Coronavirus pandemic in the US

Our live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic in the US has ended for the day. Get the latest updates from around the globe here.

President Trump’s decision to sever ties with the World Health Organization is senseless and harmful, the American Medical Association said Friday.

“This senseless action will have significant, harmful repercussions now and far beyond this perilous moment, particularly as the WHO is leading worldwide vaccine development and drug trials to combat the pandemic,” the statement said.

Harris also said coronavirus "does not respect borders" and "defeating it requires the entire world working together."

“In the strongest terms possible, the American Medical Association urges the President to reverse course and not abandon our country’s leadership position in the global fight against Covid-19," Harris said.

During a news conference Friday, President Trump announced the United States would remove some of Hong Kong’s special exemptions as the territory “is no longer sufficiently autonomous” from China.

Trump didn’t mention further tariffs or the phase one trade deal with Beijing. This boosted stocks in the last hour of trading.

Here is where things stood at closing:

California plans to have 10,000 workers trained by July 1 to contact trace coronavirus cases, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in a news conference on Friday.

The first phase commitment of 10,000 workers will be able to track 3,600 new cases per day, Newsom said.

Newsom noted the importance of contact tracing as the state reopens because it will meet the substantial needs of the counties that are reopening.

The state’s testing capacity has substantially increased from 2,000 to 50,000 tests every day. There has been an increase in the number of positive cases due to the increase in testing capacity, Newsom explained.  

The contact tracing workforce is being developed in partnership with the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).

President Trump has terminated the partnership between the World Health Organization and the US, according to remarks he made today outside the White House.

Trump blamed WHO's handling of the coronavirus pandemic in China as part of the reason.

Los Angeles will reopen further after attesting to the stability in the county’s coronavirus rates and hospital capacity.

This approval to reopen grants Los Angeles County residents to begin dining in restaurants and shopping in retails stores.

It also requires some modifications including face coverings, physical distancing and increased sanitization.

There has been almost 50,000 coronavirus cases in Los Angeles County, and more than 2,200 deaths due to the virus, according to the California Department of Public Health.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was "never blind" to the early spread of coronavirus in the United States, the agency's director Dr. Robert Redfield said during a phone call with reporters on Friday.

Redfield defended the CDC’s surveillance for coronavirus.

"The reality is the surveillance systems that CDC had developed over the years for respiratory viral diseases, particularly the influenza-like illness, really did give us eyes on this disease as it began to emerge," Redfield said. "Independent of testing, we had pretty good eyes on whether there was any new respiratory influenza-like illness occurring in our country."

Redfield was discussing a new CDC report that shows the virus was already spreading some in January and early February in Washington state and other Pacific northwest areas, much earlier than when the first case of community spread was confirmed in the United States in late February.

The CDC previously has been criticized for its slow response to the coronavirus outbreak.

The new research, published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on Friday, suggests that there was some community transmission of the novel coronavirus in the United States between the latter half of January and the beginning of February – as researchers had previously thought – and the virus likely was introduced from China.

New Jersey is creating a short-term rental assistance program for low and moderate income families, Gov. Murphy announced on Friday.

The state will be applying at least $100 million to the program, which is aimed at helping families financially impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic keep their homes. 

The latest numbers: The state reported at least 1,117 new cases of Covid-19 on Friday, bringing the statewide total to approximately 158,844 cases. The daily positivity rate continued at 6%. 

The state reported an additional 131 coronavirus deaths, bringing the total to at least 11,531. 

Of the total cases reported, at least 32,097 have been in long-term care facilities, the governor noted, and there have been approximately 5,009 deaths in long-term care facilities to date. 

No new cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) in children were reported on Friday –– the total number of cases in the state remains at 26 and no children have died from the disease.

New York Gov. Cuomo said today that five New York regions are cleared to move to phase two of reopening based on the data the state has been seeing.

Reopening in New York City is more complicated, he said, but the city is on "track to meet all the metrics" and enter phase one of reopening on June 8.

Here are the metrics that the city needs to focus on, according to Cuomo: