This is the Coronavirus Briefing, an informed guide to the pandemic. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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Italy’s daily new cases topped 2,000 for the first time since April.
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New York City became the first major U.S. city to reopen all its schools.
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The heads of two vaccines companies, Pfizer and Moderna, distanced themselves from President Trump’s comments at the presidential debate on Tuesday that a vaccine was “weeks away.”
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Get the latest updates here, as well as maps and trackers for U.S. metro areas and vaccines in development.
Roadblocks in the American recovery
The American economy is continuing to show signs of struggle, and many economists are becoming increasingly anxious about the months ahead.
After lockdowns squelched businesses and left tens of millions of people unemployed in the spring, the economy began to bounce back in May and June, but then gradually lost steam this summer. The slump is leaving experts uneasy, as is an uptick in infections and fears of a second wave this fall.
And there’s another bad omen: a fresh round of corporate layoffs. Companies including Disney, the insurance giant Allstate, and United and American airlines announced in recent days that they were firing or furloughing more than 60,000 workers. Separately, the Labor Department reported that 787,000 Americans had applied for unemployment benefits last week. While that number is slightly less than the previous week, it continues to reflect the highest level of unemployment in decades.
These new layoffs, experts say, signal anxiety around the uncertainty of further relief, and more jobs are predicted to be lost if Congress cannot agree on a new stimulus package. Last-ditch negotiations between the White House and congressional Democrats continue, but so far a deal has remained elusive.
Still, the American economy is not all doom and gloom.
Personal spending was up 1 percent, consumer confidence is on the rise, and the housing market in some parts of the country is booming, helped by low mortgage rates. And our economics reporter Ben Casselman says the Labor Department is expected to report tomorrow that 850,000 people were hired in August. If true, it would mean the economy has recovered just over half of the more than 22 million jobs lost at the height of the pandemic in the spring.
A setback for rapid spit tests
For months, public health experts have eagerly awaited the development of fast tests of saliva that could be used at home.
Spit tests, much less uncomfortable than the standard deep nasal swab tests, would greatly expand the number of people getting tested, the experts said, and some even argued that they could be as effective as a vaccine in leading us back to some sort of normalcy.
But two companies that are developing at-home tests, E25Bio and OraSure, recently abandoned an approach using saliva because the technology didn’t work as well as anticipated. Studies differ, but it may be that there just isn’t as much virus present in saliva compared to fluid from the nasal cavity.
Still, some backers are not giving up.
Saliva does seem to work in lab tests known as PCR, which detects bits of the virus’s genetic material rather than looking for virus proteins, or antigens. Such tests have successfully screened members of the N.B.A. and students at the University of Illinois. Unfortunately, they run into the same issues as any other lab test — bottlenecks for supplies like swabs or processing that mean it can take days to get results. Other organizations are working on saliva tests that are more portable or can give faster results, but they often require fancy and expensive equipment.
“Saliva has its benefits,” said Jennifer Dien Bard, director of the clinical microbiology and virology laboratory at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. “But like with every test, we really need to be cautious about thinking it’s the holy grail.”
Resurgences
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More than one in 200 people in England, about 0.55 percent of the country’s population, have the coronavirus, according to the latest update from the country’s largest study of Covid-19.
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The mayor of Moscow ordered companies to send home 30 percent of their workers — and anybody older than 65 or with an underlying condition — after the number of virus cases in the capital doubled over the past week.
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Turkey has acknowledged that it was not making all confirmed coronavirus cases public in its daily announced tally, but counting only those patients showing symptoms. The country has recorded at least 318,000 confirmed cases and nearly 8,200 deaths.
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Madrid, the epicenter of Spain’s outbreak, is challenging a national decree that would lock down the capital and prevent residents of the area from traveling to other parts of the country.
Here’s a roundup of restrictions in all 50 states.
What else we’re following
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An analysis by Cornell University researchers found that President Trump was the largest driver of falsehoods involving the pandemic.
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Vladimir V. Putin, the president of Russia, claims to be conquering the pandemic, but he inhabits a virus-free bubble, rarely leaving home.
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CNBC spoke with five participants in vaccine trials (three in Moderna’s and two in Pfizer’s) who said they experienced uncomfortable and sometimes intense side effects — but said getting the shot was worth it.
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New York and New Jersey are the latest states where residents can use their smartphones to track whether they have come close to someone with the virus.
What you’re doing
At the very beginning of the pandemic, just days before the stay-at-home order was made, a man at work sent me a message telling me how he felt about me. I had been curious about him, so we started taking socially distant walks, wearing masks. We eventually started holding hands wearing gloves, and we fell in love before we even kissed. We’re getting married next May!
— Jessica Van Antwerp, Boulder, Co.
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