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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After three months of slow declines, unemployment claims rose last week, with 1.4 million new applications.
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President Trump canceled the part of the Republican National Convention planned for Jacksonville, Fla., where cases have been rising sharply.
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In Israel, new daily cases have risen to new heights, passing 2,000 on Wednesday.
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Get the latest updates here, as well as maps and trackers for U.S. metro areas and vaccines in development.
The view from the U.S. gets bleaker
Grim milestones keep coming. The total U.S. case count surpassed four million on Thursday, with one million infections added in the last two and a half weeks alone. Virus-related deaths and hospitalizations are also rising at alarming rates.
More Covid-19 patients are on track to be hospitalized in the U.S. than at any point in the pandemic, with daily numbers hovering near the peak of 59,940 reached on April 15. Public health experts say detailed local data on hospitalizations is critical during the pandemic, but federal officials have not made those numbers public. To see where people are falling seriously ill, The Times gathered data for nearly 50 metropolitan areas, revealing just how far the devastation has spread.
“You can debate case counts and talk about how they may be underreported. You can debate testing,” Lazaro Gamio, a graphics editor who worked on the project, told us. “But hospitalizations are the real-time measure for how bad things are.”
More people in hospitals eventually translates to more deaths. Nearly 144,000 people in the U.S. have died from the virus, and the daily number has steadily grown over the past several weeks. The uptick follows a national case surge that began in June: The U.S. now averages over 66,000 new infections a day — more than double a month ago — and 39 states are seeing upward trends.
About 60 percent of hospitalizations are now concentrated in the South, according to the Covid Tracking Project, which is run by The Atlantic and collects state hospitalization data. The hardest-hit parts of Texas and Florida have approached the peak per capita rates of hospitalization in New York City in the spring. Some facilities have had to set up tents, send patients to neighboring states and bring in mobile morgues.
The demographics are also shifting. People younger than 50 made up almost 40 percent of the hospitalizations earlier this month, compared with 26 percent in late April.
Dubious treatments surge in Latin America
With more than three million infections and 160,000 deaths, Latin America is one of the hardest-hit regions in the world. Relatively few people can afford high-quality medical care, so dubious medicines and pet theories to fight the virus are proliferating in the vacuum. Potentially harmful treatments are being promoted by political leaders of all stripes, whether out of a genuine belief in the remedies, to offer hope or to deflect blame.
In Bolivia, people lined up outside pharmacies to buy chlorine dioxide, a bleach normally used to disinfect swimming pools and floors — even after 10 people were hospitalized after ingesting it. Peru’s government has purchased and promoted ivermectin, usually used against intestinal worms, even though the World Health Organization has said it should not be used to treat the virus. Some Peruvians have been buying a veterinary version on the black market.
Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, has relentlessly promoted the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine, long a favorite of President Trump, which has not been found to help against the virus and can be dangerous for some patients. Governments in El Salvador, Peru and Paraguay have also bought the drug to use for the coronavirus.
In Venezuela, the government requires patients with Covid-19 symptoms to take interferon alfa-2b, a virus and cancer medicine obtained from its ally Cuba, which has shown no definitive benefit in treating the coronavirus.
The Coronavirus Outbreak ›
Frequently Asked Questions
Updated July 23, 2020
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What is school going to look like in September?
- It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California’s two largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There’s no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.
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Is the coronavirus airborne?
- The coronavirus can stay aloft for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, mounting scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain super-spreading events reported in meatpacking plants, churches and restaurants. It’s unclear how often the virus is spread via these tiny droplets, or aerosols, compared with larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech. Aerosols are released even when a person without symptoms exhales, talks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have outlined the evidence in an open letter to the World Health Organization.
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What are the symptoms of coronavirus?
- Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.
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What’s the best material for a mask?
- Scientists around the country have tried to identify everyday materials that do a good job of filtering microscopic particles. In recent tests, HEPA furnace filters scored high, as did vacuum cleaner bags, fabric similar to flannel pajamas and those of 600-count pillowcases. Other materials tested included layered coffee filters and scarves and bandannas. These scored lower, but still captured a small percentage of particles.
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Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?
- So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.
“The people feel desperate when confronted with Covid-19,” said Santiago Ron, an Ecuadorean biology professor. “They are very vulnerable to pseudoscientific promises.”
Resurgences
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At one convent in Michigan, 13 nuns have died of Covid-19.
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Belgium is facing a second wave of the virus and has ordered people to wear masks at outdoor markets and on commercial streets, Politico reports. Restaurants, bars and hotels have also been told to collect customers’ phone numbers to aid contact tracing.
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In Israel, new daily cases have risen to new heights, passing 2,000 on Wednesday. The Knesset passed a law that expands the government’s powers in imposing virus restrictions and that lessens parliamentary oversight of them, infuriating the opposition.
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Romania reported more than 1,000 new cases on Wednesday, a daily milestone, and may reimpose lockdowns.
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Cases in Spain have quadrupled over the last month, with more than 200 local outbreaks that skew toward younger people, raising fears of asymptomatic transmission. Hundreds of thousands of people have been returned to lockdown.
Here’s a roundup of restrictions in all 50 states.
What else we’re following
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The White House and Senate Republicans neared agreement on a new economic rescue proposal that reflects a significant White House retreat on tax cuts, testing and schools. It includes another round of stimulus payments to individuals, additional aid to small businesses and a partial extension of enhanced unemployment benefits.
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As Mr. Trump calls for schools to reopen fully for in-person instruction in the fall, his son’s school says it will not.
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A fierce battle over masks is taking place among Texas Republicans, with Gov. Greg Abbott under attack from within his own party.
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The virus is reshaping smoking. In the U.S., 83 percent of smokers say a case of Covid-19 in their household influenced their desire to quit, Bloomberg reports.
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The four-month moratorium on evictions is set to expire at the end of this week, but landlords are already getting a head start on forcing renters out.
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Hand sanitizer is the accessory of the pandemic. Here are some new upscale options that also smell good.
What you’re doing
My dad and I took my 1964 camper apart and restored it together. I had not done a project with my father since I was a child (so about 35 years ago), and this gave us a wonderful chance to reconnect, as he is 70.
— Dacia Hayslip, Ventura, Calif.
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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