Live updates: Coronavirus cases exceed 1 million and death toll passes 50,000 worldwide; U.S. unemployment claims soar

Caring for coronavirus patients in a Seattle ICU: ‘move forward and accept the risk’

Andy Luks, a pulmonary critical care physician at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, talks about overcoming the challenges of treating covid-19 patients. (Alice Li, Tim Matsui/The Washington Post)

By 

Rick Noack, 

Brittany Shammas, 

John Wagner, 

Alex Horton, 

Miriam Berger, 

Katie Mettler, 

Siobhán O'Grady, 

Felicia Sonmez, 

Karla Adam, 

Hannah Sampson, 

Hannah Knowles and 

Samantha Pell 

April 2, 2020 at 4:46 p.m. GMT-5

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The global number of confirmed deaths from the coronavirus surpassed 50,000 and total cases have topped 1 million, according to tracking by Johns Hopkins University, as the outbreak continued to hit the United States and Europe especially hard. Elsewhere, officials battled to maintain earlier successes in the fight against the novel coronavirus, weighing the desire to resume normal business operations against the risk of triggering new cases.

Here are some significant developments:

• A record 6.6 million Americans applied for unemployment last week, a stunning sign of an economic collapse triggered by the pandemic.
• About 60 percent of fatalities reported worldwide have come from four European countries: Italy, Spain, France and Britain. The Italian and Spanish ambassadors to the United States reported early signs that rates of infection, hospitalization and death are stabilizing in their nations, though their governments announced a combined total of more than 1,700 new coronavirus-related fatalities Thursday.
• The Democratic Party will delay its presidential nominating convention in Milwaukee from July until mid-August to increase chances the party can hold an in-person gathering. The decision to reschedule puts the gathering one week before the Republican convention in Charlotte, which is set to start Aug. 24.
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the creation of a select bipartisan committee to oversee the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, and its management of the new $2 trillion economic rescue package. “Where there’s money there’s also frequently mischief,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) said.
• In China, a county of 600,000 people in Henan province has been placed on lockdown, illustrating the dangers of declaring victory too soon as authorities grow anxious to restart economic activity without unleashing a new wave of infections.

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