But Baker’s cautious composure cracked when asked about the Bay State’s death toll from the contagion, which now numbers more than 1,100.

“My best friend lost his mom to covid,” Baker revealed.

Then the governor paused for 10 full seconds, searching for the right words.

“He and his mom had a great relationship,” Baker continued. “And because they had a great relationship, they never left anything unsaid. You just knew that about the two of them. … When you talk about where the numbers are going on this, what I’m really thinking about is all those people who aren’t going to have a chance to say goodbye.”

Choking up, Baker explained from the State House on Beacon Hill that “one of the more brutal consequences, just psychologically,” of his stay-at-home order is that funerals cannot take place for people like his best friend’s mom. He spoke about the importance of the “critical ritual.” Then he disclosed that he has started to open up more with his own father.

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“My wife gives me a hard time all the time about the fact that Baker men never really say what they think about anything to anybody when it comes to personal things,” the governor said. “Even on these goofy phone calls I have with my dad, I try to say more because you just don’t know anymore what the future is going to hold.”

Baker encouraged others to do the same. “I really hope people have a chance to make sure that they don’t leave anything off the table with respect to their loved ones,” he added.

These comments offered a timely reminder that politicians are people too. Like most human beings, they tend to be moved more by stories than statistics. President Trump also seemed truly affected on a personal level, for example, by the death of his friend Stanley Chera, a New York real estate mogul whose condition deteriorated rapidly after being diagnosed with the coronavirus. “He’s sort of central casting for what we’re talking about, and it hit him very hard,” Trump said at his daily briefing on March 31. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

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Massachusetts, with about 30,000 confirmed cases, has the sixth-highest number of deaths per capita from the coronavirus, behind New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Louisiana and Michigan. Baker’s spokeswoman said she does not know the name of the friend the governor was referring to or the identity of his mother.

“Those numbers, to me, are about lost opportunities and the significance and the importance of loved ones putting it all out there and making sure they don’t leave anything unsaid,” Baker said.

For many people, apparently including the governor of Massachusetts, this pandemic has put in particularly stark relief what matters most in life. It’s people. It’s relationships. It’s about sticking close with the ones we love, even if the closest we can get right now is a phone call or a letter. It’s about squeezing a loved one’s hand tightly when, or if, you get the chance.

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The faces of the fallen offer reminders of our own mortality. There’s no better time than the present to do everything we can to right the wrongs of the past. Or, as Baker put it, to leave nothing unsaid.

Governors confront a political furor as they plot a cautious course for reopening.

“The multistate reopening task forces being created by governors on both coasts will probably take weeks to develop as officials tackle issues ranging from how to identify and isolate those sick with the novel coronavirus to how best to keep people from crossing state lines in search of open bars and restaurants,” Tim Craig, Scott Wilson and Shayna Jacobs report. “The two groups were created this week, one by governors of seven Northeast states [including Baker] and the other by West Coast leaders … The tension is playing out most prominently in Pennsylvania, where Gov. Tom Wolf (D) has joined with neighboring states to study how best to restart the economy. … Republicans in the Pennsylvania legislature are already trying to claw back Wolf’s emergency powers by pushing through a bill that would allow some businesses to reopen.” Trump has a conference call scheduled with the governors for 3 p.m. Eastern.

The Labor Department said 5.2 million people filed for unemployment last week.

More than 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment since Trump declared a national emergency four weeks ago. “The United States has not seen this level of job loss since the Great Depression,” Heather Long reports. “The eye-popping job losses in the past month have erased virtually all of the 22.8 million jobs gained from February 2010 to February 2020 during the rebound from the Great Recession. … The U.S. unemployment rate is already over 20 percent, according to two professors who are tracking the data in real time. It is expected remain close to 10 percent through the end of the year, meaning 1 in 10 people would still be out of work at the holidays, the National Association for Business Economics says. …

“Several key swing states for the upcoming presidential election are among those hit hardest as layoffs in manufacturing and hospitality mount. In Michigan, 21 percent of workers have applied for unemployment in the past month. Pennsylvania and Nevada and Ohio have close to 20 percent of workers out of a job, and Ohio is near 15 percent. The worst state of all is Hawaii with nearly 22 percent out of work since the tourism industry has been devastated.”

Governors face restive protests over restrictions on freedom of movement.

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Thousands of drivers clogged the streets of Lansing, Mich., to demand Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) ease restrictions and allow them to go back to work. They waved flags from the windows — Trump flags, American flags and the occasional Confederate flag – and wore MAGA hats, Meagan Flynn reports. “But in the massive demonstration against Whitmer’s stay-at-home executive order — which they have argued is excessive — the pleas from organizers that protesters to stay in their vehicles went unheeded. Many got out of their cars and crashed the front lawn of the capitol building, with some chanting, ‘Lock her up!’ and ‘We will not comply!’”

Protesters in Kentucky interrupted Gov. Andy Beshear (D) during a televised update on the virus, demanding he reopen the state. The demonstrators, some standing less than six feet apart, chanted "we want to work" and "facts over fear." ( Courier Journal

People have also protested against stay-at-home orders in Ohio, Utah, North Carolina and Virginia. ( USA Today

What other governors are doing from coast to coast:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said he will issue an executive order, effective Friday, requiring New Yorkers to cover their faces in public, as the city’s official death toll hit 11,586. That number, however, does not include the more than 3,000 people in New York City who died without having tested positive but who city officials now consider probable victims. ( New York Times

The shutdown of nonessential businesses will extend until May 15 in the District of Columbia and May 8 in Virginia. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), who already had renewed his business ban for 30 more days until May 10, also ordered residents on Wednesday to wear masks when they go to stores. ( Gregory Schneider, Fenit Nirappil and Ovetta Wiggins

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) created a $125 million fund for undocumented residents who are ineligible for federal benefits. Undocumented immigrants comprise 10 percent of the state’s workforce. ( Scott Wilson and Meryl Kornfield

Tyson Foods closed one of the country’s largest pork-processing plants in Iowa after two employees died and dozens more workers contracted the virus, but Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) – who has resisted imposing a stay-at-home order – said the facility could reopen as early as next week as its 1,400 workers are tested. ( Teo Armus

The fight against the virus

Experts say the chaotic search for treatments undermines chance of success.

“In a desperate bid to find treatments for people sickened by the coronavirus, doctors and drug companies have launched more than 100 human experiments in the United States, investigating experimental drugs, a decades-old malaria medicine and cutting-edge therapies that have worked for other conditions such as HIV and rheumatoid arthritis,” Carolyn Johnson reports. “Development of effective treatments for covid-19 … would be one of the most significant milestones in returning the United States to normalcy. But the massive effort is disorganized and scattershot, harming its prospects for success, according to multiple researchers and health experts. Researchers working around-the-clock describe a lack of a centralized national strategy, overlapping efforts, an array of small-scale trials that will not lead to definitive answers and no standards for how to prioritize efforts, what data to collect or how to share it to get to answers faster. …

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“Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s largest biomedical research agency, acknowledged researchers’ frustrations but said in an interview Wednesday he has been working behind the scenes to launch an unprecedented public-private partnership to address the problems. He said the framework involves top pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, domestic and international government agencies including the European Medicines Agency, and academic research centers. Collins said the month-long discussions have been kept under wraps to ensure buy-in for an approach likely to require sacrifices of personal recognition, scientific credit and profit — a centralized decision, for example, not to proceed with tests of one company’s drug in order to move faster on a competitor’s. Agency officials said further details would be released in coming days.”

Coronavirus doesn’t just destroy lungs. It also damages kidneys and hearts.

“The new coronavirus kills by inflaming and clogging the tiny air sacs in the lungs, choking off the body’s oxygen supply until it shuts down the organs essential for life. But clinicians around the world are seeing evidence that suggests the virus also may be causing heart inflammation, acute kidney disease, neurological malfunction, blood clots, intestinal damage and liver problems. That development has complicated the treatment of the most severe cases,” Lenny Bernstein, Johnson, Sarah Kaplan and Laurie McGinley report. “The prevalence of these effects is too great to attribute them solely to the ‘cytokine storm,’ a powerful immune-system response that attacks the body, causing severe damage, doctors and researchers said. Almost half the people hospitalized because of covid-19 have blood or protein in their urine, indicating early damage to their kidneys … Everyone interviewed for this story stressed that with the pandemic still raging, they are speculating with much less data than is normally needed to reach solid clinical conclusions.”

The recovered share what it’s like to be on the other side.

“The first nine days were bearable. Mild cough, scratchy throat, lower-back pain. Jill Baren, a triathlete [and president of the American Board of Emergency Medicine], ascribed the last symptom to overdoing exercise. The next eight days? Horrific. Severe fevers, chest pain, cramps, fatigue, diarrhea and dehydration that sent her to the hospital,” Karen Heller reports. “Last week, fully recovered, Baren returned to caring for patients. ‘It feels empowering to have been through this,’ she says. ‘I’m in a position to help in a way that other people are not. I don’t have to live in dire fear if a droplet goes through my protective clothing.’ … Baren is among the almost 44,000 people in the United States who have survived covid-19 … How does it feel to be among them? To be alive on the other side of the pandemic, the crush of anxiety? Lucky. Lucky and weepy and invincible and relieved and tired and motivated and perplexed and altered."

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Moderate levels of exercise benefit the immune system, but going beyond that could weaken it. So don’t overdo it. ( Amanda Loudin

Madhvi Aya worked long hours in a Brooklyn ER until the virus took her. Her final texts are haunting.

“She had been a doctor in India, then trained to become a physician assistant after she immigrated to the United States,” the Times reports. “Ms. Aya, 61, was alone in a hospital, less than two miles from her husband and 18-year-old daughter on Long Island, who could not visit her. … In a text with her family, she described horrible chest pain from trying to get out of bed. ‘I have not improved the way should have been,’ she wrote her husband, Raj, on March 23. As she grew sicker, her texts came less frequently and in short, sporadic bursts. ‘I miss you mommy,’ her daughter, Minnoli, wrote … ‘Love you,’ Ms. Aya wrote the next day. ‘Mom be back.’ Ms. Aya could not keep that promise.”

Mary Agyeiwaa Agyapong, a 28-year-old pregnant nurse who contracted the coronavirus died in a British hospital, but her daughter was delivered safely through a C-section. ( Siobhán O’Grady

Evelyn Caro, a 69-year-old nurse in Maryland, died as her son, also a nurse, stood by her. ( Baltimore Sun

After an anonymous tip, 17 bodies were found piled inside a New Jersey nursing home hit by the virus. The 17 were among 68 recent deaths linked to the long-term care facility, Andover Subacute and Rehabilitation Center, including two nurses, per the Times.

About 3,000 New York City public hospital workers are out sick, with 924 testing positive. ( New York Post

“Saturday Night Live” writer Michael Che is paying one month’s rent for 160 public housing residents living in the New York housing complex where his Grandma Martha once lived. Martha recently died from the virus. ( Katie Shepherd

Robert Cardona, a New York Police Department detective who beat Sept. 11-related cancer, died from the virus at 41. He’s the fifth NYPD detective to succumb. ( Daily News

Clida Cora Martinez Ellison, the mother of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), died from complications of covid-19 on March 26. She was 82. ( Star Tribune

Abdul and Tazroon Wahab, both in their 70s, moved from New York to Texas in January so they could live with their daughter. The virus took them both. ( ABC13

Thom Carr, a classical pianist and real estate agent, died at 67 in Florida. He's one of at least three people who died after attending the annual Winter Party Festival in Miami last month. ( Local 10

The federal response

Trump’s attempt to enlist business in his push to reopen the economy got off to a rocky start.

Some business leaders complained the effort was haphazard and warned that more testing needs to be in place before restrictions are lifted. “The president spent much of his day hosting conference calls with company executives, industry groups and others that he announced Tuesday as part of a hastily formed outside advisory council devoted to the issue," Robert Costa, Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Felicia Sonmez report. "But across the business world, there was private unhappiness with how the White House handled the announcement of the advisory council — which it has dubbed its ‘Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups’ — and others warned that Trump’s goal of a May 1 reopening date for much of the country was unrealistic. Many of the chief executives urged the White House to focus more on mass testing, according to several participants on the calls.

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“Some of the groups involved in the calls were notified in advance of Trump’s announcement, while others heard their names for the first time during the Rose Garden event Tuesday night. ‘We got a note about a conference call, like you’d get an invite to a Zoom thing, a few lines in an email, and that was it. Then our CEO heard his name in the Rose Garden? What the [expletive]?’ said one prominent Washington lobbyist for a leading global corporation… ‘My company is furious. How do you go from ‘Join us on a call’ to, ‘Well, you’re on our team?’’ … Participants in the calls … painted a picture of a chaotic approach by the White House.”

The Navy may reinstate Capt. Brett Crozier, who was removed from command of the USS Theodore Roosevelt after drawing attention to the military's slipshod response to the outbreak on his ship. ( NYT

More than 400 TSA officers have tested positive, and three have died. ( USA Today

Snubbing Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, the White House installed Trump loyalist and campaign veteran Michael Caputo into the top communications post at the department. ( Politico

The Justice Department’s internal watchdog will conduct “remote” inspections of federal prisons to assess their response to the coronavirus. ( Matt Zapotosky

The NFL has discussed playing in empty or half-full stadiums. Trump held a second conference call in two weeks with the commissioners of the country’s biggest sports leagues, which included several NFL team owners. ( Mark Maske and Dave Sheinin

Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious disease expert, said baseball could probably start this summer without spectators. ( Vanity Fair

Trump threatened to adjourn Congress so he can make recess appointments.

“The president cited a never-exercised constitutional power to shut down Congress if the House and Senate are in disagreement over adjourning, pushing both the executive and legislative branches into uncharted territory,” Colby Itkowitz and Mike DeBonis report. “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) spoke to Trump on Wednesday, but signaled that he wasn’t on board with the president’s plan. Any attempt to formally adjourn the Senate would require all 100 senators traveling back to Washington for such a vote — which McConnell and Senate leaders have deemed an unsafe move at this point. … Last year, McConnell deployed a controversial procedural maneuver to speed up consideration of judicial nominees. That has meant some nominees to sub-Cabinet posts, commissions and other posts have languished. With the Senate now adjourned indefinitely due to the coronavirus, all those nominations remain stalled. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee who taught constitutional law, said in an interview that Trump’s idea of ‘dissolving an assembly comes out of a dictator’s handbook. That’s banana republic stuff.’"

Quote of the day

“We have the right to do whatever we want,” Trump said at last night's news conference, threatening to take “very strong action” against governors who don’t fall in line with the reopening guidelines he plans to issue later today. On Monday, Trump claimed falsely he had “total” authority over the decision to reopen the country and could overrule governors.

The Trump administration is paying premium prices to sketchy third-party vendors for N95 masks.

“The government has paid the companies more than $5 per unit, nearly eight times what it would have spent in January and February when U.S. intelligence agencies warned of a looming global pandemic,” Isaac Stanley-Becker, Desmond Butler and Nick Miroff report. “FEMA awarded a $55 million contract for N95s this month to Panthera Worldwide LLC, which is in the business of tactical training. One of its owners said last year that Panthera’s parent company had not had any employees since May 2018, according to sworn testimony. It also has no history of manufacturing or procuring medical equipment, according to a review of records produced as a result of legal disputes involving the company and its affiliates. Panthera Worldwide’s parent company filed for bankruptcy last fall, and the LLC is no longer recognized in Virginia — where it has its main office … James V. Punelli, one of the company’s executives, said he is working his military contacts to obtain the masks. … The FEMA contract with Panthera, which was awarded without competitive bidding, has a start date of April 1.” The government is paying Panthera significantly higher prices than it pays companies such as 3M, which charges as little as 63 cents per N95 mask.

The White House raced to secure masks for senior staff, even as officials discouraged the public from wearing them.

“In mid-March, a National Security Council team rushed to address what they saw as a threat to the U.S. government’s ability to function amid the advancing pandemic: a lack of masks to protect enough staff on the White House complex,” Carol Leonnig, Elizabeth Dwoskin and John Hudson report. “Alarmed by the small cache and the growing signs of an acute shortage of protective gear in the United States, a senior NSC official turned to a foreign government for help … The effort resulted in a donation of hundreds of thousands of surgical masks from Taiwan, which had plentiful domestic production and had sharply curtailed the spread of the coronavirus on the island. The bulk of Taiwan’s goodwill shipment went to the Strategic National Stockpile, but 3,600 masks were set aside for White House staff and officials, administration officials said.”

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Ivanka Trump disregarded federal guidelines to travel to New Jersey for Passover. The president’s daughter and adviser, along with husband Jared Kushner and their three children, left D.C. for the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey even as she publicly thanked people for self-quarantining, the New York Times reports. Kushner has since returned to D.C. while the president's eldest daughter remains at Bedminster with her children.

Trump denied two weeks ago he wanted to put his name on stimulus checks, but he did.

“Trump, who was reportedly musing about placing his signature on the checks as early as late March, defended the unprecedented move Wednesday,” Toluse Olorunnipa and Lisa Rein report. “'I’m sure people will be very happy to get a big, fat, beautiful check and my name is on it.’ … The plan has been closely held within the IRS, and Commissioner Charles Rettig has not discussed it on his daily calls with his top executives, senior agency officials said. When the decision came down from the Treasury Department late Monday that the first batch of paper checks would include ‘Donald J. Trump’ on the memo line, it was announced to just five senior IRS officials. …The IRS and the Treasury Department said the last-minute change would not delay the payments.”

A note from history: In 1977, New Jersey Gov. Brendan Byrne (D) mailed out property tax rebate checks as he faced a tough reelection race. Along with the money, he sent a signed note. He got reelected with 55 percent. ( Star-Ledger

Trump said last month he wanted a daily radio show to take calls on the virus, but changed his mind because he did not want to compete with Rush Limbaugh. ( NYT

Trump’s move against the World Health Organization is the latest twist in his approach to China.

“Critics contend that the White House is employing a cynical strategy… to deflect culpability over Trump’s own mishandling of the U.S. response to the [virus] and create another foil to rally his conservative base ahead of the 2020 presidential election. A fundraising message to supporters Tuesday, sent hours after the president announced the withholding of funds from the WHO, asks for contributions to ‘hold China accountable,’” David Nakamura, Anne Gearan and Josh Dawsey report. “Trump’s allies argued that the move against the WHO is consistent with the administration’s immediate goals of countering Chinese propaganda over the origins and spread of the virus and with its longer-term campaign to contest Beijing’s rising influence at the WHO, a U.N. agency, and other global bodies. ‘This is covid-19, not covid-1 folks. And so, you would think the people charged with the World Health Organization facts and figures would be on top of that,’ White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said on Fox News on Wednesday, as she criticized the WHO’s response.” (The disease is named covid-19 because it was first detected in 2019, not because of the number of previous outbreaks.)

Congressional Democrats said defunding the WHO is illegal. “This decision is dangerous, illegal and will be swiftly challenged,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi. A senior Democratic aide said in response to the president’s move, “We are reviewing all of our options, including asking GAO for an opinion, given their opinion that the President’s hold on Ukraine funding was illegal.” “This is sort of like shooting at an ambulance because you don’t like how quickly they responded to the first call, when you’ve still got lots of wounded,” said Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.), adding that it’s worth pressing for greater transparency, balance and timeliness in the WHO’s response – just not in the middle of the pandemic. (Erica Werner)

The WHO said it is reviewing the impact of the freeze. Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declined to reveal the exact amount of U.S. funding to his group and how large the agency’s shortfall will be without U.S. money. (Miriam Berger and Michael Brice-Saddler)

The U.S. government is exploring the possibility the virus accidentally started in a Chinese lab, not a market.

“The theory is one of multiple being pursued by investigators as they attempt to determine the origin of the coronavirus that has resulted in a pandemic and killed hundreds of thousands. The US does not believe the virus was associated with bioweapons research, and officials noted that the intelligence community is also exploring a range of other theories regarding the origination of the virus, as would typically be the case for high-profile incidents,” CNN reports. “An intelligence official familiar with the government analysis said a theory US intelligence officials are investigating is that the virus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and was accidentally released to the public. Other sources told CNN that US intelligence hasn't been able to corroborate the theory but is trying to discern whether someone was infected in the lab through an accident or poor handling of materials and may have then infected others.” (Adam Taylor casts doubt on such theories.)

The government’s emergency loan program for small businesses is running weeks behind.

“The Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, or EIDL, a long-standing program run by the Small Business Administration (SBA), is separate from the $349 billion Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses,” Aaron Gregg, Jeanne Whalen and Erica Werner report. “The EIDL program received extra resources from Congress’s $2 trillion coronavirus rescue package … including $10 billion to offer grants of up to $10,000 to small businesses within three days of applying for a loan. The grants are intended to serve as a bridge for small businesses to cover rent and other expenses while they wait for the larger loans to be approved. Demand for the EIDL loans and grants quickly overwhelmed the system, leaving many applicants without funds weeks later.”

Lawmakers are negotiating an extension of the $349 billion Paycheck Protection Program the administration says is about to run out of money. It is unclear how much of the funds have actually been distributed. ( AP

The Trump Organization has laid off or furloughed more than 2,500 people, including 800 at Trump’s hotel in D.C. and the Trump National Doral resort in Florida, his two top revenue-generating properties. ( Joshua Partlow

The foreign fallout

At an Indian station with no trains, locked-down travelers wait weeks with no way out.

“The main train station in the north Indian city of Varanasi is a sprawling building that has witnessed its share of delays over more than a century of rail travel. Sometimes the waits are long, and sometimes they are pleasantly short. But it has never seen anything like this. Inside a high-ceilinged room, a group of travelers from across India has waited in vain for more than three weeks for trains that never come,” Joanna Slater and Tania Dutta report. “They are parents and children, construction workers, managers, pilgrims, students, a lawyer and a marketing professional. They have one thing in common: They were all stranded hundreds of miles from home when India abruptly suspended its passenger trains, which carry 23 million people a day, then imposed a strict nationwide lockdown … Ever since, the passengers have spent their days confined to a waiting room in a state of uncertainty worthy of an existentialist play, unable to continue their journeys and forbidden from leaving the station.”

Seventy-two families in South Delhi have been ordered by the government to self-quarantine after a pizza delivery boy tested positive. ( Allyson Chiu

Singapore is struggling to combat a surge, reporting 447 new cases, their highest single-day increase yet. ( Chiu

Nearly 700 sailors aboard a French aircraft carrier have been infected with the virus. ( Reuters

Guatemala has started testing all deportees arriving on flights from the United States, a day after the health minister said 50 percent to 75 percent of the 41 passengers aboard a repatriation flight were infected. The country has 175 reported cases, with five deaths. ( AP

Qatar stands accused of rounding up and deporting dozens of migrant workers after telling them they were being taken to be tested for the virus. ( Liz Sly

The United Arab Emirate’s “Happiness and Positivity Council” announced that police will begin wearing high-tech smart helmet that authorities say can read the temperature of people in different climate conditions. The helmets also has night vision and facial recognition cameras that can process car license plates. ( Paul Schemm

South Korea’s ruling party won parliamentary elections in a landslide, largely because of its handling of the outbreak.

“President Moon Jae-in’s Democratic Party, together with a small satellite party, won 180 seats in the 300-seat national assembly, the biggest majority any party has won since the country’s transition to democracy in 1987,” Min Joo Kim and Simon Denyer report. “Turnout was 66.2 percent, the highest in a general election since 1992, as the government surmounted the logistical challenges of holding an election during a pandemic, and the electorate determined not to let the virus prevent them casting their ballots. Many people had cast their ballots last week during two days of early voting, which helped reduce the crowds on the official election day. Park Sang-chul, a professor of politics at Kyonggi University, said the coronavirus turned out to be a political blessing for Moon and his party. ‘The sluggish economy and corruption scandals that have been bogging down the Moon government were dramatically overshadowed by its effective management of the coronavirus crisis,’ he said. ‘The virus is a life-or-death matter.’”

Other countries are tentatively easing restrictions.

Haiti will reopen its key textile industry next week, a promising sign the virus may have largely spared the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. ( Teo Armus

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will allow businesses to reopen so long as there are no “face-to-face transactions." Restrictions will also continue to be imposed on weddings and funerals. ( Chiu

Germany laid out the first steps for lifting restrictions, with some nonessential stores to open next week and schools to start again next month. Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany has achieved “fragile, intermediate success” but maintained reopening requires “extreme caution.” ( Loveday Morris and Luisa Beck

British Health Minister Nadine Dorries said the country will not “exit” a full lockdown until a vaccine is available — stunning many and forcing the government to clarify her comments. When asked if the comments were “accurate and helpful," Health Secretary Matt Hancock stressed it was too early to consider lifting the current measures and said the “key word” to take from Dorries’ tweet was “full.” ( Jennifer Hassan

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega appeared on live television yesterday after a mysterious, five-week absence to defend his government’s strategy to continue economic activity despite the pandemic. The 74-year-old Sandinista leader gave no reason for his disappearance, which fueled rumors he was ill or even dead. He said Nicaragua had the fewest number of cases in Central America – nine cases have been confirmed, a number questioned by independent doctors. ( Ismael Lopez Ocampo and Mary Beth Sheridan

Social media speed read

CNN’s Chris Cuomo, who remains quarantined in his basement, said his wife, Cristina, has now tested positive for the coronavirus:

The top spokesman for Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) shared a picture of his wife:

Hillary Clinton defended the World Health Organization:

And former Kansas senator Bob Dole (R) shared an inspiring message of hope:

Videos of the day

New Orleans residents are falling into deep despair as the economy collapses. Thousands have no way to make a living after tourism has stopped, and the state is receiving more than 10,000 unemployment claims per day:

Stephen Colbert likened Trump’s decision to block WHO funding to a man burning down the fire department when his house catches on fire:

Seth Meyers fears Trump is repeating his earlier coronavirus failures in his desperation to reopen the economy: