News Information and Media Site: Friday Morning Briefing: What you need to know about the coronavirus

Coronavirus

The spread: 100,000 deaths

In all likelihood the COVID-19 illness associated with the new coronavirus will claim its 100,000th death during the next 24 hours. From the report of the first fatality in early January, it took a month to record 1,000 deaths and a further month to hit the 10,000-mark. That was just three weeks ago.
The death toll now compares with that of London's Great Plague in the mid-1660s, which killed an estimated 100,000 people, about a third of the city’s population at the time.

But it is still far short of the so-called Spanish flu, which began in 1918 and is estimated to have killed more than 20 million people by the time it ended in 1920.

A very European compromise

Europe's finance ministers put the phone down on each other last night having achieved a compromise agreement on half-a-trillion euros worth of support for their coronavirus-battered economies - but left open the question of how to finance recovery in the bloc headed for a steep recession.

The controversy over whether - as countries in southern Europe had sought - members of the eurozone could issue joint debt has also been left till another day.

Relax? Don't

U.S. state and public health officials are doubling down on their message that Americans must resist the impulse to ease social separation measures at the first glimpse of progress now being seen in the coronavirus battle.

Calls for heightened vigilance, countering talk from the Trump administration of reopening the economy next month, came as new evidence emerged that stay-at-home restrictions were working to flatten the arc of infections in New York state, the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic.

Virtual Easter

This Easter weekend, chocolate makers of the world will miss out on what is one of their biggest sales opportunities of the year.

With big family gatherings off limits, friends and relatives are unable to meet and hand over Easter egg treats, and chocolate makers' online sites are struggling to keep up with demand for deliveries.

Easter eggs are on sale in shops but those customers who do venture out have been focused more on stocking up on basics such as pasta and tinned food.

Track the coronavirus spread with our interactive graphic and curated coverage

Sign of the times: Mile-long line of cars outside California grocery giveaway
A pop-up food pantry in Southern California drew so many people that the line of cars waiting for free groceries stretched about a mile, a haunting sign of how the coronavirus pandemic has hurt the working poor.

Italy planning to extend coronavirus lockdown until May 3: union sources
The lockdown, closing most Italian businesses and preventing people leaving their homes for all but essential needs, has been in place since March 9 and was due to end on April 13.

Brazil lockdowns, attacked by Bolsonaro, begin to slip
Lockdowns in Brazil’s largest cities to slow the coronavirus outbreak are beginning to slip, according to new data this week seen and analyzed by Reuters, with more people leaving their homes as President Jair Bolsonaro continues to criticize the measures.

Reuters reporters and editors around the world are investigating the response to the coronavirus pandemic.

We need your help to tell these stories. Our news organization wants to capture the full scope of what’s happening and how we got here by drawing on a wide variety of sources. Here’s a look at our coverage.

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World

On a sombre and quiet Good Friday in Jerusalem, the Vatican’s apostolic administrator in the Holy Land called for prayer for people suffering and dying from the coronavirus. “We are celebrating Good Friday, the commemoration of the death of Jesus, under very difficult circumstances,” Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa said outside Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson was resting in hospital as he recovered from COVID-19 while Britons were told to avoid the temptation of spring sunshine during the Easter break with the coronavirus outbreak approaching a peak. The flamboyant 55-year-old leader’s visible decline shook the nation, but he came out of three nights of intensive care at St Thomas’ Hospital after going in with a high temperature and cough.

Before and After: life is slowly re-emerging in Wuhan. Tentative signs of normal life are returning to the Chinese city where the coronavirus epidemic was first documented, after a 76-day lockdown that turned it into a virtual ghost town. Authorities in the city of 11 million on Wednesday lifted the draconian curbs they put in place in January.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden proposed expanding access to Medicare and forgiving some student debt in new overtures to supporters of onetime rival Bernie Sanders. Biden, who became Democrats’ presumptive nominee when Sanders ended his campaign on Wednesday, is working to close ranks as his party prepares a campaign to unseat Republican President Trump.

Business

Airbus shelves plan to add new A321 assembly line

Airbus has shelved plans to create a new assembly line in Toulouse, France, for its A321 airliner as the company wrestles with the coronavirus crisis. Airbus announced plans for the line in January when its problem was how to meet record demand for the jet from its site in Hamburg, Germany.

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