captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for sunday, april 26: the latest on the coronavirus pandemic. for some, the wait for lifesaving elective surgeries may be over. and the city of louisville, kentucky with a new song for the times. next on "pbs nweewshour ekend." >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and ene schwartz. sue and edgar wachenheim iii. the cheryl and philip milstein family. rosalind p. walter. barbara hope zuckerberg. mcharles rosenblu

we try to live in the moment, to not miss what's right in front of us. at mutual america, we believe taking care of tomorrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of amera financial group, retirement services and investments. >> consumer cellular offers no contract wireless plans that are designed to help you do more of the things you enjoy, whether you're talker, texter, browser, photographer or a bit of everything. our u.s.-based customer service team is here to find a plan that fits you. learn more, go to www.consumercellular.tv. additional suprt has been ovided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the american people. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> sreenivasan: it's day three of some reopening of non- essential ansinessesa week since florida began allowing limited ss to a few beaches. here in new york city, where regulations are in effect, we are working remotely.

the coronavirus pa hemic taken more than 200,000 lives hundreds of thousands of people in the united states have tested positive for covid-19, the this week, the u.s. government will begin processing another round of applications for more than $300 billion in new aid for small businesses and hospils. let's get started with today's top news: as states and local governments start to reopen, most are taking relatively sma steps. but, in some places, people are ignoring sial distancing and other restrictions-- like this salon in dallas. the owner was sent a cease and desist letter and issued a citation by police. in southern california, thousands gathered at beaches during the first heat wave of the year. on other beaches that remainre closed theere protests against stay-at-home ords. at a beach north of san diego, three people were arrested yesterday wh police said they refused warnings to leave. and beaches in los angeles o county were ke limits, even as daily high temperatures were recorded in the 80s and

90s. healthfficials continue to push for increased testing for covi19 before public places and businesses rowpen. >> righte're doing about 1.5 million to two millioner week. we probably should get up to twice that as we get into the next several weeks, and i think we will. >> sreenivasan: dr. deborah birx, the trump administration's coronavirus response coordinator said there are signs the spread of the virus is slowing, but cautioned that restrictions will remain in place for iamonths. >> sdistancing will be with us through the summer to really ensure tat we prot one another as we move through these phases. >> sreenivasan: states where reopening is already underway say they are following thatro phased ah. >> the facts in our state are, march 30 we had pead with hospitalizations with 560 across the state. today we have 300 across the state in our hospitals, and so, we think it's time for measured but i've been very clear with

oklahomans that coronavirus is still in the united states and it's still in oklahoma and we have to continue wici social dist, but we will start taking some measured ongpen a phased and measured approach. >> sreenivasan: even with the phased reopening plans and strict stay-at-he orders still in effect in many places, treasury secretary steven mnuchin forecaan economic rebound as early as july. >> as we begin tpen the economy in may and june, you will start to see theconomy bounce back in july, august, september. we are putting in an unprecedented amount of fiscal relief into the economy. you're seeing trillions m dollars thating its way into the economy and i think it's going to have a significant iact. >> sreenivasan: in wan, china, the city where the globa pandemic began, there now no hospitals.s patients in its a chinese health official announced today that the city also reported no new conavirus infections. the virus is believed to have

hiiginated in a market in cityf more than 11 million people. wuhan was also the first city to experience a strict lockdown in january when the health system beca overwheld. across all of china, officials reported only 11 new cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hos. in the united kingdom, prime minister boris johnson plans to retu to work tomorrow after recovering from coronavirus. johnson was hospitazed for a week in early april-- including th.e nights in intensive ca the u.k. continues to grapple with covid-19: more than 20,000 people with the virus have died in hospitals in britain, and the country remains under a lockdown that's grnd much of the economy to a halt. and in spain, some signs of life returning to normal. after six weeks of being cooped up inside under one of the strictest lockdowns in europe, children came outside to play today. kids under 14 are now allowed one hour of supervised outdoor activity within about a half

r mile of mes. children also must follow social distancing guidelines and are allowed to take only one toy sceach. hools and playgrounds remain closed. spain is of the hardest hit countries in europe, with the second most confirmed ses of covid-19 in the world, behind only the unitedtates. but the number of infections and deaths is slowing. officials today reported that 288 people died in the last day, the lowest total in more than a month. there are continued questions about the health of north korean leader kim jong un today. kim has not been seen in public since aprilte 11. a ite photo analyzed by 38 north, a u.s.-based organization that monitornorth korea, reportedly shows a special trai parked neaaside compound kim uses on the country's east coast. ques april when he did not attend a commemoration ceremony for the 108th birtay of his grandfather kim il sung. contuing coverage of the

global pandemic and all of the day's p news, visit pbs.org/newshour. >> sreenivasan: one challenge facing hospitals during the pandemic: deciding which patients have to wait for medical procures they've been counting on to change their lives for the better. tnow, as restrictions bego loosen, some hospitals say they will begin rescheduling elective surgeries. but, as newshour weekend's christopher bookep rts, an elective procedure doesn't mean that it is not a critical one. and postponement for some could a matter of life and death. >> reporter: 27 year-ol smelissa sillrted worrying about covid-19 long before the u.s. had any known cases. >> i was watching the trends ing what wasng on in countries like italy, and i was very nervous. >> reporter: as someone with a weakened immune system, siller knew contracting the virus cld be devastating. she was once a college tennis player, but three years ago she was diagnosed with ehlers-danlos syndrome. oit's a groupgenetic connective tissue disorders that

left the ligaments in her spine too loose to support her head. shgets dizzy, loses her balance, has vision problems and is in a lot of pain. but just this month she was planning to get some relief. >> s i was supposed to have cervical spine fusion or a cranial cervical fusion. so, it fuses my skull and to a few of the vertebrae in my cervical spine. and because of the number of covid cases n york city, the hospital that i would be having tgehe s at is really over flooded with covid patients. >> reporter: siller found ntt late last the surgery would be postponed indefinitelyc that'sse it's considered elective. last month the surgeon general and the c.d.c. ued hospitals to postpone or cancel non- emergency surgeries in preparation for a spike in covid-19 patients. across the country, procedures including organ transplants,em joint replts, even cancer

surgeries re taken off many hospital schedules. a handful of states also included abortions on the list procedures.ily restricted >> we have really never been in this situation before'v where had to triage and think about which types of procedures need to get done first. >> reporter: dr. jeffrey matthews is the surgeon-in-chief at the university of chicago medicine. the hospital began delaying medical procedures in mid march in order to o i.c.u. beds. >> we rlly stopped doing things that we felt could wait, like joint replacement. and a lot of otherypes of operations, bariatric surgery was the other example i used. but then we started to think about, could we give alternative therapy that would buy us some time, say for cancer patients. there are many cancer patients who chemotherapy couldome before surgery, and that mig buy a few weeks or months to beb to get some time so that patients weren't coming intn the hospitale middle of a pandec. >> reporter: according to

matthews, surgeries at university of chicago medicine are down 75%. to decide whdoes receive surgery, the hospital uses a newly-devised scoring system in which it calculates factors including the ize of a surgical team and how long a patient wlu. be in the i. what does the scoring system allow you to do as a doctor, and at does it allow the hospital to do as an organization? >> so, if we have room on the schedule, say, for ten or 15 of these medically necessary time sensitive operations, i've got to figure out which ones. is the orthopedic patient orhe vascular surgery patient or the cardiac surgical patiorenhe gynecologic patient, the one that needs to be done. so what thscoring system allows us to do is in an objective way and one that feess right acany different specialties and many types of patient situationsms. it so get the balance rit. >> we made the decision rather early that we wanted to be able to continue to offer transplant to our patients most in need. >> reporter: and whainabout life-s surgeries?

at mount sinai hospital in n york city doctor sander florman is still performing liver and kidney transplants. >> for the patients that we're transplanting now and that we nted to continue to be ale to transplant, their mortality risk without transplant is upwards of 80% or 90% at one month. so when you start to put it in that perspective, you start to get an understanding of why we were so committed to being able to still offer that. >> reporter: in order to the hospital created a covidts, negative i.c.u. patients are tested for thevi s before they undergo a transplant. but there has been one change: for now organs are coming almos. >> we also made the decision thghat it probably wasn't to do living donors, because while the recipients are willinto take a lot of risk, even unknown risk, it was-- didn't seem fair to put that on a donor, somebody who's completely healthy, doesn't need the operanltion and isy doing it because they're trying to save someone's life. >> reporter: the r ange means fegans are available. across the u.s. transplants are

down about 40%. provide life sustaining services for a transplant patient instead of someone with covid-19? >> we have not run s t of ventilatre. so, the idea that maybe we're using one of these ventilators for one of theseatients and not offering it to somebody else isn't accurate. contemplate questions like this before? even in a theoretical sense? >> well, transplant surgeons and physicians are very used to life and deh decision making and having a shortage. our world has always be about not having enough organs for those who are in need, right? there are 120,000 people in the united states waiti for an organ. and yet there are only about 17,000 donors. s and how atify that, and how to accept that, and how to discuss that with patients, how to know that half the people on your ldnist waiting for a will die before they ever get the opportunity, is something we've always lived with. this is just adding on top of that. >> reporter: the kinds of life and death decisions that are routine in transplant cases are suddenly being made across the

board. one drson facing it is a fri of melissa siller's, rachael wilson. she was once a thriving ballet and lyric dancer before her diagnosis. in fact, the two met in an online sugrpporp for people battling ehlers danlos-syndrome. >> my case has somewhat been elevated just within the past few da. >> reporter: just a few weeks wait while her doctors decidedo the best course of treatment for ar disorder. but in recent daelated fluid to build up in her brain, putting pressure on her neurological system. >> i'm having a lot of seizures. i'm not able to walk properly-- or much at all. actually, i need a lot of help walking. um, i'm having vision loss, neurological-type thing.ow, pretty much everything, you know. another one is not being able to

remember things. ( laughs ) so, it's very difficult to, you know, live any type of life. >> reporter: wilson lives in prior to the covid-19 pandemic she was traveling to the washington, d.c., area to see specialists who treat her condition. e doctors can't see he now, though her condition has become life threatening. >>y doctors are basically working really hard, but they can't do the surgeries right now because the hospitals are so that they're pretty much saying, you know, you just have to wait. and in the meantim, we're searching for someone that might be local. >> reporter: as she waits for her own surgery, melissa siller says she's relying on wilson's encouragement to help keep her spirits up. >> rachael is one of my biggest supporters athnd other people

our condition. we all support each other, and that sort of gives us hope. and know, for some of us, we've just been praying and hoping for a change, and hoping that the virus doesn't last much longer, and that nothing happens to us before, um, you know, it's too late. >> sreenivasan: back in march, as we were just beginning to experience the steep rise of coronavirus cases, we spoke with dr. alexis langsfeld who was just about to leave her family for several weeks to work with covid-19 yopatients at a ne city hospital. newshour weekend special correspondent karla murthy checked in with dr. langsfeld she's speaking from personal experience and does not speak on behalf of her institution.

>> reporter: so, the last time we spoke, you were dealing with a lack of personal protective equipment. at is the situation no >> i know everyone has a different perspective and had a different experience on this but, you know, i'm a doctor ie n ergency department and all of our doctors and nurs g had reald p.p.e. and we all feel really lucky and really gratel that everybody put our... our safe rty first. orter: can you describe what it's like to physically wear this protective equipment and do your job? how has it affected the way you do your job? >> so, when i'm dressed in my p.p.i'm wearing a big mask, which is extremely tight on my face. you can see now i'm wearing a, like a bandage, a silicone bandage, which protects my nose because i was getting a pressure sor and it's tight all the way around your face. and then over top of that, you wear a regular surgical mask. and then you have, i wear like a small pair of safety goggles

which are close to my eyes and protect from any particulate getting into my eyes. and then i wear a face shie. and between all of those layers, being able to actually see somebo's face through the hear their voice and be able to see their eyes-- i mean, i literally now have my name written across the top of my visor and try and make sure tha. my i is showing because people can't even tell it's me. the one other thing that's really hard for me is that the one thing that compromises my mask is if i smile too big and i'm-- i like to smile. so if i smile, i compromise my mask and my safety. 'st i often see people looking at me, like, "whnder there?" you know, it takes away a lot of the humanity of our inraction. it's so hard because i can'tve hem any of the visual cues of reassurance. >> reporter: now that hospitalizations are leveling off what is your biggest concern right now? >> now everyone's saying, "oh, look, it's sl'sowing down. etting better, it's

getting better." but our tremendous fear is that this is not one curve up and down that we're trying to flatten, but thagowe're actually g to see a sine wave. en u blehavee point was to facilities and the capacity within the hospital system to be able to take care of all of those people along that wave without having one spike that devastates our entire healthcare stem. but that sine wave is just going to be a tremendous load on all the healthcare providers. >> reporter: when we last spoke you were aving your family behind and you were going top pickre shifts at the hospital. you weren't sure when you were have you been ableeconnect? >> i have. we, we had a long three week stretch. i'd never been away from them for that long. and when i arrived back, it was st an awesome, wonderf and... seeing them again was st perfect.d... t

leaving again was im it has been so hard in so many ways going through this pandemic, but it's also the community around me, like my neighborhood, people have been rising to such extraordinaryeary night at seven o'clock when people cheer and bang pots otalg about it. and people have brought me, you know, chicken or, or, or roasted vegetables, or people got together and they made us surgical caps. it's-- it's been really awome to see how everyone's come toge.therhank you to everyone ws been supporting us. us really means aot to l of iv>> srean: have you been experiencing vivid dreamirocn? sngdu toconavo videos nhweekendme online on our broadca@wnet.org.st

people t shteringme, and so much uncertainty about wh lies ahead, city leaders are looking for ways to community spirits. the mayor of louisville, kentucky, ought music could help. newshour weekend's christopher booker has more. ♪ ♪ >> reporter: when kentucky started stayingome, the uisville orchestra conductor, teddy abrams, thout that for the first time in a long time, one day where i thought, "well, i guess i am going to have a lot of time on whichmy has and-- never happened in my life-- d then the mayor call. >> reporter: louisville mayor greg fisher was calling abramsid a itiative designed to keep spirits highures dthe sg d heeaa louisville song. you fire out to do that, but can you come up with a song that shs off he talent of our city and the diversity ofurity end really hivos a

it reporedter: abrams ag and then sent off some emails to members of the louisville music community. but then, he says, he wasn't sure what to do next. >> and then i came back home from a bike ridend i went straight to the piano and just said, "i need to come up with somethg."la and i justd the piano track pretty much straight through. i don't really know. we just must have been the right combination ingredients vitsidayate aan as dhet llthny could start conc how they'd a to it. >> reporter: abrams sent this piano tr aack eclectic mix of 29 louisville musicians-- memberofrcs orahesthe,e playert boxer and rock musicians to work on the music. meanwhile, an equally diverse e thp got to work on the lyrics. axjas of mrn fang, rapper jecorey "1200" arthur and will oldham, also known as bonnie "prince" billy." >> teddy sent some music to start withey and then scott ca sent a big, like, chunk of and so, i kind of distilled a

few things, rephrased a few, thind then stuck in the chorus, and then jim sang it. ♪ hard times come hard times go ♪ the hardest things to understand are ♪ the new and the unknown >> reporter: the musicians composednd recorded their parts from home, sending a fileo to abramroducer ben sollee who put together the full track. aftethat, they all recorded videos, whassembled into one coe performanch were then e. ♪ it's only for now it's not forever ♪ >> the sound of louisville that you hear in there s that ther kind of an effortless, eagnessto getting together and, and feeding off of ch other and giving to each her. >> y o have all sor different genres represented in this one 5-6 minute piece of music. you have strings provided by the

losville orchestra. you have teddy abrams, a virtuoso playing piano.ng bonnie prince billy you have myself emceeing, rapping. ♪ what would happf our people banded ♪ no one no one stranded as though abandoned ♪ let's take a minute to make the moment candid ♪ one time for the frontline extra daughter or son time ♪ >> reporter: how did you fiof a ting ouch aoaeap rithhiem t when se tcond, tingtg about where it was appearing in the song? me>>, as aro blacko, american whocends from slavery, whos ie most impacted group of this pandemic, my ancestors used to sing spirituals to, to reflect the sorrow, but also give hope for tomorrow. so when i write music, it's in my d.n.a. anfli use it to t the times that we're going through at that moment. and this song was no di♪fferent. new start for those who done time ♪ no time to play this weak noime to say this sweet ♪dyry ehe rwboe we might lay sit ♪ woo we gonna need ya'll ♪ to get ready we need each other

♪ when the day comes lift up my city like teddy, e, jt w wes te or abrams meilca" the song will be released wodwide tomorrol w. oceeds from its sale will go to the city's response fund. but outside of the financial contribution, teddy abrams believ the song will do much more.s >> t a document of this time. we are all experiencing this obviously simultaneously as a as a world. and i think we've alooked to our artists to put down the markers that that we theuse to understand history. t wrepresent the city se saanhw e ere.theen it's an important ♪ i'm gonna make it through you're gonna make it, too ♪ well, i'm gonna make it through ♪ you're

♪ ♪ >> sreenivasan: th's all for this edition o"pbs newshour weekend." for thet news updates essit pbs.org/nshour. i'm hari lsreenivan. thanks for watching. stay healthy and have a good night. captiong sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz.

sue and edgar wachenheim iii. the cheryl and philip milstein family. rosalind p. walter. charles rosenblum. we try to live in the to not miss what's right in mofrmeont ,of us. at mutual of america, we believe taking care of tomorrow can help you make theost of grou retirement services and investments. prdditional support has been te am ppanicion funded by th tank eryoheu. pbs.

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