This is the Coronavirus Briefing, an informed guide to the global outbreak. Sign up here to get the briefing by email.
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Pharmaceutical executives told the U.S. Congress a coronavirus vaccine might be ready within six months.
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U.S. officials accused two hackers of trying to steal vaccine data for China.
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E.U. leaders have agreed to a landmark $857 billion stimulus package to rescue their economies.
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Get the latest updates here, as well as maps and trackers for U.S. metro areas and vaccines in development.
Transmission among the troops
As the coronavirus surges across the United States, the military is emerging as a potential source of outbreaks both at home and abroad. Since April, the infection rate among the country’s military services has doubled, and more than 20,000 members have tested positive for the virus.
The U.S. is the only country in the world with a military presence in dozens of other countries, and outbreaks have emerged on bases in Japan and South Korea, and in war zones including Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
There is also evidence that the military may be spreading the virus domestically. Officials in Georgia and California have traced outbreaks to local bases, which can be ideal environments for the virus to spread. Barracks are tightly packed, intense elbow-to-elbow training sessions are the norm, and recruits often head off base to socialize at bars and beaches.
Our colleague Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a former Marine who covers the military, said that military bases generally followed public health guidelines at higher rates than the communities that surround them. But members of the military skew younger, he said, and as with young people across the country, many are exhausted by lockdowns and want to get back to normal life.
“The invincibility complex is there, how could it not be?” he told us. “I think if you’re fine with joining and going into harm’s way, then you’re probably fine with getting the virus.”
Exporting the virus to bases abroad may also damage America’s relationships with local populations, he added.
“It adds to the quiver of issues of having American troops stationed in your country,” Thomas said. “If you’re in Germany or Okinawa, there’s usually a benefit to having troops there, but this is one more thing for people there to ask, ‘Well, what is the benefit?’”
Many U.S. cases aren’t being recorded
Epidemiologists have long believed that the actual number of virus cases in the U.S. is much higher than the official count, which is currently more than 3.8 million. Now, a new analysis based on antibody tests, the largest of its kind to date, has proved them right.
The study, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that the number of infections in different parts of the country was two to 13 times higher than the reported case count, suggesting that many people who were asymptomatic or did not seek treatment might have helped spread the virus.
But the findings also indicated that the virus has touched relatively few people — only 2 to 3 percent — in many regions, including South Florida. New York City showed a rate of 23.3 percent, but even that is far from achieving herd immunity, which experts say could happen once 60 percent of a population has been exposed.
A plea for standardization. Dr. Thomas Frieden, a former C.D.C. director, called on state health officials today to adopt uniform data reporting guidelines for the virus, which other public health experts have said were long overdue.
A nonprofit health advocacy group that Dr. Frieden now runs concluded that states report only 40 percent of the data needed to fight the pandemic. In an Op-Ed for The Times, he outlined the 15 indicators that his organization recommends should be regularly collected and published.
Resurgences
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As cases accelerate in Hidalgo County in Texas, the top executive has ordered residents to stay home, imposed a curfew and asked nonessential businesses to shut down.
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Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami said the city would assign 39 police officers to a new unit dedicated to mask enforcement.
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Mississippi reported more than 1,630 cases today, a record for the state.
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President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines said the police would arrest people for not wearing masks in public.
Here’s a roundup of restrictions in all 50 states.
What else we’re following
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The World Health Organization has sent two experts to China to lay the groundwork for an investigation into the origins of the virus, but it’s unclear how much access they’ll get.
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The Times health reporter Jan Hoffman explains why developing a vaccine may be easier than persuading people to use it on today’s episode of “The Daily.”
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According to a new study, Covid-19 patients are prone to problems with blood clots.
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Early in the pandemic, a temporary hospital in New York was set up for $52 million. But during the month it was open, it served only 79 patients, highlighting a series of government missteps.
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Asian-Americans have faced a surge of harassment linked to the virus, but with little action from the federal government, public service ads and social media campaigns are stepping in.
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Two neighboring communities in the Houston area have had very different experiences during Texas’ outbreak, underscoring how the virus is a magnifier of inequities.
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The public health campaigns that promoted seatbelts, helmets and condoms can inform how to make mask-wearing routine, experts say.
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Which U.S. airlines are packing planes, and which are keeping seats open to reduce virus risks? Here’s a guide.
What you’re doing
We live up in the mountains of Colorado. To help pull our neighborhood together safely, we took a cabin on our property and turned it into a Little Free Library. All of our neighbors came together (at a safe distance, of course) and donated books and furniture, so now we have a snug little place to take turns visiting, borrow a book or a game or a video, and share in chats what we find meaningful about it.
— Mary Ann O’Rourke, Evergreen, Colo.
Let us know how you’re dealing with the outbreak. Send us a response here, and we may feature it in an upcoming newsletter.
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