This is the Coronavirus Briefing, an informed guide to the global outbreak. Sign up here to get the briefing by email.
-
The S&P 500 hit a record despite economic devastation and record unemployment.
-
Deaths from the coronavirus in American correctional facilities surpassed 1,000, as cases rose to 160,000.
-
Get the latest updates here, as well as maps and trackers for U.S. metro areas and vaccines in development.
Party fouls
Whether it’s illicit raves or pool parties, partying on a large scale has returned to many areas of the world, worrying health officials who say the events are contributing to an uptick in coronavirus cases, particularly among young people.
The scenes of revelry would have been unimaginable a few months ago. In Wuhan, the city in China where the coronavirus outbreak began, hundreds of people recently swam shoulder to shoulder at a cramped pool rave — and no one wore a mask.
Italy was recently forced to shutter its night clubs after an increase in cases — the first significant crackdown since the country came out of lockdown four months ago — and images circulated of people ignoring mask requirements at clubs and social-distancing rules on crowded streets. The median age of people contracting the virus has dropped below 40.
In the United States, people with means continue to fight for their right to party — with their wallets.
A cottage industry of medical concierge services has cropped up in wealthy enclaves in the Hamptons and Manhattan to offer rapid screenings for clients hosting exclusive parties — even as most of the country waits two weeks to get test results.
Meanwhile, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill shut down in-person instruction for undergraduates and moved classes entirely online because of four clusters of infections. A university official told faculty members this week that most of the cases had been traced to the “social sphere of campus life,” according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The New York Times has identified at least 251 cases of the virus tied to fraternities and sororities. “The frats are being frats — they are having their parties,” Lamar Richards, a sophomore at U.N.C., told The Times
How U.S. pooled testing failed
Pooled testing — a decades-old approach that combines samples from multiple people to save time and supplies — was once hailed by the Trump administration and Dr. Anthony Fauci as a solution to America’s persistent testing headaches.
But no longer: The virus is now too widespread in many areas for pooled testing to be effective.
As our colleague Katherine Wu reports, pooled testing works only when a vast majority of batches is negative. If the proportion of positives is too high, more pools will need to have each individual sample retested, eliminating efficiency gains.
In many parts of the country, positivity rates — the proportion of tests that turn up positive — are above 10 percent, which makes pooled testing largely impractical. Many areas are also reporting delays of two weeks or more for test results to be processed.
Still, in New York, where test positivity rates have held at or below 1 percent since June, universities, hospitals, private companies and public health labs are using the technique in a variety of settings, often to catch people who aren’t feeling sick.
The Coronavirus Outbreak ›
Frequently Asked Questions
Updated August 17, 2020
-
Why does standing six feet away from others help?
- The coronavirus spreads primarily through droplets from your mouth and nose, especially when you cough or sneeze. The C.D.C., one of the organizations using that measure, bases its recommendation of six feet on the idea that most large droplets that people expel when they cough or sneeze will fall to the ground within six feet. But six feet has never been a magic number that guarantees complete protection. Sneezes, for instance, can launch droplets a lot farther than six feet, according to a recent study. It's a rule of thumb: You should be safest standing six feet apart outside, especially when it's windy. But keep a mask on at all times, even when you think you’re far enough apart.
-
I have antibodies. Am I now immune?
- As of right now, that seems likely, for at least several months. There have been frightening accounts of people suffering what seems to be a second bout of Covid-19. But experts say these patients may have a drawn-out course of infection, with the virus taking a slow toll weeks to months after initial exposure. People infected with the coronavirus typically produce immune molecules called antibodies, which are protective proteins made in response to an infection. These antibodies may last in the body only two to three months, which may seem worrisome, but that’s perfectly normal after an acute infection subsides, said Dr. Michael Mina, an immunologist at Harvard University. It may be possible to get the coronavirus again, but it’s highly unlikely that it would be possible in a short window of time from initial infection or make people sicker the second time.
-
I’m a small-business owner. Can I get relief?
- The stimulus bills enacted in March offer help for the millions of American small businesses. Those eligible for aid are businesses and nonprofit organizations with fewer than 500 workers, including sole proprietorships, independent contractors and freelancers. Some larger companies in some industries are also eligible. The help being offered, which is being managed by the Small Business Administration, includes the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. But lots of folks have not yet seen payouts. Even those who have received help are confused: The rules are draconian, and some are stuck sitting on money they don’t know how to use. Many small-business owners are getting less than they expected or not hearing anything at all.
-
What are my rights if I am worried about going back to work?
- Employers have to provide a safe workplace with policies that protect everyone equally. And if one of your co-workers tests positive for the coronavirus, the C.D.C. has said that employers should tell their employees -- without giving you the sick employee’s name -- that they may have been exposed to the virus.
-
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.
And there are still more audacious plans to close the testing shortfall. In an article in The Atlantic, Robinson Meyer and Alexis Madrigal report on a proposal to mass-produce inexpensive paper-strip saliva tests and use them on a massive scale, possibly in conjunction with pooled testing.
Resurgences
-
After an increase in infections in the past week, South Korea shut down high-risk facilities such as nightclubs, karaoke rooms and buffet restaurants in the Seoul metropolitan area.
-
Greece locked down two facilities for migrants linked to an outbreak of new infections; another overcrowded reception center was put under lockdown last week.
-
France, which has been experiencing a surge in virus cases, will make mask-wearing mandatory in enclosed office spaces by the end of August.
Here’s a roundup of restrictions in all 50 states.
What else we’re following
-
Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City is facing mounting pressure to delay the start of in-person K-12 school.
-
A new report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention points to economic sectors in which workers are at high risk of infection, including factories, warehouses and building sites.
-
A new study determined that a rare immune syndrome that strikes some children with the virus — known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome — is distinct from both Kawasaki disease and Covid-19 in adults.
-
States are testing a new way to combat the spread of the virus in nursing homes: “Strike teams” that apply an emergency response model traditionally used in natural disasters.
-
Harvard researchers developed a formula to determine how many daily tests a state should be conducting in order to slow the spread of the virus. According to that formula, Idaho is doing the least amount of testing in the country necessary to understand and contain the virus.
-
Residents of Flint, Mich., still reeling after the city’s tainted-water crisis, are now facing a new set of worries related to the coronavirus. The pandemic delayed a project to replace lead service lines, violent crime has spiked and opportunities for work have become even more scarce.
What you’re doing
A dear friend was confiding to me about all the things her 3-year-old grandson was missing out on this year, including no trick-or-treating in October. I told her I’d mail her grandson a small package of candy that he could open on Halloween, and we talked about other friends who could send similar little packages of treats to surprise him with.
— Kathleen Lyons, Queenstown, Md.
Let us know how you’re dealing with the outbreak. Send us a response here, and we may feature it in an upcoming newsletter.
"What" - Google News
August 19, 2020 at 05:52AM
https://ift.tt/3ga2Oph
Coronavirus Briefing: What Happened Today - The New York Times
"What" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3aVokM1
https://ift.tt/2Wij67R
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Coronavirus Briefing: What Happened Today - The New York Times"
Post a Comment