken with anyone that agrees with that . Well, just to define what we are talking about, i think he is saying some governors say they liked doing it the Old Fashioned way with not a lot of testing. No. I have not heard anyone that agrees with that. Everything that i am hearing is that we need to test more and more people. How to find the people and how to contain the virus. The answer is no. The other answer, i am not sure that i understood what he was saying. Listen, President Trump, he is trying to backtrack a separate claim about testing. This is what he said yesterday and then today. Here it is. I heard you say you are confident that you can surpass 5 million tests per day. We are going to be there soon. 5 million. I didnt say 5 million. Someone said 5 million. I think maybe the harvard report. They said 5 million. We will be there. I didnt say it. Okay. How many tests do we need drew . It all depends what you want to do. 5 million per day is a study by harvard. It is 5 to 20 million per day. Do we want to test as many people as we can. Send around the trackers to track them down and make sure that we know where the virus is. Mr. Trump may have been backtracking because it is almost impossible to do that kind of test. The person in charge of testing told Time Magazine that there is absolutely no way on earth or this planet or any other planet that we can do 20 million tests per day or even 5 million tests per day is what he told Time Magazine. The president did say that we can do 5 million. We are going to get to 5 million. Now he is learning we cant. I guess he is backtracking on that. Would it be nice to do 5 million per day . It would. We are only doing about 200,000. It is really out of the question to talk about it at this time. If we doubled testing we would get to 400,000. 500,000. Good numbers to know we are testing everybody that needs a test. Don, the numbers are all over the map. To test the kind of test that we want, testing people back to work to make sure that we are safe. You are in the millions per day and that is a big, big number to achieve given where we are. Testing is in short supplies. Now we are learning or hearing that we may never be able to meet the demands. What do you know. Yeah. That is exactly the problem. I think that this is where reality has kind of come to grips with this administration. The supply line problems that we have been talking about on the show for a month and a half are not fixed. The capacity problems at big labs. Although they are increasing. You are not seeing the huge leaps in increasing amounts that we need to get anywhere near 5 million tests per day. The whole world cant test this much and compete for this many resources at the same time. I know the models are coming out saying you need to test 5 to 20 Million People a day in the united states. I dont know how you have enough resources to do that. Right now we have 200,000 per day. Thank you so much. Florida officials stopped medical examiners from releasing the count of coronavirus deaths and that is leading to questions about how complete the states own tally really is. Achoo . Do your sneezes turn heads . Try zyrtec. Zyrtec starts working hard at hour one. And works twice as hard when you take it again the next day. Zyrtec muddle no more. And try childrens zyrtec for consistently powerful relief of your kids allergies. This virus is testing all of us. And its testing the people on the front lines of this fight most of all. So abbott is getting new tests into their hands, delivering the critical results they need. And until this fight is over, we. Will. Never. Quit. Because they never quit. Reports of discrepancies in the reports of the tally of death has Florida Governor is announcing the reopening of the state. The Tampa Bay Times is reporting that state officials blocked a list of covid19 death totals kept by floridas 22 medical examiners from being released publicly and that they could be 10 higher than the Health Departments list. What are they saying now . The county medical examiners have been keeping lists like these for decades. They do it in crisis time. They always made the lists public until now. The state department of health is saying no more. You cant release the information anymore. The state wants to review the list and redact some of what is on the list and that the state wants to remove the cause of death and case descriptions. Cnn reached on out to the department of health, governors office, medical examiners commission, my colleague heard back from the department of health. They say they are following cdc guidelines with how they report death it is in the state. Per cdc people are listed according to their place of residence ensuring they are not listed twice. For example if a new yorker comes down to florida and dies from coronavirus in florida, floridas department of health would not record that as a florida death. That would be a new york death. The person was from new york. The medical examiner counts every death for the county no matter where they are from or where the person lives. It will be interesting to see if they will sync up. County officials county every death and only residents or visitors that come down here for the winter months. Saying that reporting deaths by residency is the appropriate method. Interesting on that one. Okay. Govern the three largest counties in the state and one includes the city of miami. The state will reopen except for those three counties on may 4th in phase one of his reopening plan. As you said the governors plan. He said he is reopening the state of florida but not the largest counties and the most populous areas. Those counties make up 30 of the states population. All of those people are going to be under a stay at home order. Here is what is opening. Restaurants. Outdoor seating. Indoor at 25 capacity. The Retail Stores will be open. Elective surgeries can resume. Golf courses are open as long as you take your own cart and the Community Pools will be reopened. Many will be closed around the state. Movie theaters, gyms, salons, skate parks, nursing homes, schools will remain closed. Meanwhile i have to tell you at the press conference with the governor he spent the first 20 minutes taking what you might call a victory lap. In the 20 minutes he went on to blame the experts who criticized the media for painting a more dire picture of what might happen in florida than what did happen. He used graphics, newspaper headlines, touted what he considered very low numbers here in florida. Facts should be comforting. We have done up better than everybody said we would do. We will continue to apply factbased datadriven approach to the problems before us. Saying florida would be like new york ewas wrong and people need to know it was wrong. The governor was quick to point out despite the predictions. Despite the fact there were headlines that florida would be the next new york or uber italy, the state did not reach hospital bed capacity. Florida has more than 6,000 ventilators that are standing by idle that have not needed to be used. I am sure the victory lap will continue as florida reopens on may 4th. Thank you new york for the social distancing. It works. Every doctor. Every expert said it works. That is going to be the first thing out of his mouth. Some businesses reopening in georgia over the last few days but are the customers there . I will speak with a Business Owner reopening next. Hey allergy muddlers. Achoo . Do your sneezes turn heads . Try zyrtec. Zyrtec starts working hard at hour one. And works twice as hard when you take it again the next day. Zyrtec muddle no more. And try childrens zyrtec for consistently powerful relief of your kids allergies. Its kind of my quiet, alone time. Audible is a routine for me. Its like a fun night school for adults. I could easily be seduced into locking myself into a place where i do nothing but listen to books. I never was interested in historical fiction before, but im obsessed with it now. There are a lot of like, classic and big titles that i feel like i missed out since i dont have time to read, mean i might as well listen. If i want to catch up on the news or history or learn whats going on in the world, i can download a book and listen to it. Because i listened to her story over and over again, i made the decision to go ahead and follow my own dream, which was to help other veterans. I think theres like 180 books in my, in my library now. It changes your perspective; it makes you a different person. Its true, its so true. To start your free 30day trial, just text listen25 to 500500. Certain businesses in georgia now are allowed to reopen, but striking a balance between a need to make money and stay healthy. Joining me now is the owner of chateau denails in georgia. You wrote a piece in the new york times, why i am reopening my georgia nail salon. Governor kemp announced salons opened last week. You had customers wanting to come back to your salon. Originally i was going to hold out when Governor Kemp made the announcement my phone blew up, calls after calls, clients trying to get in and book. They are stir crazy and trying to get in. You were careful when you opened. Is there enough demand to keep you going . We are still working off of our regular clients. There are not a lot of walkins. On regular days we are not getting much calls at all. People are still scared. I reach eed out to our client be and a lot of them told me jenna, i am going to hold out for a while longer. I am really scared. I cant leave. A husband sick at home or the daughter has asthma but they cant take the risk. I dont blame them. Even for myself, i am scared to work. Yet you reopened. That is a delicate balance. I am sure you need to handle your business. Yeah. Trying to maintain the business, you know, i dont really know what the right thing to do. My family is really upset that i am opening. They feel like i am putting everyone at risk. But at the same time i have bills that i have to pay. My landlord wants to be satisfied. They want rent to be paid. I have to maintain my lifestyle and everybody they owe to. Masks to clients, face shields, et cetera, items should be disposed. Arrive in clean clothes. Change clothes before leaving. Jenna, you are doing all of this and even more . Yes. We are also taking temperatures when they come in. Making them sign if they get sick for them to give us a call so we know how to handle the situation if they did get the virus because we could be at risk as well. What do you think you will do. Do you think you will end up closing . Closing, i am not open every day. I am opening only on an asneeded basis until we know where we are going. When there is more demand i will extend my hours and days. It is a really tough position that you are in. Yes. It is horrible. And my staff, too. We cant get unemployment because they are 1099 workers. You know, they are scared. They are scared. They are scared to come to work but they are need to feed their families and to put food on the tables. Yeah. Awful position we are all in. Good luck to you. Be safe, please. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for watching everyone. Our coverage continues. L 5 indis of brain performance. Memory, focus, accuracy, learning, and concentration. Try neuriva for 30 days and see the difference. There are times when our need to connect really matters. To keep customers and employees in the know. To keep business moving. Comcast business is prepared for times like these. Powered by the nations largest gigspeed network. To help give you the speed, reliability, and security you need. Tools to manage your business from any device, anywhere. And a team of experts here for you 24 7. Weve always believed in the power of working together. Thats why, when every connection counts. You can count on us. Little low and welcome to our viewers. You are watching cnn newsroom and im rosemary church. Just ahead, hope is high for an experimental drug which could help shorten the time it takes to recover from covid19. The u. S. Is in its worst economy ever warns the fed as we wait to find out in a few hours how many more americans have filed for unemployment. Most of florida is getting ready to reopen next week as californias governor prepares