City Officials Brace for COVID-19 Surges Amid Protests
As protests against racism and police brutality continue amid the COVID-19 pandemic, state, city and local officials are engaged in a delicate balancing act, weighing the rights of Americans to gather peacefully while also trying to prevent further spread of the coronavirus.
Rather than bar protests on the grounds of public health, many leaders have adopted a strategy of risk reduction, reports TIME staff writer Abigail Abrams. “At least at the local level, mayors all over have really been saying, ‘We know people are going to be protesting, so let’s not tell them to just go home. Let’s figure out how to deal with this,’” Abrams says.
Health officials in New York City, for instance, have been encouraging protestors to use noisemakers instead of singing or chanting (actions that can spread the virus), carry hand sanitizer, and avoid contact with vulnerable people after attending demonstrations. And many protestors across the country have been wearing masks and taking whatever other steps they can to curb the spread of the virus—though social distancing is typically impossible in a packed demonstration. (Many police officers, meanwhile, have not been wearing masks, which puts both themselves and protestors at needless risk.)
But the often disproportionately violent police reaction to the protests may have further soured the relationship between many citizens and their government at a time when trust is vital for public health. Rigorous surveillance efforts, including contact tracing, are essential to fighting an epidemic. And protestors may now be more wary of sharing the names of those with whom they were demonstrating for fear of legal consequences.
“If there’s already a distrust of the U.S. as a whole, and U.S. systems as a whole, the health care system is a part of that," says Lorraine Dean, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University who studies racial health disparities.
More than 7.2 million people around the world had been sickened by COVID-19 as of 11 PM eastern time last night, and more than 411,000 people had died.
Here is every country with over 100,000 confirmed cases:
The pandemic has “triggered the most severe recession in nearly a century,” according to the latest analysis from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Moving forward, the international economic group predicts two “equally likely” timelines: “one in which the virus is brought under control, and one in which a second global outbreak hits before the end of 2020.” In the latter scenario, world economic output could fall by 7.6% this year, the group says.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is working to clear up confusion caused in part by a World Health Organization staffer’s statement that asymptomatic spread of COVID-19 is “very rare.” That assertion “is not correct,” Fauci said today on ABC’s Good Morning America. "They walked that back because there’s no evidence to indicate that’s the case." Indeed, the staffer who made the comment, WHO COVID-19 technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove, has since backtracked, telling TIME that “I did not say that asymptomatic cases cannot transmit; they can.”
Brazil’s government has resumed publishing the country’s cumulative COVID-19 death toll, the Associated Press reports, following criticism that it was obfuscating the pandemic’s impact by withholding full and current data on the disease. The move comes after the government was ordered by a Brazilian Supreme Court justice to release the information. Critics say the country’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, is underplaying the severity of the pandemic. “We are sorry for all the dead, but that’s everyone’s destiny,” Bolsonaro said last week.
Brazil is also one of several hard-hit countries that are loosening lockdown measures earlier than public health experts say is wise. Other countries in a similar situation include Mexico, South Africa, India and Pakistan. “Politicians may be desperate to get their economies going again, but that could be at the expense of having huge numbers of people die,” Dr. Bharat Pankhania, an infectious disease expert at the U.K.’s University of Exeter, told the AP.
The Situation in the U.S.
The total number of COVID-19 diagnoses in the U.S. surpassed 1.9 million as of 11 PM eastern time yesterday, and the death toll neared 112,000.
On June 9, there were 11,802 new cases and 683 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
The coronavirus contributed to election problems yesterday in Georgia, where some voters had to wait hours to cast their ballots and many faced problems with the state’s new voting machines. Polling places had fewer staffers on hand to help address issues because of concerns over viral spread, an alarming preview of troubles that may arise during the presidential election in November.
A small number of District of Columbia National Guard members have tested positive for COVID-19, following the force’s deployment amid protests against racism and police brutality. The news is “certainly disturbing but is not surprising,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said today on Good Morning America. “When you get congregations … that’s taking a risk, and unfortunately what we’re seeing now is just an example of the kinds of things we were concerned about.”
Republican leaders expect that their party’s national convention will take place in Jacksonville, Fla. instead of Charlotte, N.C. The convention is being moved after President Donald Trump attacked North Carolina’s Democratic governor for refusing to allow the event to go ahead without health measures in place, including limits on the number of attendees. Senior Republicans say the move will be announced by Thursday, the New York Timesreports.
Testifying before the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee today, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told lawmakers they need to make sure the “many Americans that still don’t have jobs get back their jobs.” “The economy is going to rebound significantly,” Mnuchin said, “but I would also say there is still significant damage in parts of the economy and we’re going to consider using all of our fiscal tools, working with Congress, to make sure that we restore this economy back to where it was.”
In sports, Major League Soccer may become the first American pro league to resume games in the coronavirus era. MLS’ 2020 season is set to kick off on July 8 with a tournament featuring all 26 clubs. Games will be played in Orlando, which may also temporarily host the National Basketball League.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of June 9, 11 PM eastern time. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Some Doctors Support Protesting in a Pandemic
Gathering in a packed crowd is exactly what we’re not supposed to do during the COVID-19 pandemic—but some doctors argue that recent protests against institutional racism could save lives in the long run. “Protest is a profound public health intervention, because it allows us to finally address and end forms of inequality,” says Dr. Rhea Boyd, a California-based pediatrician. Read more here.
The U.S. Response to COVID-19 Is 100 Times Worse Than China’s
The coronavirus death rate in the U.S. has now passed 340 per million residents, just over 100 times the rate in China. Gavin Yamey (a professor of global health at Duke University) and Dean Jamison (a professor emeritus of the University of California, San Francisco's Institute of Global Health Sciences) explain in an essay for TIME why that’s such a big deal. Read more here.
Does Speaking Japanese Lower The Risk of Spreading Coronavirus?
When it comes to transmitting the virus, what we say and how we say it may be an important factor, VICE reports. Read more here.
Coronavirus in the Courtroom
As many U.S. states begin to resume in-person court proceedings, questions arise about coronavirus precautions—especially regarding mask-wearing, The New York Times reports. Read more here.
COVID-19 Is Just One In a Series of Epidemics For Some Countries
Many low-income countries were already battling a plethora of deadly infectious diseases, including polio, ebola, and cholera, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. The simultaneous outbreaks are overwhelming already strained health care systems, the Associated Press reports. 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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Today's newsletter was written by Sanya Mansoor and edited by Alex Fitzpatrick.
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