Good morning. A top US government doctor has turned whistleblower after he says he was pushed out of his role in the search for a coronavirus vaccine. Rick Bright told the New York Times he believed he was dismissed as director of the US health department’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority because he resisted Donald Trump’s push to use an unproven malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, as a treatment for Covid-19:
Contrary to misguided directives, I limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit.
Trump and his cheerleaders at Fox News have recently backed away from promoting the possible benefits of hydroxychloroquine, after a trial of the drug in US veterans hospitals went badly. The president told reporters on Wednesday that he had “never heard of” Bright.
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The studies so far. There have been several scientific studies of hydroxychloroquine and Covid-19, writes Julia Carrie Wong – but none have produced evidence that the drug works.
Even Trump says Georgia is reopening ‘too soon’
Despite expressing his support for the anti-lockdown movement, Trump said on Wednesday that he “strongly” disagrees with Georgia governor Brian Kemp’s decision to reopen bowling alleys, hair salons and other businesses this weekend. Many of the state’s business owners have also concluded it is “way too early” to return to normal.
But Kemp is far from the only leader eschewing the lockdown. In South Dakota, where Republican governor Kristi Noem never issued a stay-at-home order, hundreds of people are expected to attend motor races this weekend. And the mayor of Las Vegas told CNN she would “love everything open” and said her city could be a “control group” to assess the impact of the virus.
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A tale of two states. Kentucky and Tennessee share a border, but their governors took very different approaches to their coronavirus outbreaks and, as Josh Wood reports, they have seen very different outcomes.
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New voters go unregistered. The pandemic has made it almost impossible to register new voters using traditional methods in states across the US. That could have a huge impact on November’s election, writes Sam Levine.
A study says China’s official case numbers fell far short
Mainland China reported 55,000 cases of coronavirus in the country’s first wave of infections. But a study by researchers in Hong Kong suggests that number would have been more like 232,000, had the later adopted definition of a Covid-19 case been applied from the outset.
By contrast, South Korea had some of the most reliable infection numbers, suffered a comparatively low death toll and is now beginning to return to something like normal life. Justin McCurry explains how it got there.
Meanwhile, in…
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…Italy, relatives of those killed by the coronavirus have launched a Facebook effort to take legal action against the authorities, over what they claim were errors made at the start of the country’s outbreak.
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…Mexico, at least 21 doctors and nurses have suffered violent attacks, in public, after being wrongly accused of spreading the disease.
This California town is testing everyone
A doctor from Bolinas, California, says her small town north of San Francisco is hoping to become a “model” for the rest of the country, after resolving to test every single member of its community for Covid-19. The town raised $300,000 through GoFundMe to buy testing equipment for its population of 1,600, to help researchers understand how the virus spreads.
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Early deaths. Tissue samples from the autopsy of a 57-year-old woman who died in northern California on 6 February have tested positive for Covid-19, suggesting the coronavirus started killing Americans weeks earlier than was originally thought.
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Covid-19 in cats. Two cats in New York state have tested positive for the virus, apparently after catching it from humans – the first confirmed cases of US pets catching Covid-19.
In other news…
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‘Catastrophic’ flooding is coming soon. That’s according to new research, which has found that the number of people affected by floods will double to around 147 million annually by the end of the 2020s.
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Iran puts its first military satellite in orbit. The reported launch of the “Noor” ratchets up existing tensions between Tehran and Washington, with the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, saying it violates a 2015 UN security council resolution.
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A million-dollar art heist was caught on camera. A Dutch crime show broadcast footage of a man with a sledgehammer smashing his way into a museum in the Netherlands on 30 March, and fleeing with a Van Gogh painting under his arm.
Great reads
Is Bad Education Hugh Jackman’s best performance yet?
The X-Men and Greatest Showman star’s latest role is that of Frank Tassone, a real-life school district superintendent who turned out to have been skimming millions from the budget, in HBO’s new drama Bad Education. It’s the performance of his career, writes Charles Bramesco.
New Orleans musicians mourn with a new kind of show
The city that gave birth to jazz has lost hundreds to coronavirus, including one of its musical greats, the pianist Ellis Marsalis. Rather than go silent, his disciples have adapted to lockdown with online gigs, mobile concerts and internet recording sessions, as Oliver Laughland reports.
Therapy under lockdown: ‘I’m as terrified as my patients’
Gary Greenberg, a psychotherapist for 35 years, is still seeing his patients via videocall. Even Freud at his most misanthropic, he writes, could not have imagined that when we need each other most, the best we can do to care for each other is keep well apart.
Opinion: this crisis could help us face the climate challenge
Greta Thunberg has said the global response to Covid-19 shows what can be achieved when society listens to scientists. New Zealand’s climate minister, James Shaw, argues that instead of returning to normal after this crisis, we should reset our economies to tackle the bigger challenge ahead.
If we spend the next few years restoring business as usual, we will have only a few years left to transform that business as usual into something else. It simply won’t be able to be done.
Last Thing: A Welsh minister’s hot mic Zoom moment
A Welsh health minister has apologised after he forgot to turn off his mic during a Zoom call with the country’s assembly – and accidentally broadcast a sweary rant about a colleague. The four-letter audio clip has been preserved for posterity, as have the priceless reactions of his fellow assembly members.
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