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During the pandemic, Ars has done everything possible to keep you up to date with the most important news. But there are definitely gaps in our coverage: small updates to the stories we have covered, or news we have decided was not worth the time to report deeply. Focusing on the latest news also limits our opportunity to provide a broader perspective. To compensate for this, we will try to make a series of updates on Mondays to help you stay informed.
You can read Ars Complete coronavirus frequently asked questions, or explore all our coronavirus coverage.
Covid-19 Coverage
Current counts: 3.5 million confirmed cases worldwide; 1.15 million of those in the United States. 250,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19; 62,000 deaths in the United States.
Global trends
On Friday, the World Health Organization released its declaration of a global health emergency. SARS-CoV-2 is now actively transmitted on all inhabited continents, and many new cases are occurring in developing countries in Africa and South America, which have more limited healthcare systems and much less testing capacity. Therefore, it is difficult to know how much the virus is spreading in these countries (to be fair, it is difficult to know how fast it is also spreading in many developed countries).
In Europe, the image is mixed. Russia has seen more than 10,000 new cases diagnosed in a single day, a record for that country. Meanwhile, several countries that were heavily affected in the early period of the pandemic appear to have had new infections under control. France, Italy and Spain have seen their daily death count drop to numbers not seen since early March, allowing them to begin planning to lift some restrictions on public life.
Updates
Last week, we covered the announcement of a clinical trial that found a drug called remdesivir reduces the recovery time of patients with COVID-19. On May 1, the United States Food and Drug Administration issued an Emergency Use Authorization for the drug. This will allow hospitals to administer it to patients with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19. Cases should be considered severe and the drug will be administered intravenously. There are linked fact sheets for patients and healthcare workers on that page that contain information on dosage and side effects.
Research news
A large American consortium (with some help from France and the United Kingdom) discovered all the human proteins that we could target with drugs to treat COVID-19. To reproduce, the virus has to rely on human proteins. To find out which ones, the authors tagged 26 of the 29 proteins encoded by SARS-CoV-2, then used them to extract any human protein with which the virus’s proteins interacted. This resulted in a list of 332 human proteins that the virus may need to reproduce. Of that number, 66 are already drug targets; 29 of them are already approved for human use, and 12 are in clinical trials for other disorders.
This does not mean that these drugs do anything to SARS-CoV-2 or that they are even safe to use in patients with COVID-19, but it does help to provide a rational reason to accelerate further detection.
US response
For several weeks, the Trump administration had touted its ability to keep the number of deaths in the United States below the predictions of some models, bringing the lower limit of possible deaths to 60,000. With that number surpassed last week, President Trump on Sunday used a virtual town hall to recognize that things would be worse, but hopefully not much worse. Trump calculated his new estimate between 75,000 and 100,000 deaths in total. With many states showing a long plateau of cases, the lower end of that estimate no longer seems realistic.
To see what their status is on both government orders and the number of cases, The New York Times has created a follow-up page.
Last week, the current tension about congressional oversight of the administration escalated to the pandemic response for the first time. Congress had requested testimony from Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; The Trump administration has now declined to make it available for testimony. Fauci has been a leading spokesperson for the government’s response, and his accurate information and discreet delivery have made him a reliable source and allowed him to correct Trump’s mistakes without obvious consequences. Management says Fauci’s time is better spent on the pandemic.
