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1. Spot Gold has traded between $1,708 and $1,681 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific, the yellow metal is off its overnight lows, down $15 an ounce at $1,702…Spot Gold has narrowed the gap with Gold futures, signalling hopes for an improvement in strained supply chain logistics that have hampered bullion shipments to the United States to meet contract requirements…Silver, with strong new support at $15, has slipped 23 cents to $15.27…Copper and Nickel have firmed up…Copper has gained 4 cents to $2.34 while Nickel has jumped a dime to $5.39…Zinc is up a penny at 88 cents while Cobalt is steady at $13.38…Crude Oil remains under pressure due to global demand concerns, down another $1.62 a barrel to $18.25…the U.S. Dollar Index has retreated one-third of a point to 99.69…President Trump gave governors a road map yesterday for recovering from the economic pain of the Wuhan COVID-19 pandemic, laying out “a phased and deliberate approach” to restoring normal activity in places that have strong testing and are seeing a decrease in COVID-19 cases…“We’re starting our life again,” Trump said during his daily press briefing…“We’re starting rejuvenation of our economy again”…he added, however, that “this is a gradual process”…the new guidelines are aimed at easing restrictions in areas with low transmission of the virus, while holding the line in harder-hit locations…they make clear that the return to normalcy will be a longer process than many envisioned, with federal officials warning that some social distancing measures may need to remain in place through the end of the year to prevent a new outbreak…and they largely reinforce the plans already under development by governors, who have the primary responsibility for public health in their states…China’s math problem – facing heat over fake numbers, China has suddenly increased its “official” virus death total by nearly 50% to 4,632…the real number is believed to at least 10 times higher…there have been claims of city officials in Wuhan paying off families in exchange for their silence…from the start of this virus in Wuhan late last year to today, China’s Communist Party has repeatedly lied to the world and engaged in the costliest government cover-up ever, supported by the World Health Organization (WHO) which, shamefully, has had unrelenting support from the Trudeau government in Canada…

2. Since the Cultural Revolution ended in the mid-1970’s, China’s economy, fueled by market reforms, has notched up more than 4 decades of unbroken gains, enlarging the domestic economy by roughly a hundredfold and transforming the world…that winning streak is over…China today reported a 6.8% year-over-year contraction in its economy for the first 3 months of the year…of course, numbers from China can’t be trusted anymore (-6.8% may have been –16.8%, who knows) but the fact is that China has experienced its first quarterly decline in GDP since since official record-keeping began in 1992, and likely the first since Mao Zedong’s death in 1976…the fall was even steeper compared with the previous quarter: a 9.8% pullback as the virus that first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan spread across the country and around the world, delivering an economic blow unprecedented in modern times…“The scale and breadth of China’s economic contraction are staggering,” said Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University and the former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division…“There is little prospect of China driving a revival of global growth”…after shuttering Wuhan and enforcing a strict, roughly 2-month nationwide shutdown of all but the most essential commercial activity, China has largely returned to work but reports suggest it’s far from business as usual…nonetheless, the communist government reported today that industrial production was down just 1.1% in March compared with last year…other metrics, such as daily power production and coal consumption, have regained all or most of last year’s levels – again, that’s the claim by the CCP…

3. The experimental COVID-19 treatment remdesivir is showing promise in a Chicago clinical trial, according to the health news site STAT…it reported that patients in the trial experienced rapid recoveries from fever and respiratory symptoms…nearly all patients were discharged in less than a week, it said..the news has sent shares of remdesivir developer Gilead Sciences (GILD, NASDAQ) up $6.47 to $83.01 as of 7:00 am Pacific…getting any kind of COVID-19 vaccine to market, however, won’t happen this year…meanwhile, French drugmaker Sanofi expects to produce up to 600 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine in 2021 if its clinical trials with GSK go as planned, CEO Paul Hudson told CNBC this morning…“We believe we’re one of the few companies who will be able to make a vaccine at a huge scale,” he said during an interview on “Squawk Box”…Sanofi and GSK announced Tuesday that they entered into an agreement to jointly create a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of next year…the companies plan to start clinical trials in the 2nd half of 2020 and, if successful, make it available to the public by the 2nd half of 2021…

4. Spain’s health ministry says the total number of cases in the country have jumped to 188,068, up from 182,816 yesterday…second only to the U.S. worldwide, Spain has recorded the highest number of Wuhan Covid-19 infections in Europe…earlier today, Spain’s social security minister said the government would try to support roughly 1 million of the poorest households with a monthly basic wage…the UK announced a further 3-week extension of its lockdown yesterday as the number of daily confirmed cases remained steady at around 5,000…the death toll however, has remained consistently high with another 861 people losing their lives yesterday…the total now stands at 13,729…Indonesia’s health ministry has confirmed 407 new coronavirus cases, taking the country’s total number of infections to 5,923….pandemic problems are escalating in Russia…officially, the country has registered more than 25,000 cases and 198 deaths, but many doctors and local officials believe those numbers don’t reflect the true extent of the outbreak which is clearly getting worse there…aside from its ethnic cousins in Belarus or Ukraine, there may be no other European country less capable of combating the pandemic than Russia…the average lifespan of a Russian male is 66 years…Russians, and especially Russian men, are known to have weak hearts, bad livers and high rates of cancer…we don’ know everything yet about COVID-19, but we do know that these 3 medical problems make people more susceptible to complications from this pernicious infection…Turkey is also still firmly in the acceleration phase as it registered a record 125 deaths yesterday…for the 9th straight day the country has recorded more than 4,000 new cases…meanwhile, Latin America is a mess when it comes to the Wuhan COVID-19 virus…Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro fired his health minister yesterday after clashing with him over how to fight the virus, and again called for states to end stay-at-home orders that he said were hurting the economy…the spread of the Wuhan virus in Brazil has accelerated to 30,425 confirmed cases, with some 200 fatalities per day bringing the death toll to 1,924 through yesterday, according to Health Ministry data…that’s the highest reported death toll in Latin America…

5. With hundreds of bodies left decaying in homes for days due to lack of space in the city’s overwhelmed morgues and hospitals, the Wuhan virus has struck a massive blow to Ecuador’s economic capital Quayaquil, now a symbol of the chaos the pandemic can unleash among Latin America’s poor…the Pacific port city has become the epicenter of South America’s struggle as the pandemic gradually tightens its grip on the region…in Guayaquil, which has a very high population density, the virus has struck particularly hard…the stench of death floats around the hospitals…long lines of vehicles form outside the cemeteries, loaded with cardboard coffins…for days, hundreds of bodies were left at home, or in the streets where they fell, wrapped in black plastic…hampered by a strict 15-hour curfew, funeral services were overwhelmed and the health sector, lacking funds and personnel, simply collapsed…nearly 800 corpses have been removed from homes in the city over the past couple of weeks, a government official announced late Sunday, though that figure is believed to be significantly higher…the grim task of removal has been handed to a special force of troops and police hastily set up last week, in response to videos posted on social media by panicked residents of bodies lying in the streets…officially, Ecuador has reported just over 400 deaths and 8,000 cases, but those numbers are believed to be grossly understated at this point…a large number of Ecuadoreans work overseas…as the contagion spread during February to Europe and the U.S., where Ecuadoreans work due to lack of jobs at home, they started returning home…controls at the airports were insufficient…their unscreened entry in the country unfortunately resulted in a swift and severe escalation of the coronavirus pandemic…

6. The Dow has jumped 558 points as of 7:00 am Pacific…Boeing (BA, NYSE) is up more than 10% after the airplane maker said it would resume production in the Seattle area as early as April 20…in Toronto, the TSX has gained 345 points while the Venture has added 1 point to 445…in a sweeping reversal of Canopy Growth’s (WEED, TSX; CGC, NYSE) once grandiose international growth strategy, the company announced yesterday it will shut down much of its cannabis and hemp operations abroad in an effort to rein in spending and keep supply in check as the legal cannabis sector continues to experience sluggish growth…the Smiths Falls, Ontario-based licensed producer will either scale back or close down operations in New York, Saskatchewan, Colombia, South Africa and Lesotho, the company said in a statement…Canopy will continue to operate internationally in Europe, Australia and Latin America on a much smaller scale through its Spectrum Therapeutics medical brand…Newmont (NGT, TSX; NEM, NYSE) is looking to restart in as soon as days some of the 4 Canadian and South American Gold mines that it shut last month to curb the spread of the Wuhan virus…

7. The Financial Times reported this morning that Public Health England has been given 1 week to disclose the details of how much the government paid for Covid-19 antibody tests, who they were bought from and how much money has been recovered after the devices were deemed not fit for purpose…Greg Clark, chair of the science and technology committee, wrote to Kathy Hall, PHE’s director of COVID-19 testing strategy, to ask for details, after she admitted in an inquiry hearing that the government was attempting to recoup money spent on the tests…Hall has until April 23 to respond…after ordering 17.5 million antibody (serological) blood tests, the government conceded that none had proven effective enough to be used…scientists in Oxford had been validating tests from 9 companies, including Wondfo and SureScreen…today, the Department of Health confirmed that at least 500,000 tests had been imported from China, but did not confirm nor deny a report that $20 million had been spent on 2 million tests from 2 companies alone…in his letter, Clark asked for details of how many and which companies had signed contracts with the government, how much was spent, how much money had been recovered so far and “why it was considered necessary to commit to pay for the antibody tests in advance of their effectiveness and accuracy being proven”…just one more reason why Sona Nanotech (SONA, CSE) is set the explode after imminent validation of its antigen-based COVID-19 test, backed by the credibility of GE and expected to be the leading brand in the COVID-19 space for lateral flow tests…

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