Coronavirus pandemic in the US

Pentecostal and Baptist churches in California and Illinois were pushing for the US Supreme Court on Friday to stop their states' governors from limiting the number of people that can attend religious services as part of coronavirus social distancing measures, according to new filings sent to the court.

The churches are asking the court to stop the worship restrictions before this Sunday, the Christian holy day of Pentecost. The Supreme Court could act as soon as Friday. 

How the churches got here: In recent days, both states have lifted social distancing measures that relaxed limitations on churches. But the churches say they still need the court’s intervention.

California recently loosened its restrictions to allow up to 100 people to meet for religious services.

In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker lifted the state’s restrictions on religious worship on Thursday.

The state previously had prohibited more than 10 people from gathering for religious services. But Elim Romanian Pentecostal Church and Logos Baptist Ministries said they fear that if the state has another wave of Covid-19 cases this summer and fall, Pritzker could restrict their services again.

“What changed? The governor was summoned to the steps of this Court to give an account. But the governor’s sudden change has no permanency or force of law, and both his public statements and his new policy strongly signal an impending return to his old ways.

Absent a pronouncement from this Circuit Justice, or the Court, there can be no reasonable expectation that the Governor will not once again infringe Churches’ constitutional rights,” the churches in Illinois wrote.

The President's perspective: President Trump called on governors to reopen religious institutions for services last week after issuing guidance deeming places of worship "essential."

Trump even threatened to "override" governors if their states did not follow the new guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which released guidance for religious institutions on Friday.

Governors have gradually been reopening some businesses and other community gathering places in their states after months of lockdown and some plateaus of Covid-19 cases. The churches have claimed they shouldn’t be treated differently than retail business.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city has measurements in place that could trigger a possible need to dial back the restart and reinstate restrictions.

The test and trace initiative will be a positive X factor, he added. 

“If our thresholds were exceeded the wrong way, that’s the situation where, unless there are other extenuating circumstances, we would have to take a step back to where we are right now," de Blasio said.

Here are the indicators the city will monitor:

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was pressed on whether he can narrow down the potential phase one start date as June commences next week. 

“We are confident that we will be able to go to phase one in the first two weeks of June. This is going to be based, of course, on the tangible indicators and thresholds from the state and the city. So that’s what will lead the decision. We have to have that factual evidence," he said at a news conference on Friday.

The percentage of New York City residents who have tested positive for coronavirus is at 5%, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday.

The mayor assessed the daily indicators by threshold and would like to see this number under a 15% threshold.

The daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected Covid-19, which the mayor would like to see under a 200 threshold, is at 61.

“A very good number,” de Blasio said.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio delved into protections and initiatives for businesses, workers and consumers as the city begins planning for a phase one restart in either the first or second week of June.

De Blasio outlined what the city is doing to make sure businesses are ready to reopen. The mayor said face coverings for all employees and customers is absolutely necessary for every business to succeed and be safe.

The NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, Small Business Services and Citywide Administrative Services will coordinate pickup and delivery of 2 million face coverings for businesses and workers with more to come.

A strong restart, he added, is making sure businesses can come back “quickly” and “effectively.”

Business owners big and small need help “making sense of all this.”

The city is also working to make sure businesses have a supply of cleaning fluids at an affordable price.

Other reopening efforts: De Blasio reiterated that the city is training a group of small business compliance units to go out and work with businesses.

The city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection will also send teams out to talk directly to people working with unions, worker centers and immigrant rights organizations. They plan to listen to their needs and give out helpful information.

“Workers have every right to be safe when they return to work," de Blasio said.

A worker protection hotline will be launched next week, the mayor added.

De Blasio also said that starting next week, the city will have a testing initiative focused particularly on non-profit staff with an aim to reach nearly 31,0000 nonprofit human service provider staff beginning June 1.

These tests are voluntary and the city intends to provide up to 4,000 a day. Mobile testing sites will be launched mid-June.

US stocks were mixed at the start of Friday’s session, with the Dow and the S&P 500 adding onto losses from the prior day.

Rising tensions between the United States and China are weighing on investor sentiment.

President Trump is expected to hold a news conference later today in response to China’s Hong Kong crackdown.

The Trump administration has also been critical of China’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, which could come up again. 

Here is where things stood at opening:  

The Dow opened down 0.5%, or 134 points.

The S&P 500 kicked off 0.3% lower.

The Nasdaq Composite opened higher, climbing a modest 0.1%.

American consumer spending slowed dramatically during the coronavirus lockdown, and that is a massive problem for the spending-addicted US economy.

April's personal consumption data showed a 13.6% drop in consumer spending, according to a Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) report released Friday. That's equal to $1.89 trillion. 

In total the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index fell 0.5% from the prior month. Excluding food and energy, for which prices can change more rapidly, the index slipped 0.4%. 

It was the largest month-to-month decline since the BEA began tracking the data in 1959. And it followed a similarly steep, revised 6.9% drop in March when the lockdown began. 

Some more perspective: About two-thirds of America's economy runs on consumer spending, so this doesn't bode well for the start of the quarter. The steep drop in spending is just the latest sign of an economy in a dire, pandemic-linked recession.

Millions of people have lost their jobs and businesses are reliant on government stimulus, while more than 100,000 lives have been claimed by Covid-19. 

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic performance, is expected to drop as much as 40% on an annualized basis between April and June. That would be the worst quarter on record.

But this data won't be released until the quarter is over. Until then, economists have to fall back on other numbers like the PCE index to paint a picture.

April's data showed that as Americans didn't spend money, they saved a lot more. Personal savings as a percentage of disposable income soared to 33% in April, up from some 13% in March.

The dramatic increase was due in part to the increase in government benefits during the pandemic, the BEA said. 

The country went into lockdown in the second half of March to limit the spread of coronavirus. Businesses shut down and laid off millions of workers.

Seventeen Democratic senators have sent a letter to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, asking for a plan to fight a “dramatic” drop in childhood vaccinations since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Earlier this month, the CDC reported a "notable decrease" in the number of vaccines ordered through a federal program that immunizes half of all kids in the country. Several states have also reported drops in immunizations.

The group of senators, organized by New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan, asked the CDC to organize a program to reverse the trend. 

The CDC has cautioned that unvaccinated or under-vaccinated children will be at risk for other infectious diseases besides coronavirus.

“Such outbreaks would put lives at risk, and place additional stress on our health care system and public health infrastructure at a time when these systems are struggling to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the senators wrote.

The lawmakers also urged the CDC to provide resources for communities where vaccinations have fallen, and to provide guidance on how parents can safely get their kids vaccinated.

More than 2 million New Yorkers had been infected with Covid-19 by the end of March – about 10 times the official count, according to a new study. 

State data, however, shows only about 189,000 cases by the end of March. That means about 1.8 million cases potentially went undetected. 

Why cases may have been undercounted: There are several reasons why those cases were not detected, said study coauthor David Holtgrave, dean of the School of Public Health at the University at Albany. 

Some infected people may have had no symptoms, or only mild symptoms, and so never went to the doctor, Holtgrave said. Others might have wanted to get tested but couldn’t find a doctor to test them, given the shortage of tests in February and March. 

In the study, researchers drew blood from more than 15,000 New York adults and found that about 14%, or 1 out of 7, had antibodies to the virus, which means they had previously been infected. The researchers extrapolated that number to the entire population.

On herd immunity: While the 14% infection rate was higher than previously thought, it’s still not high enough to confer herd immunity, Holtgrave said.

Herd immunity is when a community has a sufficiently high proportion of people who are immune to a disease so that the disease is unlikely to spread. These are the full results of New York's antibody survey, some of which New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has previously mentioned.

The data also shows that communities of color were disproportionately infected. Among those who had antibodies, 30% were Hispanic and 22% were black, which is higher than their proportions in the New York population. 

The study was coauthored by officials at the New York Department of Health, and posted on the pre-print server MedRXiv.org, which means it wasn’t peer reviewed or published in a medical journal.