Trump fuels China lab theory, Big Tech earnings hit

Jobless claims have surpassed 30 million over the past six weeks, with Florida now topping California as the state with the most weekly unemployment claims, according to data released Thursday. With unemployment skyrocketing, companies are pushing to return to business. Macy’s is planning to open the doors to all of its stores over the next six weeks, while Ford aims to bring back office workers in June. Read on for more news on how companies are responding to the fast-evolving public health crisis. 

This is CNBC’s live blog covering all the latest news on the coronavirus outbreak. All times below are in Eastern time. This blog will be updated throughout the day as the news breaks. 

• Global cases: More than 3.2 million
• Global deaths: At least 232,817
• US cases: More than 1 million
• US deaths: At least 62,860

The data above was compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Large companies that received money from the small business loan program are not to blame, according to former TARP watchdog Neil Barofsky.

“You have to go back to the design of the program itself,” Barofsky told CNBC. 

“I mean, Congress went out of its way to carve out businesses that have more than 500 employees but are restaurants, chain restaurants,” he said on “Closing Bell.” “They wanted the money to go to chain restaurants.” 

Barofsky, an attorney, previously served as the inspector general for the controversial Troubled Asset Relief Program, which Congress passed to stabilize the financial system amid the 2008 crisis. 

Publicly traded companies such as Shake Shack, Potbelly and Ruth’s Hospitality Group all received loans through the Paycheck Protection Program but have since announced they were returning the money. 

“They participated because they qualified and then there’s this tremendous political backlash,” Barofsky said, specifically referencing Shake Shack as an example. —Kevin Stankiewicz

President Donald Trump said — without offering any evidence — that he has reason to believe that the coronavirus outbreak originated from a laboratory in China.

“I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that,” Trump said when asked what evidence he has seen to make him believe the virus emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

Trump initially was asked by a reporter at a White House event on Thursday about the origins of the virus, and answered, “You have heard all different things. Three or four different concepts as to how it came out.”

“We should have the answer to that in the not-so-distant future and that will determine a lot how I feel about China,” the president said.

But he later was asked by a reporter if he had “seen anything that gives you a high degree of confidence, at this point, that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of this virus?”

Trump replied, “Yes, I have,” and then repeated that assertion. —Dan Mangan

Delta Air Lines on Thursday became the latest airline to require travelers wear masks on board their planes as carriers take steps to try to protect the health of passengers and crew.

Delta’s policy requires travelers to wear a mask or other face covering in the check-in area, premium lounges, boarding gate areas and on board for the whole flight, except during meals. The airline is also urging travelers to wear them on security lines and in restrooms. The policy takes effect May. 4.

Frontier Airlines issued a similar requirement that goes into effect May 8.

JetBlue Airways earlier this week became the first major U.S. airline to mandate masks for travelers. Frontier Airlines took a similar step Thursday.

“We want our passengers to feel comfortable when flying with us by protecting themselves and their fellow travelers as we all navigate the Covid-19 pandemic,” Barry Biffle, Frontier’s CEO said in a release. “This new measure is aligned with CDC recommendations and those of many municipalities within the U.S. that include wearing a face covering when out in public. —Leslie Josephs

United Airlines Thursday posted its biggest quarterly loss since 2008 and expects to burn an average of $40 million to $45 million a day in the second quarter as the coronavirus continues to hurt bookings.

The Chicago-based airline and its competitors are facing a 95% decline in U.S. air travel, just as customers are normally gearing up for summer vacation. The second and third quarters are generally the most lucrative for airlines but the virus and shelter-in-place orders are keeping would-be travelers home.

United swung to a $1.7 billion loss in the three months ended March 31, from a $292 million profit in the same period of 2019. Revenue dropped nearly 17% to $7.98 billion, slightly below analysts’ estimates. —Leslie Josephs

Apple shares were down slightly in extended trading after the company’s second-quarter earnings in which it reported $58.3 billion in revenue, a slight year-over-year increase, during a quarter in which supply and demand for Apple’s products was negatively affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

 iPhone revenue was down to $28.96 billion, a 7% year-over-year decrease. The shortfall was partially made up by a 16% rise in services revenue, which include iCloud, Apple Music, and other subscriptions, to $13.34 billion. Total revenue growth for the quarter decreased to 0.5% from 9% a quarter ago.

Apple’s cash hoard now stands at $192.8 billion, down from $207.1 billion at the end of the previous quarter.

The company did not issue guidance for the quarter ending in June, as it usually does. It withdrew guidance for this quarter in February as the Covid-19 coronavirus spread in China.

Apple had addressed the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic while it was still mainly affecting China, but on Thursday CEO Tim Cook struck an optimistic note about worldwide recovery in his interview with CNBC. “There was a significant, very steep fall-off in February. That began to recover some in March, and we’ve seen further recovery in April. So, it leaves us room for optimism,” Cook said. —Kif Leswing, Jordan Novet

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he plans to close state and local beaches in Orange County, calling the images of huge crowds that occupied the beaches over the weekend “disturbing.” 

“Orange County has been on our list of health concern and they’ve done a wonderful job down there, I just think we can tighten that up a little bit. So we’re going to have a temporary pause down there,” Newsom said at a press conference on Thursday. 

Newsom said beaches in the southern part of California, including those in Orange, Los Angeles and San Diego counties, have raised alarm bells, including images of people who were congregating there and not following physical distancing guidelines. He said the state wants to work closely with local officials, and if they can create better guidelines, the beaches can “reopen very very quickly.” 

“My job as governor is to keep you safe, and when our health folks tell me they can’t promise that if we promote another weekend like we had then I have to make this adjustment,” Newsom said. —Noah Higgins-Dunn

Gilead Sciences said that it can produce “several million” rounds of its antiviral drug remdesivir next year to help patients fight the coronavirus.

The company expects to produce more than 140,000 rounds of its 10-day treatment regimen by the end of May, and anticipates it can make 1 million rounds by the end of this year.

“Our focus at this time is on both our work with remdesivir and our ongoing commitments to the people who depend on our medicines today,” Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day said in the company’s first-quarter earnings release.

On Wednesday, Gilead released preliminary results from its clinical trial on remdesivir, showing at least 50% of the patients treated with a five-day dosage of the drug improved. The clinical trial involved 397 patients with severe cases of Covid-19. The severe study is “single-arm,” meaning it did not evaluate the drug against a control group of patients who didn’t receive the drug. — Berkeley Lovelace

Amazon said it expects to spend its entire $4 billion operating profit in Q2 on coronavirus-related expenses including “hundreds of millions” to develop its own testing capability for the virus.

Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky told CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa he expects the company will spend $1 billion on testing in the full year 2020. Amazon has designated a team of researchers, engineers, procurement specialists and program managers to work on building incremental testing capacity. Amazon said the team is building a lab and has already begun a pilot test of front-line employees.

“We’re not sure how far we will get in the relevant timeframe, but we think it’s worth trying, and we stand ready to share anything we learn,” Amazon said in the release.

Some of the $4 billion will also fund higher wages for workers, personal protective equipment (PPE), better cleaning protocols at facilities and “less efficient process paths” that will allow for social distancing.

“If you’re a shareowner in Amazon, you may want to take a seat, because we’re not thinking small,” Amazon said in the press release. “Under normal circumstances, in this coming Q2, we’d expect to make some $4 billion or more in operating profit. But these aren’t normal circumstances.” —Lauren Feiner

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has a message for the CEOs of Google, YouTube and Twitter when it comes to coronavirus misinformation: please be more like Facebook.

It’s an unusual request from a D.C. lawmaker after Congress has spent the past few years scolding Facebook for its misinformation policies. But the coronavirus pandemic has given Facebook an opportunity to reclaim its reputation and at least one lawmaker is taking notice.

Facebook said earlier this month it would notify users if they had engaged with a post that had been removed for including misinformation about Covid-19 in violation of its policies. Facebook will also direct users to myths debunked by the World Health Organization. That marked a major step for Facebook, which has wrung its hands over other forms of misinformation, most notably in political ads. But even while it has refused to fact-check or remove most political ads that contain false information, Facebook said it would remove any that contain misinformation about the coronavirus. 

Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee that investigated Russian meddling in the 2016 election, asked the chief executives at Google, YouTube and Twitter to consider a similar policy to  Facebook’s in letters sent on Wednesday. 

“While taking down harmful misinformation is a crucial step, mitigating the harms from false content that is removed requires also ensuring that those users who accessed it while it was available have as high a likelihood of possible of viewing the facts as well,” Schiff wrote to the CEOs. —Lauren Feiner

Honda Motor is joining General Motors, Ford Motor and others in assisting the health-care industry with ventilators amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The Japanese automaker announced it has started producing and delivering critical components for ventilators to Dynaflo of Reading, Pennsylvania.

Honda is producing diaphragm compressors, a key component of portable ventilators, in a 6,000-square-foot area at one of the automaker’s development centers in Marysville, Ohio.

The companies are aiming to produce 10,000 compressors per month once production reaches capacity, according to Honda. The automaker expects to continue production through August.

Both GM and Ford are building tens of thousands of ventilators under the Defense Production Act with health care partners at auto facilities. —Mike Wayland

Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates laid out what the world needs from a Covid-19 vaccine in order to reopen society.

“Realistically, if we’re going to return to normal, we need to develop a safe, effective vaccine. We need to make billions of doses, we need to get them out to every part of the world, and we need all of this happen as quickly as possible,” Gates said in a blog post. 

The vaccine only needs to be at least 70% effective to stop the outbreak, Gates said. He added that a vaccine that’s 60% effective is usable, but society would still see localized outbreaks, while anything under 60% is unlikely to stop the virus.

Gates said he’s optimistic a safe and effective vaccine could emerge in 18 months, though it could be as short as 9 months or up to two years. —Jessica Bursztynsky 

Macy’s Chief Executive Jeff Gennette is sure of one thing: The retailer’s sales will be more “modest” for some time as it emerges from this crisis. 

“We are going to emerge out of this as a smaller company,” Gennette said Thursday afternoon during a virtual fireside chat with Gordon Haskett analyst Chuck Grom. “We don’t really know what the ramp back looks like.” 

Macy’s is, meantime, already planning to see lower volume this holiday season, in part because millions of Americans are now unemployed and without paychecks. Gennette also expects its hundreds of department stores and specialty shops, including Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury, to reopen in phases. 

Macy’s shares were recently down about 7%, following the conversation with Gordon Haskett’s Grom. The stock has fallen more than 66% this year. Macy’s has a market value of about $1.8 billion. —Lauren Thomas

House Democrats released a plan to invest more than $80 billion into boosting broadband internet access as the coronavirus forces Americans to work, learn and seek medical treatment from home. 

The proposal by 12 lawmakers resembles bills Democrats have released before to bolster a core piece of U.S. infrastructure. The issue has taken on more urgency, though, as efforts to slow the outbreak’s spread have forced governments to close businesses and schools, leaving millions at home without reliable internet service.

“This broadband deployment is very, very necessary,” House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., told reporters earlier Thursday in previewing the plan. He said ensuring more households have the internet was “made even more necessary by this current pandemic that we’re trying to respond to.” —Jacob Pramuk

Vice President Mike Pence wore a mask while touring an Indiana facility that is making ventilators, two days after igniting a storm of criticism for failing to put on a mask during a visit to the Mayo Clinic despite strict coronavirus restrictions there.

Pence was touring the General Motors plant in Kokomo with Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and GM CEO Mary Barra. Photos show others with him wearing masks as well.

Pence, who once served as governor of Indiana, has previously said that he does not need to wear a mask because he is tested regularly for coronavirus, and so far has been shown to be negative for it.

Health experts have disputed that idea, saying the tests are not always accurate, and that there is a risk that Pence could contract the coronavirus in between tests.

The Mayo Clinic has said it told Pence’s staff before he visited there Tuesday that masks were required for all visitors, staff and patients at its Rochester, Minnesota, facility, because of the coronavirus outbreak

Pence was surrounded by people, including patients, wearing masks during his tour. —Dan Mangan

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is developing three smartphone apps to help New York state trace every person who comes into contact with someone infected with Covid-19 cases to help control the spread of the virus. 

Contact tracing requires scores of people to interview coronavirus patients and track down all of their contacts over the past 14 days so those people can be notified, tested and quarantined. 

The team, led by Bloomberg, is partnering with the health-care nonprofit Vital Strategies to develop the three new smartphone apps. The first app will help contact tracers find information and data quickly, the second will allow the public send data directly to local health departments and the third will provide guidance to people in quarantine and allow them to report any symptoms, Bloomberg said. 

“When social distancing is relaxed, contact tracing is our best hope for isolating the virus when it appears and keeping it isolated,” Bloomberg said from the governor’s press conference in Albany. —Noah Higguns-Dunn, Will Feuer 

Ford Motor expects to begin calling back salaried employees who have been working remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic beginning in late-June, executives said.

About 124,000 white-collar workers are expected to be in the “final group” of employees to return to their offices, according to Ford Chief Human Resources Officer Kiersten Robinson. She said employees will gradually return starting in late June and into early July.

Plant workers are expected to gradually return to work as early as next month as the company plans to gradually reopen its U.S. plants beginning in the second quarter. The facilities have been shut down since last month due to Covid-19. 

Farley and other executives said Thursday both groups of workers will return to work with extensive safety measures and protocols in place.

The plans include extensive cleaning; mandatory face masks and, in some cases, face shields. Employees will need to clear a pre-work health assessment and temperature checks, including thermal body scanners and handheld readers, when entering the building. Ford is also redesigning workplaces to allow for social distancing where possible. —Mike Wayland

President Donald Trump said U.S. officials and scientists are working as quickly as possible to produce a coronavirus vaccine, and he asserted that he’s in charge of its development in “Operation Warp Speed.”

“I hope we’re going to have a vaccine and we’re going to fast-track a vaccine like you’ve never seen before if we come with a vaccine. I think they probably will,” he told reporters during a White House meeting with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.

“I’m not overpromising,” he added. “Whatever the maximum is, whatever you can humanly do, we’re going to do.”

When asked by a reporter who is in charge of the vaccine operation, Trump said, “honestly, I am.” 

“I’m really in charge of it,” he said. “I think probably more than anything I’m in charge.” —Berkeley Lovelace

Dow Inc. CEO Jim Fitterling told CNBC that strict worker screening and the use of personal protective equipment have allowed the material science giant to continue to operate its plants and labs as safely as possible during the coronavirus outbreak.

“We’re working safely. We’re sharing those best practices with governments around the world,” Fitterling said on “Squawk on the Street.” “We think it’s safe to go back to work, and we’re going to start to demonstrate that.”

Dow is currently operating with around 14,000 workers in its production facilities, Fitterling said, noting that governments classified many parts of the company as essential “because we supply so materials that are in need today.”

Dow has 36,500 employees at more than 100 manufacturing sites in 31 countries.

Fitterling said that returning workers safely to plants and labs are the focus of the company’s efforts now.

“When we get spaces where they’re tighter, like offices, that will probably come later,” he said. “We want to make sure we’re taking care of the basic functions and the people that are working effectively from home can continue to do that.” —Kevin Stankiewicz

Britain has officially passed the peak of its coronavirus outbreak, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.

“I can confirm today that for the first time we are past the peak of this disease,” Johnson said in his first appearance at the government’s daily briefing since returning to work after falling ill with Covid-19.

“We’re past the peak and we’re on the downward slope.”

Johnson did not however lay out a roadmap for the U.K. to eventually lift its restrictions on public life, something which countries elsewhere in Europe have been gradually doing. —Ryan Browne

The top U.S. spy agency said for the first time that the nation’s collective intelligence community does not believe that the coronavirus was man-made or genetically modified.

“The Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified,” the Office of Director of National Intelligence said in a rare statement.

“The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan,” it added.

The statement from the Office of Director of National Intelligence contradicts reports suggesting that the new coronavirus had been developed by Chinese scientists in a government biological weapons laboratory.

The U.S. intelligence community was tasked with examining whether the virus that caused the global pandemic emerged accidentally from a Chinese research lab, current and former U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.  —Amanda Macias

New York City is suspending 24-hour subway service to disinfect subway cars during the coronavirus crisis, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday.

“They (MTA) can disinfect all trains and buses every night, it can best be done by stopping train service from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. every night during the pandemic so they can actually perform this service,” Cuomo said at a news briefing.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority, which runs the city’s public transit system, will still provide buses as well as for-hire vehicles and “dollar vans” at no cost to essential workers during those hours, said Cuomo. —William Feuer, Noah Higgins-Dunn, Jasmine Kim

Florida has overtaken California as the U.S. state with the most weekly unemployment claims as Tallahassee began to process in earnest its sizable backlog of filings.

Florida, which reported 432,465 jobless claims for the week ended April 25, topped California’s 328,042, marking the first time since the week ended March 21 that the Golden State didn’t lead the nation in the number of workers filing for unemployment benefits.

Though both states reported declines in the number of workers seeking insurance from the prior week, that Florida is now leading the chart is notable since its labor force is about half that of California’s. Texas and Georgia also saw a significant number of claims last week with each state reporting at least 250,000.

The relative surge Florida in claims is likely thanks to an improvement in the state’s ability to process filings. —John Schoen, Tom Franck

Lindsey Marvel, 38, moved to New York three years ago because, she said, “I’m literally going big or going home.”

Now she’s going home to Tulsa, Oklahoma to escape the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic that has hit New York harder than any place in the nation. The outbreak’s impact on her personal life, and on the city she loves, was simply too much.

“My neighbor died. Friends were seeing body bags from their windows, and you’re just in this survival mode. I just was terrified,” said Marvel, who lived alone in a rental apartment in Brooklyn. “Things in New York are not easy– and that’s some of the charm, you know—it’s not so easy—and it just became way too difficult.”

Marvel, an optometrist who left Tulsa 20 years ago, actually applied for a program last year called Tulsa Remote. In an effort to attract new employee talent, it offers a $10,000 grant and additional benefits to eligible remote workers who move to and work from Tulsa.

She was accepted, but declined because she just couldn’t bear to leave Brooklyn. She called back last week and asked if they’d still take her. They did. —Diana Olick

It is “unconscionable” and “absolutely unacceptable” that a Brooklyn funeral home left corpses in storage vans as the city’s mortuary system is overwhelmed with coronavirus patients, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday.

“Why on earth did they not either alert the state who regulates them or go to the NYPD precinct and ask for help?” de Blasio said at a news briefing. “Do something rather than leave the bodies there. It’s unconscionable to me.” 

The mayor was responding to reports that the Andrew T. Cleckley Funeral Services in Brooklyn left corpses to decay in unrefrigerated U-Haul and other rental trucks on a crowded city street on Wednesday. When CNBC reached the funeral home for comment, a man who did not identify himself hung up before any questions could be asked. 

“I have no idea in the world how any funeral home could let this happen,” de Blasio said. “Absolutely unacceptable. Let’s be clear about this.”

New York City’s mortuaries, cemeteries, crematories and morgues have been overwhelmed by the casualties of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed almost five times as many New Yorkers in two months as the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.  —William Feuer, Jasmine Kim

Even though the current NBA season is still technically suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic, its return this year seems less and less likely with each passing day. Team executives are starting to feel the pressure, frustrated with the lack of information from the league and pushing for an outright cancellation of the season so everyone can focus on safely resuming play next season.

NBA team executives and players’ agents spoke to CNBC in recent weeks about the challenges in resuming play. They said team owners are concerned with liability issues and are conflicted about whether or not to give up on the current season. The individuals spoke on condition of anonymity as they aren’t authorized to discuss league matters publicly.

Billions of dollars are on the line if the NBA can’t rescue its season. NBA teams split the roughly $2 billion per year in national TV money the NBA receives from ESPN and Turner Sports. But clubs also gain revenue from local media deals with Regional Sports Networks. —Jabari Young

McDonald’s is expecting steeper same-store sales declines in the second quarter as international restaurant closures due to the coronavirus pandemic continue to weigh down sales. McDonald’s global same-store sales shrank 3.4% in the first three months of the year after plunging 22% in March.

“Looking at comparable sales, we expect the second quarter as a whole to be significantly worse than what we experienced for the full month of March,” CEO Chris Kempczinski told analysts on the conference call.

More than half of restaurants in McDonald’s international operated markets segment, which includes France and Australia, are closed. Four countries in the segment — the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, and France — have closed down restaurants entirely to slow the spread of the virus. In April, the segment’s same-store sales are down about 70%. —Amelia Lucas

The first quarter of 2020 saw the U.S. wind industry install more than 1,800 megawatts (MW) of new capacity, a report from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has revealed. According to the AWEA’s report, 11 new projects with a total capacity of 1,821 MW commenced operations in the first three months of the year.

The AWEA noted that this represented more than double the installations compared with the first quarter in 2019, AWEA said in a statement issued Wednesday.

While there are clear positives in the report – which also said construction activity hit a new record in the first three months of the year – the coronavirus is casting a shadow over the sector. Citing its own analysis from March, the trade association said an estimated 25 gigawatts of planned projects – which represent $35 billion in investments – were at risk. —Anmar Frangoul

Tyson Foods said it was temporarily suspending operations at a large Nebraska beef processing that serves as the largest employer for neighboring Sioux City, Iowa, after a surge of coronavirus cases in the area. Tyson said it would close the Dakota City plant Friday through Monday to perform a deep cleaning of the facility.

State health officials in recent days have reported hundreds of new coronavirus cases in both Nebraska’s Dakota County, where the plant is located, and Woodbury County, Iowa, where Sioux City is located. Tyson previously disclosed that some workers at the plant had tested positive for the virus, but it has not said how many. The Arkansas-based company said it was screening Dakota City employees for the virus this week with the help of the Nebraska National Guard.

The Dakota City facility is one of the largest beef processing plants in the country, employing about 4,300 people. The move follows recent closures of other meat processing facilities across the country due the coronavirus, which spreads rapidly among workers who often stand shoulder to shoulder on production lines. —Associated Press

The spread of Covid-19 in Denmark has not accelerated since the country began a gradual loosening of restrictions in mid-April, the State Serum Institute, which is responsible for preparedness against infectious diseases, said.

The so-called R rate, which shows the average number of infections one person with the virus causes, has increased slightly in the past two weeks but remains below 1.0, the institute said.

“However, there are no signs that the COVID-19 epidemic is accelerating,” it said. —Reuters

Restaurateur Luca Di Pietro and his team have become known as the “lasagna guys” among New York City’s frontline workers. That’s because Di Pietro and his team have helped deliver more than 64,000 meals to health-care workers amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The lasagna is always a big hit,” Di Pietro, 50, who is the owner of owner Tarallucci e Vino restaurant group in Manhattan and now the founder of Feed the Frontlines NYC, told CNBC Make It. “It puts a smile on my face. It’s hard times…at least they get to eat something good. To think the food has been brought by and prepared by New Yorkers is a morale boost for frontline workers.”

Di Pietro started Feed the Frontlines NYC, a for-profit initiative, to raise funds for his restaurant, Tarallucci e Vino, and other local restaurants. It also provides hospital hospital workers in the country’s hardest hit city with free and delicious food. So far the initiative has raised over $1.26 million in donation to pay for meals, and its success has even inspired others to create their own Feed the Frontlines initiatives in other cities.

Beyond feeding local hospital workers fighting the pandemic, Feed the Frontlines has helped keep participating restaurants alive and their workers employed. —Taylor Locke

CNBC’s Jim Cramer blasted Vice President Mike Pence for not wearing a coronavirus mask while touring the Mayo Clinic earlier this week.

“Until we get this under control, we can’t have the vice president of the United States go to the Mayo Clinic without a mask because that sets an example of recklessness,” Cramer said on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”

Cramer’s commentary on Pence came as the “Mad Money” host praised Costco for its new policy, starting Monday, that requires all shoppers to wear a face covering in its stores. Costco already requires its employees to wear masks.

“I think this will be the standard of care two weeks from now,” Cramer said, predicting people won’t be going anywhere without a mask. —Matthew J. Belvedere

Stocks fell on the last day of April, as investors digested another round of dismal economic data along with the latest batch of major tech earnings.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded down 252 points, or 1%. The S&P 500 slid 0.7%. The Nasdaq Composite chopped around the flatline in early trading. 

The Labor Department said another 3.84 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, bringing the six-week total to more than 30 million. U.S. consumer spending also dropped 7.5% in March on a year-over-year basis. —Fred Imbert, Thomas Franck

The feeling behind Tesla CEO Elon Musk‘s expletive-filled tirade against state government stay-at-home orders is shared by a growing number of Americans, Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC.

“I think that reflects a growing sentiment in this country where that’s going to tug against what the governors have to do,” Gottlieb said on “Squawk Box.” “They have tough decisions to face this month.” 

Late Wednesday, Musk lashed out, even dropping the F-bomb, on the electric vehicle maker’s earnings call, saying that lockdowns meant to help slow the spread of the coronavirus are “fascist.” He also said the orders amounted to “forcibly imprisoning people in their homes against all their constitutional rights.”

A number of states across the country, such as Georgia, Colorado and Tennessee, have recently eased up on some of the coronavirus-related business restrictions. Other states, such as Ohio, have announced details of a phased reopening to begin in May. —Kevin Stankiewicz

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a member of the boards of Pfizer and biotech company Illumina. 

Across the country, states have shut down businesses and ordered people to work from home if they can and stay indoors as much as possible to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

However, with cases beginning to level off, states are looking to jump-start economies hit hard by the virus. Millions of Americans who have been put out of work by lockdown efforts are also eager to get back in the workforce. 

Governors have taken different tactics in developing plans to loosen stay-at-home orders, each taking different paths in removing social-distancing restrictions. States in the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast have formed coalitions to usher in a regional recovery. Other states have faced criticism for already allowing nonessential businesses to resume in-person operations. Some governors have yet to release any sort of reopening plan.

Here is a rundown of how every state in the U.S. has responded to Covid-19 in terms of lifting restrictions on citizens and businesses. This list will be updated each day with new developments. —Hannah Miller 

Mercedes-Benz reopened its U.S. plant this week in Alabama, becoming one of the first manufacturers to resume operations since the coronavirus pandemic halted auto production across the country last month.

Daimler, which owns Mercedes-Benz, said it took “robust and best practice safety measures” to ensure that the reopening of the plant was safe for its 4,200 workers who produce the Mercedes-Benz GLE, GL and GLE Coupe SUVs.

New protocols to reduce the spread of the virus include the mandatory wearing of face masks, temperature checks at entry and separation of employees in break rooms, cafes and common areas.

Only one of the plant’s three shifts of workers was initially called back Monday as the plant ramps up production and the safety measures are implemented. —Michael Wayland 

First-time filings for unemployment insurance hit 3.84 million last week as the wave of economic pain continues, though the worst appears to be in the past. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting 3.5 million.

Jobless claims for the week ended April 25 came in at the lowest level since March 21 but bring the rolling six-week total to 30.3 million as part of the worst employment crisis in U.S. history. Claims hit a record 6.87 million for the week of March 28 and have declined each week since then. 

The surge in unemployment has come amid efforts to contain the coronavirus spread. While some states and municipalities have begun to bring their respective economies back online, much of the key U.S. infrastructure remains locked down. —Jeff Cox

The International Energy Agency said it expects global energy demand to plunge this year in what the Paris-based agency called the biggest drop since World War II. 

With roughly 4.2 billion people around the world subject to some form of lockdown in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, the IEA is forecasting a 6% decline in energy demand for the year. In absolute terms this is the largest on record. Percentage wise, it’s the steepest decline in 70 years.

The demand hit from the pandemic is expected to be seven times greater than the decline in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008.

“In absolute terms, the decline is unprecedented — the equivalent of losing the entire energy demand of India, the world’s third largest energy consumer,” the agency’s Global Energy Report said. —Pippa Stevens

The California Police Chiefs Association told members in an email Wednesday that Gov. Gavin Newsom will announce Thursday that all beaches would be closed as of Friday to prevent the kind of crowding seen over the weekend, when warm weather prompted thousands to flock to the Orange County coastline.

State parks are also expected to be closed.

The email, which appeared to include a memo, was confirmed to NBC News by two law enforcement sources. —NBC News

A handful of quarterly reports from major U.S. companies revealed pressured resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Here’s who offered updates Thursday morning.  

—Sara Salinas

Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, parent company of CNBC.

Italy’s Prada said it had gradually resujmed production in several sites across Italy after almost two months of lockdown imposed to contain the spread of coronavirus.

The fashion company said it had reopened its industrial sites in Tuscany on April 20 and those in the central regions of Umbria, Marche and the northern region of Veneto — one of the hardest-hit areas — after that.

It said some workshops in its Milan headquarters were also back at work. The group said it implemented a full range of security measures for its staff, including a double-screening method for staff and the use of antibody tests. —Reuters

The U.K. will know by July whether its Covid-19 vaccine is effective, pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca said.

The company said it has partnered with Oxford University to help develop and distribute the vaccine being researched by the Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group. Under the agreement, AstraZeneca would be responsible for the worldwide manufacturing and supply of Oxford’s vaccine, which entered phase one clinical trials last week.

AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot told BBC Radio 4′s “Today” show that the company would know within months whether the coronavirus vaccine was effective.

“By June, July we will already have a very good idea of the direction of travel in terms of its potential efficacy,” he said. —Chloe Taylor

Japan is preparing to extend its state of emergency for about a month, government sources told Reuters. It was originally set to end next Wednesday.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told parliament he will consult infectious disease experts on whether to extend the emergency, which he declared on April 7 for seven prefectures including Tokyo. The meeting will take place on Friday, the economy minister said. —Holly Ellyatt

The number of new coronavirus-related deaths in Spain fell to 268, its health ministry said, marking the lowest tally in nearly six weeks, Reuters reported.

The total number of deaths rose to 24,543 on Thursday, up from 24,275 on the previous day, the ministry said. The total number of cases in Spain now stands at 213,435, up 1,309 from the previous day. —Holly Ellyatt

Sweden has attracted global attention for not imposing a full lockdown, as seen in most of Europe, to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

Nonetheless, data released from the country’s central bank and a leading Swedish think tank show that the economy will be just as badly hit as its European neighbors.

Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, gave two possible scenarios for the economic outlook in 2020 that “depend on how long the spread of infection continues and on how long the restrictions implemented to slow it down are in place.” Both possible scenarios are bleak.

In the first scenario, gross domestic product contracts by 6.9% in 2020 before rebounding to grow by 4.6% in 2021. In the more negative prediction, GDP could contract by 9.7% and a recovery could be slower with the economy growing 1.7% in 2021.

In both predictions, unemployment will rise and could reach 10.1% in 2020 in the worst-case scenario, up from 7.2% currently. —Holly Ellyatt

Read CNBC’s coverage from CNBC’s Asia-Pacific and Europe teams overnight here: Euro zone economy sinks; Spain’s daily deaths at lowest tally in nearly 6 weeks.