In India, the number of infections is now 2 million transmitted. The speed at which the virus has spread across the country of 1.3 billion people is staggering. India reported its first case on 30 January. It took almost six months to reach 1 million cases, then only three weeks to add another million.
Meanwhile, there are now 1 million reported cases in Africa – more than half of them in South Africa – although the World Health Organization said the actual number of infections in the region could be much higher because testing remains a challenge.
And Brazil, the second worst-hit country in the world, is fast approaching 3 million cases and 100,000 deaths.
The figures could be much less. Several U.S. states are seeing an increase in the percentage of tests that return positive, and Drs. Anthony Fauci said this was a predictor of problems ahead. “It’s a clear indication that you’ll get an uptick in cases that inevitably, as we’ve seen in the southern states, lead to electricity, and then you get hospitalizations and then you get dead,” Fauci told CNN yesterday.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now projects more than 181,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States through August 29. That means the CDC expects an average of nearly 1,000 Americans to die each day over the next three weeks.
Further ahead, the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the School of Medicine of the University of Washington sees nearly 300,000 U.S. deaths as of December 1st. It does not have to be this way. The institute said 70,000 lives could be saved between now and December, if only more people started wearing masks.
“Starting today, if 95% of the people in the U.S. wore masks when leaving their homes, that total number would decrease to 228,271 deaths, a drop of 49%,” said IHME Director Dr. Christopher Murray.
YOU ASKED. WE ANSWERED
Q: Should I get a mask with a vent?
IN: No. The CDC does not recommend that people wear masks with valves or valves during the pandemic. The one-way valves can provide more comfort because the valves can escape air from the mask and keep the face cooler, but they also allow the virus to escape.
The CDC encourages people to wear masks so that they do not infect others. Covid-19 spreads mainly through respiratory drops when a person talks, sneezes, sings or coughs. Masks can help stop those respiratory drops.
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What is IMPORTANT today
It’s ok not to be ok
“The idea that what this country is going through doesn’t have to have an effect on us – that we all just have to feel normal all the time – that just doesn’t feel right to me. That I hope you make yourself feel whatever you feel.”
The words of former First Lady Michelle Obama really resonated for many in America and around the world. Obama said she was suffering from a ‘low depression’ caused by concerns about the pandemic, racial relations in the US and the political struggle around it all.
A new Commonwealth Fund report on the impact of the pandemic on mental health found that many adults reported stress, anxiety, or great sadness that had only been difficult to deal with since the outbreak began. But while there were people suffering in each of the 10 developed countries that the researchers looked at, the report found that Americans were much more affected: 33% of Americans said they were anxious, stressed or feel sad. The countries with the next highest levels were Canada and the United Kingdom, both of which reported 26% of people fearful or stressed.
The country with the lowest levels of stress, anxiety and sadness was Norway, where 10% of adults reported these mental health concerns.
Some teachers wrote their own obituaries as part of their prep after school
In addition to all her usual preparations for going back to school this summer, veteran teacher Sarah Backstrom wrote her own obituary and sent it to Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds’ office. Backstrom said she was apprehensive about going back to class after Reynolds issued guidance that said at least half of school instruction should be carried out in person – and that schools can not apply for online-only education unless the positivity figures of the province were 15% or higher.
She is one of the group of educators in America who dreams of starting school this year. Teachers in Gwinnett County, Georgia are protesting the district’s plan for students to return to school, even though hundreds of neighborhood staff have tested positive for Covid-19 or are in quarantine because of potential exposure. The teachers and their families gathered yesterday – in their cars – in Suwanee yesterday, honking their horns and displaying signs to express their displeasure with the district’s recent decision to phase out face-to-face instruction.
And when a high school student in Dallas, Georgia shared a photo of a hallway full of maskless students at her school, she was arrested. “I was concerned for the safety of everyone in that building and everyone in the province because precautionary measures that the CDC and guidelines that the CDC has been telling us for months have not been followed,” Hannah Watters said.
What’s new on the fax front
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged every nation that eventually produces a viable coronavirus vaccine to share it with the world. “Any country that could find this vaccine and not make it around the world without restriction … will be terribly judged by history,” Morrison said at a news conference today.
Meanwhile in Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro said the experimental vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca was available to Brazilians from “December to January” – and that once that happened, the pandemic “would be overcome” in a issue of weeks. The vaccine is currently being tested in phase three in Brazil.
In the US, President Trump said yesterday that he was “optimistic” a fax would be ready around election day on November 3, even because his own experts urged caution.
As of this week, there are 26 vaccines in human studies around the world and a further 139 are in pre-clinical studies.
US recommends ‘Do Not Travel’. But where can Americans go?
After more than four months, the US State Department yesterday lifted its advisory warning of US citizens traveling abroad. The department announced the Level 4: Do Not Travel advisory – the highest level – on March 19, urging US citizens not to travel overseas due to the coronavirus pandemic.
But even if the advice is lifted, U.S. travelers remain severely restricted in countries worldwide because of the severity of the crisis in the US.
The European Union has blocked entry for American tourists, and the United Kingdom requires U.S. travelers to be quarantined for 14 days.
There are also restrictions on non-essential travel between the US and its neighbors to the north and south – Canada and Mexico – until at least the end of August.
ON OUR RADAR
- The latest US jobs report will be released today. Economists predict the U.S. will add 1.6 million jobs in July, a sharp drop from the 4.8 million added in June. Data released yesterday showed another 1.2 million Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits.
- Facebook will let employees work from home until July 2021. The company, along with Google, Twitter and others, is offering that option to workers.
- Working parents are struggling right now. One company is trying to help by opening a daycare.
- A seven-year-old boy with no underlying health conditions died of Covid-19 in Georgia, the youngest victim in the state.
- Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps told CNN’s coronavirus town hall that maintaining a normal routine helped him deal with the pandemic.
- Authorities in Los Angeles will soon be able to request a closure of water and power from homes and businesses hosting parties and other incredibly large gatherings.
- NFL players had until yesterday to decide whether to opt for the 2020 season due to the coronavirus pandemic. 66 have taken the step.
- Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine tested positive for coronavirus shortly before he was scheduled to meet with President Donald Trump. He then tested negative in a second test.
- Three CNN heroes navigate pandemic barriers to provide a lifeline for those who are behind bars and returning home.
- 147 inmates at Mississippi Jail test positive for Covid-19
TOP TIPS
In this longer period of shifts and scheduling, in which many of us no longer “work” or go to school than many from anywhere else, time feels more and more fluid.
CNN’s David Allan shares a simple hack he used to wrestle control over his days in the service of certain activities and projects he wants to accomplish.
TODAY’S PODCAST
“The schools were incredibly good at communication … I got an aerial photo of the school with entrances and exits marked with all the wash stations, with all the guidelines for the children, with all the numbers of children who were allowed to be together, the distancing rules. “- Susanne Gargiulo, a journalist in Denmark
School life in Denmark during a pandemic looks a little different. CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta talks to Susanne Gargiulo, a journalist in Denmark, about how her country has successfully re-established schools. Listen now.
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