Confirmed cases of Covid-19 pass 3m worldwide – as it happened

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28 Apr 202019.05 EDT

Eleanor de Jong

New Zealand has ended its strictest lockdown phase and entered Level 3, with 400,000 Kiwis returning to work, takeaways open, and fishing, surfing and swimming permitted.

Local media reported lines outside McDonald’s drive-through from 3am on Tuesday morning, and by 10am the food app Regulr – which many local cafes and restaurants are using to allow pick-ups – had crashed nationwide.

Fast-food chains such as Dominos and Hells Pizza have warned customers to expect signficant delays as demand surges, and hired hundreds of extra employees to cope with the rush, and deliver food.

NZ Domino’s general manager Cameron Toomey said “zero contact delivery”, more frequent hygiene and sanitisation practices, and physical distancing and temperature testing were now underway in all their stores, and essential workers would have priorities for pizza.

In that press conference Trump also said that he believed China “could have stopped” the coronavirus and that the US would conduct “serious investigations” into the outbreak.

As Reuters report, Trump said: “We are doing very serious investigations ... We are not happy with China.

“We believe it could have been stopped at the source. It could have been stopped quickly and it wouldn’t have spread all over the world.”

Earlier, the director-general of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the “world should have listened” to the WHO.

He said the agency sounded the highest level of alarm over the novel coronavirus early on, but that not all countries heeded its advice.

Trump’s briefing has now ended.

27 Apr 202018.36 EDT

Julia Carrie Wong

Trump was asked whether he has any information about Kim Jong Un’s health, which has been the subject of rumors and speculation in recent days.

He says: “I can’t tell you exactly. Yes, I do have a very good idea but I can’t talk about it now.”

27 Apr 202018.28 EDT

Julia Carrie Wong

Vice President Mike Pence appears to be arguing that the administration actually met its goals because millions of test kits were distributed, even though they were not given and processed. That is quite an argument.

27 Apr 202018.25 EDT

Julia Carrie Wong

We’re hearing a lot about very large numbers of tests that will be done during the month of May. But it’s worth remembering that we have heard big promises in the past about testing, such as the big promises of drive-through testing run by Google, that have yet to materialize.

27 Apr 202018.18 EDT

Julia Carrie Wong

Asked if he takes any responsibility for reports of people ingesting disinfectant after his own remarks, Trump says: “No, I don’t.”

We’ve moved on to questions from the press. A reporter asks why HHS secretary Alex Azar hasn’t been fired.

Trump says it’s an unfair question and attacks Democratic politicians.

Trump has previously denied reports he planned to fire Azar.

27 Apr 202018.13 EDT

Julia Carrie Wong

Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for health at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is now discussing an eight-part plan for testing. Apparently we are on step eight.

27 Apr 202018.11 EDT

Julia Carrie Wong

We also heard from Krogers, Walmart and Rite-Aid. Now we’re back to the president. Trump spoke again about testing, and has introduced the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, Dr Deborah Birx, to discuss a “blueprint” for states to expand testing.

27 Apr 202018.09 EDT

Julia Carrie Wong

The chief executive of CVS Health just announced that the pharmacy chain will expand testing to 1,000 CVS facilities in May. For context, there are nearly 10,000 CVS locations across the US, so this means that approximately one out of 10 CVS locations will have testing capacity by next month.

Next is the Walgreens boss, who says they will triple testing capacity, but does not provide hard numbers.