tonight with our chief breaking news correspondence. >> good evening during the coronavirus tax force briefing dr. deborah birx noted how california is an example of how to flatten the curve and bend to the curve, for more than a week the number of new infections and new debts in california has been steady. when it comes to patients being admitted to icus which is a key barometer on curve flattening, california is seeing numbers come down. here is the states each h hhs secretary. >> our peak may not be as high as we planned around and expected, the difference between what we are seeing today in our hospitals may not be that much different than where we are going to peek in the many weeks to come. >> still los angeles county extended its stay-at-home mandate until may 15th. across the country there is a great deal of focus on the number of total cases and number of deaths but when it comes to flattening the curve what is most important is the percentage of increase in the number of cases. from april 6th to 7th, we had a 9% increase in cases across the country, from seventh to eighth it dropped to 8.5%, then to 8.1%, and today we are down to 7.8%. fewer people getting sick is the right direction. i want to point out potential hot spots that include delaware, south dakota, maryland, rhode island, and pennsylvania but the dire situations in new orleans and detroit appear to be stabilizing. friday night, we have more good news than bad. >> bill: nice to hear that, trace gallagher in l.a. testing will play a critical role in the days and weeks ahead to come of the host of the dr. oz show is with me now. you've been a workhorse on this. good evening to you. how much consideration have you given to how we reopen parts of the country? >> i've been thinking about it a lot because we have to do it in a medically sound way. especially with major surgery we just went through where we pulled the emergency brake, you're going to be in the recovery room for a while. testing is absolutely essential. i spoke to at that in the last 24 hours, they are making a million of the tests every week that take six hours to figure out if you have infection with the covid-19 virus, they are making about 50,000 a day of the kits that can detect within 5 minutes if you've been infected. kudos to them for making these tests. once we know who is sick, then we can do part two which is to make sure they are quarantined and separated so they don't infect ten people getting home and people they know who they've been close to, more than 10 minutes, less than 6 feet away from somebody, you were too close. those folks have to get pulled out and quarantined as well. with those numbers coming down, we have to make the hospital system comfortable so they can accommodate people who get sick just in case you have errors that occur. >> bill: there was breaking news who had earlier there was a study in france with hydroxychloroquine, about a thousand french people, what did they tell you about the conclusions of that? >> the world famous infectious disease specialist who works in marseille met with the french president for three and a half hours and he sent us the data that he reviewed that was about the first 1,061 patients. they had a 96% success rate of getting rid of the virus within ten days, it means those patients are not infectious anymore, this is a combination of hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin. there wasn't a lot of complications with using those drugs together, that's critical because of the side effects are meaningful, then you will be cautious because you don't know for sure the benefits are going to be there. breaking news an hour ago, 950,000 patients concluded the use of this drug hydroxychloroquine was safe. this study reinforced what people have been saying for a long time, it's been around since 1955 and doesn't have a profile that concerns people. it's used for 300,000 lupus patients every year but they did warn when combined with other medications, they have to be more cautious. it looks like the drug is safe, we aren't sure if it works but increasing data from france and china makes me comfortable that what most doctors are doing is reasonable, talk to your patient about it and if it makes sense and people who are not that sick yet and not completely healthy, that middle ground may be benefited. >> bill: we'll keep an eye on that, i will speak on a modeling expert from the university of washington. how good are the models when you consider the virus is adapting and moving and changing? how much stock do we put in those? >> the models of the best we got to go with, obviously they are a little bit more malleable than we would wish because you can rapidly change by an order of magnitude what our expectations are. i'm pretty confident we would've had a much worse outcome if we hand shut the country down. the variables coming into play are whether we can actually test and assess how widely spread the virus is. in new york we missed the boat, but california as you pointed out got there a little bit of head of time but just because the nature of california it wasn't as easy for it to spread. the subways aren't there, the elevators, the places that cause problems in new york. the models addict what's going to happen in 24 days and that's how long it took us to get ahead of this. modeling is vital otherwise you are completely without guidance. >> bill: with regard to new york, we lost a staggering 777 people yesterday, that's the fourth day in the row we've been over 700 per day. hospitalization numbers are down, the icu numbers are down significantly. his new york as a city or state on the backside of this? >> can't quite say that yet, we have to wait until easter or the day after but on the ground talking to colleagues, it doesn't feel lighter yet. we aren't getting less patients but it's less people in the icu's net net because some are being discharged. some are needing breathing relatively consistent. my hope is once we reached that stable point which we seem to be at now we will start to slide down the slope and it's a lot easier skiing downhill than uphill. >> bill: when you speak to doctors and you find out how much damage is being done to the lungs and the human body, what does that tell you about the virus? >> this virus is different, it's more contagious than any we have ever seen but it's a lot different than what we expected. it doesn't make the lungs wet like a sponge might be, it has a destructive effect but in a dry long enough. doctors are struggling with the best way to use ventilators, maybe you don't want as much pressure as historically you would use. doctors are calling audibles continually. you may remember governor cuomo sounds like a doctor he speaks so much about the health issues of the state but governor cuomo spoke about an 80% mortality rate with ventilators early on, the mortality at my hospital is more like 50% which i think is reflective of the fact that physicians have gotten much better at treating the problems. it's still not great and we can do better but with new insights the dry pneumonia that has happened with these patients, we will figure out more innovative ways to get folks through there. we have to figure out ways of slowing the infection down so less people get that ill. back to the earlier question about what we do about this, the older members of society that have comorbidities, that's were almost all the deaths are. we have to be especially cautious about what we are doing. if we can't take our eyes off that ball, that really hurts. >> bill: the surgeon general said we are going to test about one in 100 americans, we aren't going to test all 330 americans, i'm sure you're aware of that. dr. felt was asked about this immunity card, he did not dismiss it, is that the way we are going in america, carrying him immunity card that says you know longer have it and will not get it? >> dr. fauci was guarded when he answered that question and i think he's right. it's not the obvious step to take, other countries are doing that and a lot of other people have already been infected maybe it makes sense to keep track, but most people do the right thing. the bigger question is finding people who are currently infected, not the ones who are infected last month. it's good to know that you can start to predict who could safely go to work and get herd immunity. herd immunity protects 60-75% of the population minimum. i'm focused not on the antibody tests but on the nasal test, the test of the virus itself. that is essential and that is the one major gap that we have been living through. without that, you don't have eyes on the target, you can't figure out how to make decisions and it's not fair to our leadership at any level if we don't give them guidance. we need an active public health service who can help people not contaminate everyone they meet going out to. >> bill: thank you, dr. oz, nice to see you. jonathan serrie was in atlanta reporting outside the cdc. >> we are nearing the end of what the federal health officials and would be a difficult week for the number of covid-19 deaths. this is the delayed result of large numbers of people admitted to hospital icus in new york over the past two weeks. >> i understand intellectually why it's happening, it doesn't make it any easier to accept. >> new york governor andrew cuomo's urging congress to create a hero's fund to compensate hospital employees and other frontline workers in a pandemic response, public health officials say every day americans embracing social distancing are reducing the numbers of new cases nationwide. >> you can see for the first time in the united states, we are starting to level on the logarithmic phase like italy did about a week ago. >> in a moment of levity for the children of maryland, governor larry hogan issued a proclamation declaring the easter bunny unessential worker, as we go into the holiday weekend, officials are urging families to celebrate by themselves in their own home to help america continue to reduce the spread to. >> bill: jonathan serrie in atlanta. a key model is showing major signs of improvement as the death toll has now been revised down multiple times. the professor behind the model is dr., university of washington, welcome back and nice to see you again. we spoke earlier in the week and thank you for coming back. why did the model change so dramatically from monday to wednesday? it was all good news but why did that happen? >> we have seen positive news from italy and spain and we included them in our model. we have seen better practices at our hospitals when it comes to need for icus and ventilators. our physicians are doing a better job of triaging patients and we are seeing positive news in the climbing number of deat deaths. >> bill: so many of us we go to your website and check out your information, we find it critical to our understanding, what is the state of play in america tonight is you look at the model? >> the worst is behind us as a country, we are going to go down in terms of mortality. some states will peak a little bit later but california, my state, new york are going to go down in terms of numbers of mortality. it's very positive as we move forward that the worst is behind us as a country, for some states it will take a week or so. >> bill: you said twice, the worst is behind us. is this the first time you have felt that way or did you feel that way earlier this week? >> no, this is the first time that our data is showing the mortality will be declining from now on and it will go down from now on. >> bill: wow. on this good friday, that's good news. >> it's very good news for all of us and it's time for all of us to start thinking about recovery and how we can bring our economy back. >> bill: that's no the next part of my question and you said i've got family and friends suffering too with respect to them as well, if you are doing a new model next week that will break down the different parts of the country to tell you who and where you can reopen the economy and where it's best to keep it closed for the moment, can we explain how that will work? >> we're looking looking at different scenarios of modeling next week. one of them as we start going back to normal before a certain time or after. the second model we have been asked to do based on the data we have right now for certain states that they have nonessential business closure, we know what the definition of nonessential business closure was. certain business that weren't closed in one state but another. what will happen to the death rate in the virus again? >> bill: that can help the team at the white house determine who goes open for business again. >> yes. it's important for us as we talk about reopening our businesses, we aren't out of danger yet, we need to stress that. we need to do it in phases and make sure we bring some people in -- testing is very important, public surveillance is important, case investigation and after that we can use more people. we don't want to put them at risk, this is the basis of our economy so we have to be very careful who we asked to come first. we test them and check that there is no virus, then if we feel comfortable we can expand our relaxation measures and so on. >> bill: i'm going to take this headline "the worst is behind us." and fly into the weekend that way. we'll speak again next week, thank you. in the meantime, the president is announcing he's training a new task force, austan goolsbee and stephen moore will weigh in on that. a live report for casey stegall as because you can't get to the theater, we're bringing the theater home to you, with xfinity movie premiere. there's a world full of other trolls. how different can they be? our brand-new service that lets you watch all the latest movie releases from the comfort of home. trolls world tour available now. i will protect you no matter what, pinky promise. just say xfinity movie premiere into your voice remote to bring the theater to you. ♪ >> bill: one of the state's hardest hit by covid-19 is the state of louisiana, casey stegall is watching that. he's in arlington for us tonig tonight. >> what a difference a week makes. at louisiana state health officials started this week with a very short timeline of when they thought they were going to run out of hospital beds and ventilators. tonight, that is no longer the worry, at least if the trend continues. and the numbers don't change and they keep moving in the right direction. there has been great heartache across louisiana, 755 people have died from coronavirus and more than 19,000 have tested positive. the government losing one of its own, a state representative died yesterday. the 54-year-old was just elected back in january, then hospitalized last week. today president trump also said is looking more like the extra 1,000 temporary hospital beds won't be needed there, a thousand beds already went online at the new orleans convention center at a pop-up hospital and while the government says there is light at the end of a long tunnel, he says it remains imperative for people to stay home and maintain all social distancing rules despite it being a holiday weekend which they say could tempt some people with warship or gathering with friends to break the rules, but maintain you have to stay the course to see the numbers continue to level off. >> bill: casey stegall arlington, texas, tonight. president trump said the decision on when to move to reopen the economy will be the biggest decision i've ever had to make. austan goolsbee is with me now, former economic advisor to president obama, good evening to both of you. the big headline today was the economic task force of will be announced tuesday of next week, i imagine we will get a leak or two, what would you expect or hope to see on that? >> congratulations, you made my weekend with that previous segment about the worst behind us, that is the best news i've heard in many months. congratulations on that and let us hope that trend continues. incidentally, the problem here that the president has to deal with is it looks like the worst of the death rate and the infection rate is behind us but the economic carnage from the shutdown is only just starting. we've seen 16 to 17 million additional americans put on unemployment liens. this has come at a very heavy cost and donald trump if you're watching, please get this economy up and running as quickly as possible. trump is talking about this task force with people like my buddy larry kudlow and probably steve mnuchin, but there will also be private sector people, we are hoping to see some of the business leaders so you get the best advice because the decision trump makes in the next 4 to 8 to 10 weeks will be critical in terms of the economic recovery we are hoping for. >> bill: you don't want to start and pull back again no matter what the decision ultimately is. go ahead, what do we need? >> i think he really needs to get credible people who are not associated with the administration's previous positions. the president has for the last 12 weeks at least been clearly agitating to say the virus isn't as serious as people say, we should go back to work. he previously said we should be able to go out and get back to work by easter. i think if he is going to form a task force to try to make this decision, it's imperative that task force have credibility and not be perceived as pursuing a political agenda. i would also say it's not the president's decision to make, that's the thing. the virus is the boss, not the president, not the governors who are the ones that make these decisions. you have to slow the rate of the spread of the virus into testing to enable that before we can go back otherwise we are going to go back to square zero and do this again. >> bill: the treasury department is saying some of the direct deposit checks are going out to americans as we speak and they suggested the majority would have theirs by april 15th which is ironically taxed day of next wednesday. i'm just rattling these headlines earlier today, jpmorgan 20% unemployment, gdp 40% hit, imf the worst recession since the great depression. that loan program has been stubborn so far, they have got to get it right, my guess is that has to be the next level of attention. >> the numbers are exactly why austin is wrong. we got to get this economy open in a safe way, not in cities that account for the deaths but in other parts of the country -- we have half of our businesses up and running and they found a good way of doing it without getting their workers sick. we should be taking the example of great companies like walmart and fedex that have got their people back to work. this loan program is critical because we have to save the businesses. we have so many small businesses in this country, millions of them that are this close to being bankrupt because they have no customers. the most important thing is to get the economy open but in the meantime we have to get those loans to those companies so they have some revenue so they can meet their bills. >> bill: your name was invoked, can you do it in 15 seconds? >> all i'll say is you've got to get the testing. if you don't get the testing, you will be back to square zero and have to shut down again. they have to sort out these wrinkles because we both agreed getting money to these small businesses and getting money to people so that nobody starves, nobody gets affected, nobody goes bankrupt and has their business if liquidated, that's got to be a goal. >> we agree, testing is critical. >> bill: have a great, peaceful weekend. in a moment, chad pergram on what washington has planted next and the president talking about what he will talk about the world health organization next week, sen >> bill: is there another stimulus package in the works? chad pergram joins us from the latest from washington tonight, what are they thinking about n now? >> there was that impasse on the senate floor yesterday over the small business provisions, democrats blocked republicans and republicans returned to the favored but it sparked negotiations. chuck schumer and nancy pelosi nancy pelosi spoke separately with treasury secretary steve mnuchin. pelosi is concerned about underserved communities getting access to capital. chuck schumer says there is no reason we can't come to a bipartisan agreement by the end of next week. we want to see if the phase three bill works, proposals for the phase four bill -- the ideas out there are legion. josh hawley wants to pay workers 80% of their salary. the other question they have to get resolved his oversight, adam schiff the chairman of the house intelligence committee, he wants a 9/11 style commission to look into coronavirus, that would be a fifth layer of oversight. there's a commission that is built into the phase three bill already, and speaker nancy pelosi has impaneled the select committee but she's open to the idea of a 9/11 style commission but says it has to be bipartisan and after action review has to be number one it will not point fingers. >> bill: chad pergram in washington. the world health organization as you know is under a ton of scrutiny. one of the more vocal critics has been senator tom cotton who penned a piece on foxnews.com, he's with me tonight. thank you for your time on this good friday for being here. you characterize this as an information war, let's start there, make your case. >> the chinese communist party has been waging an information war against the united states, they have their ambassadors all around the world telling the countries that host them that this virus originated with american soldiers, not with the city of wuhan and hubei province in china. they are engaged in online disinformation campaigns as well, that's why it's so important we remain clear about why this virus originated -- in china -- and the fact that china could have kept at probably a local health challenge in wuhan and hubei province as opposed to unleashing a global pandemic on the world. unfortunately the world health organization from the very first moment they learned about this virus has been covering up for china, been praising china and more concerned it seems with political correctness than actually stopping this pandemic before it spread around the globe. >> bill: i have a number of questions. if you're right and had beijing acted sooner, how different would the world be today? >> let me give you one example of beijing's treachery. on january 23rd, they shut down air travel from wuhan to every other chinese city, couldn't go to beijing, couldn't go to shanghai, but you could still travel to any city around the world direct flights from wuhan to include new york and san francisco. that meant that thousands of cases were being seated all around the world before the w.h.o. and china were even acknowledging human to human transmission. china was looking out for its own people by shutting down domestic travel while continuing to let this virus spread all around the world. >> bill: the issue now, or soon to be, if the doctor from the university of washington is right saying the worst is behind us and we put a bigger focus on the economy, you've got a catch-22. our economies are so linked to one another, what do you do about that? what do you do about supply lines, what action do you think is appropriate? >> it's time to start delinking our two economies. this happened over 30 years as a result of deliberate policy choices made in washington, those were bad choices. we can reverse it through good choices, legislation will bring back pharmaceutical manufacturing and the production of devices and supplies in short order but it has to continue to other critical fields like and telecommunications equipment and manufacturing products. we can't allow our people to be depended on the chinese communist party for our health, safety, security and economic prosperity. >> bill: there was word from tokyo that the japanese are looking at a similar thing in terms of supply lines. i don't know what you expect next week from the president or how much consideration you have given that but what should be looked at if you're right and the critics in the world health organization are right again at this one? >> we need a full accounting of what went wrong in january and february, a commitment to reform and transparency in the future and we need a change in leadership to ensure those things happen. the u.s. taxpayer doesn't need to be subsidizing a leader who's in the pocket of beijing. >> bill: they screwed up ebola six years ago, they were slow on the trigger and roundly criticized from just about every corner of the world. thank you for your time and happy easter weekend. >> happy easter to you and your viewers. >> bill: thank you very much, i appreciate that. in a moment, the latest headlines today, the number of u.s. cases topping half a million. the president announcing help for italy, will backfill you in in on that and we will take >> bill: welcome back, the number of covid-19 cases in the u.s. has hit half a million. the president moments ago ordering the u.s. government to provide humanitarian relief for italy, we'll keep an eye on that. there are signs of hope as new york saw its first daily drop in icu covid-19 patients. governor cuomo called that cautiously optimistic. rick leventhal live in new york with more details on this as well. >> another one of the quietest friday nights you'll ever experience in manhattan and we have some signs of the curve may be flattening. some very good news and stark reminders of just how deadly the coronavirus can be. we'll get to those numbers in just a minute. the number of patients in intensive care dropped for the first time since the virus became an issue in new york city, it's been going up every single day between thursday and wednesday, it actually dropped by 17 patients. that number as "the new york times" pointed out is very small but its significance is great because consider just a week ago, the number of patients being checked into icu was up at 300 single day. on a steep hill up and now potentially it's on the way do down. the death toll, the number of dead in new york is just staggering, about half of the deaths across the country have happened in this state. 599 on monday come up to 731 tuesday, 799 yesterday and a slight drop to 777 today. horrible news for the city as it tries to handle all of the bodies but the best news we've heard today is the curve may in fact be flattening. if the message the governor and the mayor wanted to deliver his social distancing is working. people need to keep 6 feet or more away from each other for this thing to be beat. >> bill: rick leventhal in the streets of new york city. i'm sure many of you at home still have a lot of questions about this, we'll try to give you some answers. we asked viewers to submit questions on facebook and our panel of doctors are here to address some of those. baylor college of medicine professor -- good evening to both of you. ladies first, this is justin from arizona with the first question. >> is this virus mutating like the flu, and can you catch it again once it mutates or once you have survived it, will the antibodies you created help you fight off the new infection? >> bill: a great question, lots of people want to know. >> being from arizona which happens to be my home state, that is a great question and the truth is we don't really know. that data is showing us there are about three different strains of this virus circulating around and in fact the strain on the east coast seems to be different from the west coast, east coast being from europe and the west coast being directly from china. the truth is there's probably more than three strains circulating around. the theory is if you are infected from one of the novel coronavirus strains, you probably have more general immunity and it will likely be that you are more immune to other strains. think about it like the common cold which is also caused by the coronavirus, how many times can you get a common cold, and those tend to be different strains of the coronavirus. it's possible if you have been infected with this coronavirus which caused covid-19, it's possible if you were to be reinfected with another strain, you may have another mild outcome because you do have some sort of communit immunity to it. the truth is we will only know as we go further along in the process. the theory right now is if you have been infected right now with a virus that causes covid-19, it does confer some sort of immunity so that's what we are going to go with. >> bill: bill from texas with the next question. >> my question is if i have a small collection of masks that i use for myself and for my family members, what's the best way to sanitize those masks so i can reuse them? >> bill: it would save us a lot of work, do you have an answer on that? >> actually the cdc has a nice website now about cloth masks for use at home. they do recommend cloth and it turns out just plain old washing in the washing machine seems to be adequate. a couple things to be careful -- you want to not use cloth masks on kids especially under the age of two primarily because of the choking risk. also individuals who are debilitated and can't remove the masks themselves, be very careful about that. look at the website, it tells you how to construct the mask. >> bill: we could go all night but i want to come back to a headline we had about 30 minutes ago from the university of washington, including the white house -- the man who runs the website said the worst is behind us, that was his headline tonight, how do you take that? >> i love looking at any glimmer of hope and i do think there is time to be optimistic in that time is right now. we have a tough road ahead and we have to be careful not to jump on this and go outside and have a party and everybody get together. the truth is all of these actions that everybody has been doing, all this painful social distancing is working. we are having fewer hospitalizations, fewer people in the icu, we are still going to be seeing some deaths. the numbers are going down, this is a time during holy week to be optimistic and know there is light at the end of the tunnel. >> bill: that's a good message, thank you for coming on tonight. president trump delivering an easter message from the oval office earlier, we will oval office earlier, we will show that to you and more in a oval office earlier, we will sthere 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 nation's largest gig-speed 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. we've always believed in the power of working together. that's why, when every connection counts... you can count on us. ♪ >> we will not be able to gather together with one another as we normally would on easter, we can use this sacred time to focus on prayer, reflection, and growing in our personal relationship with god, so important. i ask all americans to pray that god will heal our nation, to bring comfort to those that are grieving, to give strength to the doctors, nurses, and health care workers, to restore health to the sick and every person who is suffering. our nation will come through like never before. >> bill: from a bit earlier today, the oval office with president trump. we are out here on fifth avenue in midtown manhattan, normal you can never walk out here especially friday afternoon at 5:00. it's easter weekend, to that direction is central park and the trump tower, in this direction is the heart of the american catholic church, st. patrick's cathedral behind me. with good friday today, normally you'd be getting ready for this great celebration for easter sunday and around noon time, you get the easter parade, all the parishioners come out of the church for sunday mass. but for now new york is a very different place. after nightfall, it gets lonely, there's not many people around. a few stragglers here and there but new york is a different town just like perhaps your town is right now. on this easter sunday, st. patrick's cathedral still stands tall and weights for the faithful to come back. i want to bring in theologian and fox news contributor at jonathan morris tonight. nice to see you and good evening to you. what are you thinking about on this good friday. >> i think you mentioned it right there on fifth avenue, it's a lonely. what a great opportunity for us this year like no other year to experience what jesus christ on his way to the cross experienced which was probably not only physical pain but loneliness. loneliness. maybe the deepest human suffering and so many of us are isolated right now. i think whether you are christian, jewish, and other faith, to understand that it's true suffering that joy and resurrection, like we celebrate as christians on easter sunday is experienced. just very simply i remember as a kid, i come from a family of seven kids, my parents would have us be quiet between 12:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. on good friday to commemorate the three hours that hung on the cross by tradition before he died. it was so hard to keep us quiet. at this year, 2020, we are able to be quiet and experience the loneliness that felt as a great preparation for easter sunday. >> bill: as a priest, you never said mass and an empty church but it will happen this year. happy easter ♪ >> bill: each of you enjoy this passover from this past weekend. a blessed easter and we i'm sure it will be different. maybe that's not all bad. i'm back monday at 3:00 eastern, as we say, set your dvr and never missed. brian kilmeade is in for laura's side as we say good night from new york. ♪ s s s s s s s s s s s s s s e through noon and what makes america great on fox nation. see you. speak >> shannon: president trump with the biggest decision he will ever have to make. when to reopen the country's economy and he's giving the most optimistic reading and weeks on the progress of the fight against the coronavirus. all of this setting up a potential showdown between the medical experts and new economic team putting together right now. tonight the federal communications commission has a tough question for trying about disappearing whistle-blowers who are raising alarms over china's handling of covid-19. and usa sounding the alarm over chinese company operating in the u.s. right now. joining us live with details. for the first time in american