“The normal road to developing new drugs is often a long one—and one that frequently meanders into dead ends and costly mistakes with no guarantees of success,” according to TIME senior health writer Alice Park. That makes the race for a COVID-19 therapeutic all the more noteworthy: with unprecedented speed and under trying circumstances, the search for a treatment has grown incredibly robust and diverse.
There is not yet any proven way to cure or treat COVID-19, but researchers are leaving no stone unturned. As Park writes in her comprehensive breakdown of treatment research, some teams are recycling drugs used to treat Ebola, malaria, the flu and cancer in hopes that they also work against the virus that causes COVID-19, while others are using machine-learning techniques to analyze both existing and in-development drugs for potential efficacy against the virus.
Other groups are using the human body as a drug of its own. In New York City, doctors are hoping that blood donated by people who have recovered from COVID-19 can provide antibodies that help those still suffering recover from the disease. One New Jersey company is turning to an even more experimental option: placental cells that could in theory strengthen the body’s immune response enough to fight off coronavirus.
Promising though they may be, none of these potential therapies can match the impact of a vaccine, which would prevent large swaths of the population from getting sick in the first place. Scientists across the globe are hard at work on vaccine development too, but that process is so long and arduous that it could be years before the average person gets vaccinated. If proven effective, drugs both experimental and established could buy us valuable time until then.
The number of COVID-19 cases worldwide continues to inch closer to 2 million, with more than 1.9 million illnesses and almost 120,000 deaths reported as of Monday night.
Here is every country with over 20,000 confirmed cases, as of Monday 8 PM eastern time:
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said today that his country’s lockdown of 1.3 billion people will continue at least until May 3, though there may be some flexibility for wage and agricultural workers who need to travel to their jobs.
As countries around the world try to flatten their curves, the International Monetary Fund is predicting 2020 will be the worst year for the global economy since the Great Depression almost a century ago. The group’s projections say the global economy will shrink by 3% this year (for comparison, the dip during the 2009 recession was only 0.1%). Though uncertainty remains, IMF does predict the economy could recover and begin to grow again by 2021.
In a bit of good news, the World Health Organization said Monday that 70 COVID-19 vaccine candidates are in development around the world, and three have already progressed to human trials. Still, there’s a long way to go before one is ready for widespread distribution.
The Situation in the United States
More than 580,000 people in the U.S. had contracted COVID-19, and more than 23,000 had died from it as of the evening of April 13.
Two groups of governors, one on the East Coast and one on the West, have formed coalitions to figure out how to reopen their regions safely. The governors of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Massachusetts and Rhode Island will work together in the East, while the governors of California, Oregon and Washington will team up on the opposite coast. Neither group has put forth a concrete timeline or plan for when or how states will begin to reopen, but New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been cautiously optimistic about the path forward, as new cases, hospitalizations and deaths begin to plateau in his state. On Monday, he said the worst of the outbreak may be over, while emphasizing that containment measures must still be carefully followed.
President Donald Trump, however, immediately pushed back on the governors’ announcements, arguing that he alone has the authority to move states out of lockdown—even though he left decisions about what to shut down and when to the states. “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total,” Trump said at a Monday evening press briefing, without any clear explanation of why that would be so. Governors from both parties immediately pushed back on that claim.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc on presidential primaries. Hundreds of Chicago voters were told Monday that they may have been exposed to the virus when they voted on March 17, after a poll worker developed symptoms and died.
All numbers are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of April 13, 8 PM eastern time. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
All Your Coronavirus Questions, Answered
The TIME staff put together this handy guide to your most common coronavirus questions, from how COVID-19 testing and treatment works to best practices for grocery shopping and laundry. Read more here.
Meet the Medical Students Becoming Doctors During a Pandemic
COVID-19 has turned everybody’s lives upside down—and for graduating medical students, it means starting a health-care career at a truly unprecedented time, often with a mixture of fear and empowerment. Read more here.
U.S. Patients Who Don’t Speak English Face Higher Risks
With fewer medical interpreters working due to stay-at-home orders and more patients flooding into U.S. hospitals, the COVID-19 pandemic has created yet another obstacle for some of the country’s most vulnerable residents. Read more here.
Watch: Katie Couric Interviews a New York City Doctor About the Front-Line Fight
Couric spoke with NYU Langone’s Dr. Mark Pochapin about the battle against coronavirus through her collaboration with TIME. Watch the interview here.
Planned Parenthood Will Use Telehealth in All 50 States
With access to abortion clinics shrinking during the COVID-19 pandemic, Planned Parenthood told TIME on Monday that it will allow women in all 50 states to use its services via a new telehealth app. Read more here.
A Political Prisoner’s Thoughts on Confinement
Activist Ko Bo Kyi spent almost a decade in an 8-by-12 foot Myanmar prison cell. For those experiencing (far more luxurious) lockdown for the first time, he recommends accepting your reality while keeping perspective—and positivity. Read more here.
Why Has the World Shut Down for COVID-19, But Not Other Diseases?
Over at FiveThirtyEight, reporter Kaleigh Rogers dives into the unique features of COVID-19 that have brought the world to its knees. Read more here.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com.
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