Donald Trump extends social distancing guidelines until April 30, says peak US death rate likely in two weeks

Trump announced that the White House Task Force “Slow the Spread” guidelines of social distancing would be extended to April 30. He also had another testy exchange with reporter Yamiche Alcindor. Read the full transcript of the news briefing here. Tremendous distance between chairs, social distancing. You practice it very well. We appreciate it. That’s great. I want to start today by highlighting several critical developments on both the testing and treatment that will help us win our war against the coronavirus. On Friday, the FDA authorized a new test developed by Abbott Labs that delivers lightening fast results in as little as five minutes, and it’s a whole new ballgame. I want to thank Abbott Labs for the incredible work they’ve done. They’ve been working around the clock. Normally this approval process from the FDA would take 10 months and even longer, but we did it in four weeks. Abbott has stated that they will begin delivering 50,000 tests each day starting this weekend. As you know, even before this development, we’ve been doing more tests than any other country anywhere in the world.