American retail sales fell 8.7 percent in March, the largest drop on record.

Leaders around the world criticized the Trump administration’s decision to halt U.S. funding for the World Health Organization.

Relief payments under the $2 trillion stimulus package have started showing up in Americans’ bank accounts.

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Testing is the key

Have we slowed the spread of the coronavirus? Are we past the peak? When can we safely ease restrictions? How can we head off a second wave of infections?

The answers all depend on swift, accurate, widespread and readily available testing, both for active infections and for the antibodies they leave behind. Without it, officials trying to grapple with the pandemic are flying blind.

But a severe lack of testing capacity has emerged as a signature failure of the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic, and now threatens to hamper efforts to tamp down the outbreak and to reopen the economy.

Senate Democrats proposed on Wednesday that $30 billion be included in the next stimulus package for a national program to greatly expand testing and tracing of Covid-19 infections. “Each state can’t have its own separate plan,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York said. “We need a national plan.”