Coronavirus Live Updates: Business Executives Call for More Testing; Trump’s W.H.O. Attack Is Condemned

When the first conference call of Mr. Trump’s economic advisory council on reopening the economy was held Wednesday morning, several business executives echoed a cry that health officials and state and local leaders have been making for weeks, according to one participant: that the country needs more testing.

During the call with business leaders from the worlds of retail, banking, financial services, hospitality and other industries, each executive was given a minute or two to provide his or her overview of what was needed to reopen the economy, according to the participant, who was granted anonymity to describe private communications. There appeared to be a wide consensus that more virus testing was needed, the participant said, to track who was infected and who might have immunity before employees could return to work.

But another issue of great concern to the executives on the call, said this person, was the need to address the liability companies could face if employees were to get sick after returning to work, given the possibility that workers who felt that they were brought back to soon — or were not placed in an adequately safe environment — could sue en masse. Details of the call were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Some executives were unable to join in because of scheduling conflicts. The chief of Goldman Sachs, David M. Solomon, who was leading his own quarterly earnings call during the same time as the White House call, was one of them.

In an indication of his own viewpoint, Mr. Solomon — who noted during his earnings call that he had spoken to about 100 chief executives who are Goldman clients about the effect of the virus — said that “we have to rebuild confidence in people’s security and safety around the virus” and that “unless people feel safe and secure and confident around the virus, the economic impact will continue in some way, shape or form.”

Senate Democrats, meanwhile, unveiled a $30 billion plan on Wednesday to vastly ramp up the development, manufacture and distribution of testing across the country, saying they would push to include it in the next round of government pandemic relief.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/us/coronavirus-cases-update-live.html