More than 20,000 people have lost their lives. 1,800 new deaths were reported in the u. S. Saturday alone. A brutal figure but a slight dropoff after more than 2,000 deaths reported on friday. It is raising a slim hope that the virus in the u. S. May have peaked w. The addition of wyoming on saturday, all 50 u. S. States are now under disaster declarations. Thats the first time in history for this country. You have also probably heard donald trump repeatedly claim no one could have seen this pandemic coming. But a new report in the New York Times outlines just how untrue that actually is. It details how Administration Officials were sounding the alarm as early as january. Not only was he reportededly aware of those warnings, he largely ignored them for weeks. Mr. Trump continued to downplay the threat publicly until midmarch. Health officials had wanted that implemented weeks yearly. Jeremy diamond has more on this report from the white house. According to the New York Times, it was the third week of february when the governments Top Public Health experts concluded that aggressive social distancing measures would need to be implemented in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus. But when that decision was made by those Public Health experts the president was traveling in india. The experts decided they should brief him in person when he returned. But that flight from india to washington was a momentous one. The president grew furious watching the stock market crashed when he was warned there would be severe disruptions to daily life. Instead of that briefing that the president was set to receive upon his return from india, the president held a News Conference putting Vice President mike pence in charge of the coronavirus efforts and we know that the white houses response began to shift, focusing especially on public messaging, trying to assure the American People that they had the response under control. Now, we also know that beyond that briefing and beyond those conclusions by those Public Health experts, there were warnings inside the Trump Administration in january as well as in february. We reported of course on the memo by Peter Navarro in late january warning of trillions of dollars in economic losses and millions of americans could be infected with this virus. The alarm was also sounded back in january for the potential of a global pandemic. The president meanwhile though, while we know exactly what he was thinking at the time because he was telling the public, the president in january and in february, repeatedly downplaying the threat of this coronavirus pandemic insisting that he had it under control. Jeremy diamond, cnn, the white house. Lets take a closer look at one of those warnings that went unheeded. The New York Times reports that on january 28th, a senior medical adviser sent an email about the virus which read in part, any way you cut it, this is going to be bad. The projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe, end quote. Just how early did the administration know it should be acti acting divisively but didnt . One of the authors of the story spoke with cnn. That quote came from an email we obtained who had been written by the chief medical officer of the Veterans Affairs administration or agency and he, of course, has long experience in dealing with these kind of pandemics. But by the third week of february, just three weeks later, this was pretty much the widely held view inside the white house, the full medical community and so forth, and yet it took them three weeks until the middle of march to convince the president. And the president said three contradictory things here. First, he said no one could imagine this happening. Of course they did. They even ran exercises in the situation room of what this would look like. The second thing he said, i knew it would be a pandemic all along. Why didnt he act on it . And then the third thing he said is you know i wanted to be a cheerleader for the country. Its fine to be a cheerleader for the country. But if you think something thats coming thats going to kill a good part of your populous. You need to do things to protect them. Lets talk with the professor of governor at the university of essex. Good morning to you. Good morning. The bottom line from this report, it seems, is that President Trump ignored warnings, he claimed there werent warnings, actually, there were and then was slow to act. What is your takeaway on this report . Right, the New York Times has been doing some excellent reporting and this is really a summation of a lot of these reports and it goes into deeper detail about the extent to which trump was aware of this virus. A lot of the warnings came in january from the secretary of health, from intelligence reports and also from his own trade adviser peter in a var na. They made it clear that this is an aggressive virus and the u. S. Is going to need to respond immediately and in a very forceful way. He didnt Pay Attention to this. As the report mentioned, by mid to late february, everyone in his own administration believed it was going to be pretty dangerous, but it took them another three weeks to convince them to act. As a result theres been complete chaos and confusion and total lack of coordination. Right. We want to read an excerpt from the New York Times report and this refers to the plane ride home from india when mr. Trump visited there a few weeks ago. Here it is here on the 18hour plane ride home, mr. Trump fumed as he watched the stock market crash of cdcs official comments. This official commenting on the dangers americans could face. He was furious. He called the health and Human Services secretary when he landed february 26th raging that the official had scared people unnecessarily. It did seem that the president continued to downplay the severity of what this country was about to face and you got to wonder why. Right. And what the reporting was insinuating was this was because he was really eyeing what was going to happen to him in 2020 and everything was banking on having a robust economy with full levels of employment. This was going to really wreck havoc on the economy because nothing is worse than uncertainty. A pandemic is going to cause great levels of uncertainty. He didnt what to project an image that would cause fear and confusion. By doing so, he downplayed the threat and refused to act. Mentioned many times in this report, that ended up causing all kinds of coordination delays when they needed to be procuring protective equipment for hospital workers, when they needed to be procuring ventilators, ensuring there were enough hospital beds and he decided he wanted to downplay it because he was worried that this would then affect his chances in 2020. Right. He reportedly fixated on the stock market, of course, very concerning about the economy. But the New York Times reports that a National Security adviser said in the oval office meeting, the economy would be destroyed by the pandemic regardless of whether the white house stepped up to take strict measures. The indications are the president was focused on the stock market and perhaps that kept him from looking at the Health Consequences that would lead to what americans are now facing. Right. And, remember, this is a president that hasnt tended to believe in science. He uses his gut. That was illustrated throughout the New York Times article, that his use of gut decisionmaking makes it difficult to respond to a pandemic. We know theres controversies over who disbanded the pandemic office, but it made it very difficult for this administration to respond quickly and understand the severity of these types of crises. The economies are going to face a severe recession. Theres no way around it. But the point is to try to save lives and ensure that we have fewer deaths than we could have and he didnt act quickly enough. Thats what the report was indicating. How will the president s handling or mishandling of this crisis, plus the economy affect his presidency and his hopes for reelection. Its hard to focus on the election when so many people are suffering. But it is coming. Right. So some of the polls that were taken by gallop a couple weeks ago indicated that he did have a bump. He never got above 50 , but his Approval Rating was 49 . 80 of the public did believe he was doing a good job. There have been so many lies by his administration and theres efforts by republicans to keep him away from doing these nightly briefings that go on for hours because he contradicts himself and he gets caught in a web of lies. We know in february he said that the virus would be like a miracle, it would disappear and then weeks later hes saying, he knew it was going to be a pandemic. These types of statements dont look good. His base is supportive of him. They like the fact that he is always trying to keep them calm and telling them its going to be fine. But youre going to see more and more people really questioning as their own people have been affected by this questioning that theres no there hasnt been a coordinated federal response and it has actually really caused many, many lives. And were still playing catchup and were about to talk about that next. We appreciate your insights. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Well, again, new york remains the worsthit u. S. State for covid19 with more than 180,000 cases and 8,600 deaths. Thats more than four times the number of fatalities in the secondmost affected state, neighboring new jersey. New york state and city governments have said they need help fighting the pandemic but there are however now signs of hope. Here was new York Governor Andrew Cuomo on saturday. Good news is the curve of the increase is continuing to flatten. The number of hospitalizations appears to have hit an apex and the apex appears to be a plateau which is what many of the models predicted that it wasnt going to be a straight up and straight down. It was going to be a straight up. You hit the top number and you plateau for a period of time and that looks like what we are doing, the hospitalization rate is down and thats important. We have more people getting infected still. We have more people going to the hospitals but we have a lower number. Thats all this is saying. Lets look closuer at the situation with a global expert. Hi, peter. Thanks for coming on. Good morning. Good to see you again. The governor there, as he has most days, chilling remarks about the deaths, the horrific number of deaths that new york has seen, but it does seem the curve continues to flatten. How significant is this. Its important and of course the daily news is still grim because hundreds of people just in new york state are dying everyday. But what we know is when we put in place an intervention like social distancing, its not going to take effect for several weeks. We expect the first thing well see is a leveling off in the number of new cases followed a couple weeks later in a leveling off of the number of hospitalizations. And deaths is going to be the most lagging indicator. What were seeing now with the reports of leveling off and a decline in the number of hospitalizations suggest that new york is at its peak and we may see again deaths lagging for a little bit but we hope were getting to the point where the worst is behind us. Thats assuming we keep all of the social distancing measures in place for some time further. Right. That was my next question. This is the time when no one i think dr. Fauci said, needs to hit the accelerator at all. It appears to be working and it needs to continue and that might get more and more difficult as time goes on and people remain on lockdown. Thats right. We know from places like italy, which are a little bit ahead of where new york is, is that rather than just being a peak and a quick dropoff, theres a plateau and a slow decline after that. All of our modeling suggests and experience suggests if we were to suddenly relax on adorabsoci distancing, we would almost see a very quick second spike in new infections that would have all the same risks in terms of overwhelming the health system. Its going to take probably several more weeks of extreme social or physical distancing and then hopefully we can put in place a smart plan for testing, isolation, and gradual easing of these measures in order to safely get the society back to work. I want to talk to you about testing. That is still such a huge issue. 1 of americans have been tested. Do you expect well get to a place where there can be widespread testing because without tests, without diagnostics, how can you assess the future threat of the virus . Thats right. Its so important. And have the answer is, we have to figure it out. The only way that were going to come out of this safely is if were able to do widespread testing. Theres two kinds of tests, the tests weve mostly been talking about, diagnostic tests for active infection, and thats going to be important. If we want to ease lockdowns, we need to be able to test anybody and everybody who has symptoms and then also be able to trace their contacts and test them even before they have symptoms so we can identify every new infection and get them isolated and out of circulation as quickly as possible. Thats how we prevent a second spike. Thats going to be critically important and were not at that point yet. The second kind of test are antibody tests. These are tests that show past infection that the body is starting to build up antibodies having been infected in the past. Usually they come about four weeks after someone has been infected. This can serve two really important purposes, the first is, we can do surveys that are going to give us for the first time a real picture of how many people in a population have been infected. We dont know whether the reported cases are the tip of the iceberg and actually whether there are many, many, many people who had asymptomatic infections who may have some degree of protection. Thats going to be important. The second thing is that antibodies, the presence of them, at least implies that there is a level of immunity in someone who has had a past infection. But we hope that will give us a means of understanding who may be safe to go back to work and particularly for health workers, thats going to be critically important. Absolutely. Antibodies, its a word that the world is now paying attention to for sure and for good reason. Doctor, we appreciate your expertise. Thanks for coming on. My pleasure. How is the rest of the world handling this health crisis. We take a look at europe. Its been having as many deaths per day as italy and spain on their worst days, plus an update well have on the Prime Ministers health. Spain is reopening some parts of its economy on monday, but the government warns the fight against the virus isnt over. Well share the new guidelines there coming next. Youre watching cnn newsroom. Roadtrip companion. Its kind of my quiet, alone time. Audible is a routine for me. Its like a fun night school for adults. I could easily be seduced into locking myself into a place where i do nothing but listen to books. I never was interested in historical fiction before, but im obsessed with it now. There are a lot of like, classic and big titles that i feel like i missed out since i dont have time to read, mean i might as well listen. If i want to catch up on the news or history or learn whats going on in the world, i can download a book and listen to it. Because i listened to her story over and over again, i made the decision to go ahead and follow my own dream, which was to help other veterans. I think theres like 180 books in my, in my library now. It changes your perspective; it makes you a different person. Its true, its so true. laugh to start your free 30day trial, just text listen25 to 500500. Moving now to europe. Many in the uk hope the government will roll back some of the restrictions. The country is nearing a tragic milestone. Almost 10,000 people there have died from the virus as of now. And there are almost 80,000 confirmed cases. In her easter message, the queen urged people to stay home to stop the spread. This year, easter will be different for many of us. But by keeping apart, we keep others safe. But easter isnt canceled. Indeed we need easter as much as ever. And spain is loosening up its nationwide lockdown amid encouraging signs in the countrys fight against the virus. Some people in sectors in construction or manufacturing will be allowed to go back to work on monday. Health care workers are seen here using drones to spray disinfectant in public spaces and police and Public Safety workers will be handing out 10 Million Masks in the coming week. Spains Health Ministry says more than 11,000 people have recovered in the past three days. Encouragement there. Lets talk more about that. Good morning to both of you, nick, ill start with you because the Prime Minister continues to recover from the coronavirus. Whats the latest on his situation . Reporter yeah, frankly a statement that sort of is short in which he thanks for the workers for the National Health service, he says that he cant thank them enough and he owes them his life. Thats the entirety of the statement. But its the first we have heard from the Prime Minister since he was troublingly sent to the hospital behind me. Then he was in intensive care for three nights and is said to be on the road to recovery. Hes doing short walks around the ward. This hit him exceptionally hard and his gratitude there, short in words but clear in his sentiment, natalie. Yeah, absolutely. Nick paton walsh for us there. Lets go to al in madrid. Al, word that the country there is loosening up restrictions. Talk to us about that. The numbers of deaths now more than 16 now in spain and the numbers of new cases, the percentage increases are getting small. And so the government says spain is not yet in the deescalation phase. The lockdown continues at least until the end of april and the Prime Minister says he may have to extend it