The world passes a gruesome milestone. One week could’ve saved 36,000 American lives. And scientists are hopeful about finding an effective vaccine quickly. Here are this morning’s updates on coronavirus:
- More than 100,000 coronavirus cases were reported to the World Health Organization in the previous 24 hours, “the most in a single day since the outbreak began,” Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said yesterday. The world now has more than 5 million confirmed cases, with almost 329,000 deaths and 1.9 million recoveries. Here in the U.S., we’ve had 1.55 million confirmed cases. More than 93,000 Americans have died, and more than 294,000 have recovered.
- Going into lockdown just one week earlier could have saved at least 36,000 American lives. Even small differences in timing would have prevented the worst exponential growth, researchers found.
- Two new polls show most Americans don’t feel ready to reopen the country. The first finds that two-thirds of Americans don’t expect their daily lives to return to normal for at least six months, and as states reopen, three-quarters are concerned that a second wave of coronavirus cases will emerge. And in the second poll, 83% of Americans say they’re at least somewhat concerned that lifting restrictions in their area will lead to additional infections, with 54% saying they are very or extremely concerned that such steps will result in a spike of COVID-19 cases.
- The CDC is conflating viral and antibody tests, compromising a few crucial metrics that governors depend on to reopen their economies. Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, and other states are doing the same.
- Dallas, Houston, Southeast Florida’s Gold Coast, the entire state of Alabama, and several other places in the South that have been rapidly reopening their economies are in danger of a second wave of coronavirus infections over the next four weeks, according to a research team that uses cellphone data to track social mobility and forecast the trajectory of the pandemic.
- Guidance for reopening houses of worship amid the coronavirus pandemic has been put on hold after a disagreement between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the White House, which was resistant to putting limits on religious institutions, according to administration officials.
- Scientists are increasingly optimistic that a vaccine can be produced in record time. But getting it manufactured and distributed will pose huge challenges. The U.S. has secured almost a third of AstraZeneca’s one billion possible COVID-19 vaccine doses by pledging up to $1.2 billion, as the world’s biggest powers scramble for medicinal supplies to get their economies back to work. President Trump’s talk of developing a vaccine at “warp speed” has led the anti-vaccine movement and some others into forswearing it. In the meanwhile, a top scientist here warned that governments shouldn’t count on a successful vaccine being developed anytime soon when deciding whether to ease restrictions.
- Nursing homes in the U.S. where African-Americans and Latinos make up a significant portion of the residents — no matter their location, no matter their size, no matter their government rating — have been twice as likely to get hit by the coronavirus as those where the population is overwhelmingly white.
- New York officials tapped reality television star Bethenny Frankel to find masks for medical workers. She found a global bazaar of ex-cons and exaggerations.
- The lockdown’s quiet roads proved too tempting for speeders, leading to a spike of motor vehicle fatalities per miles driven.
- The practice of contact tra