Europe Prepares to Reopen (Some of) Its Doors Just in Time For Summer
Next Saturday, summer will officially begin in the Northern Hemisphere, and it will be like none we’ve seen in generations.
Over the past week, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration has been regularly reporting rising numbers of travelers passing through airport security, but the figures still pale in comparison to the same time last year. Last Thursday (June 11, the most recent day for which TSA reported data), the count of people who went through security cracked 500,000 for the first time since mid-March. One year ago, TSA processed nearly 2.7 million travelers the same day.
The numbers may not return to normal this year. Only 37% of Americans surveyed in early June by The Harris Poll said they felt commercial flights are safe right now, and only 33% said thjey would stay in a hotel within three months of the COVID-19 curve flattening. And perhaps those numbers shouldn’t return to normal; when the New York Times polled 511 epidemiologists, only 20% said they would be willing themselves to travel on an airplane this summer.
On Saturday, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis took a day trip to the Mediterranean island Santorini, a wildly popular tourist destination in less fraught times. “We’re ready to extend Greece’s legendary hospitality and welcome the world again,” he said, according to Bloomberg. “We feel we are taking an extremely calculated risk. It’s not an option to do nothing.”
Tomorrow, Greece will begin to allow visitors—but only from 29 countries. The U.S. is not among them.
That’s typical of a trend right now: Belgium, Denmark, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Switzerland and more will all begin allowing visitors from certain countries tomorrow. Germany will follow on Tuesday. Most are forming a sort of “tourism bubble,” sharing the same list of countries from which travelers are allowed, and mostly including only other European Union members.
Perhaps none have as much at stake as Greece. The country has largely been seen as one of the biggest success stories in Europe, with just 297 cases per million residents, a fraction of other Mediterranean coast countries like Italy (3,908 per million) and Spain (5,212 per million). Greece has also managed to keep coronavirus-related deaths below 200 total. Opening up risks a possible victory over the pandemic. But Greece needs visitors—tourism accounts for 18% of its economy, and this would normally be the start of its tourism high season.
The problem is, despite outward appearances that the U.S. and Europe are ready to move on from COVID-19, COVID-19 is decidedly not ready to move on from us humans. It’s now raging through Brazil instead of Italy, through Phoenix instead of New York City, but the virus hasn’t gone away. And one of the key reasons that this pandemic spread so rapidly to every corner of the globe is that international travel has become so commonplace, with annual international flights rising every year since the 2009 recession; before COVID-19 hit, the global airline industry had projected to pass 40 million international flights for the first time in 2020. It just takes a single person to slip through the cracks—easy enough, given that nearly half of global cases were likely caused by the virus spreading through asymptomatic carriers —and the virus is back in a place where it had been under control.
A recent TIME analysis found that there are currently four states that have yet to reach the first peak of the first wave of COVID-19: California, Mississippi, North Carolina, and, by far worse than the other three, Arizona.
On Friday, Arizona established its new high for daily cases, at 1,772, then nearly matched it yesterday, with 1,621. That’s a dramatic climb from the 350 or so new cases the state was reporting daily at the end of May. In addition, hospitalization rates are up and ICU beds are filling up, yet Governor Doug Ducey has steadfastly refused to re-implement stay-at-home orders or even less restrictive measures like requiring the use of face masks in public.
Elsewhere in the struggling Sun Belt, former Florida Department of Health data scientist Rebekah Jones launched her own COVID-19 data portal for the state. Jones was fired last month after refusing a supervisor’s request to manipulate the state’s COVID-19 numbers to make the Florida’s outlook appear rosier than it actually was. Her new project is supported by a GoFundMe campaign.
A Setback in China
This weekend, China reported its highest single-day tally of new cases in nearly two months, with 57 confirmed cases on Saturday. Most of these cases were in the capital city of Beijing, and according to a World Health Organization press release, Chinese authorities believe the cluster stems from Xinfadi Market, a gigantic wholesale produce market (it claims to be the largest in Asia) in the city. The market has been shut down , and is surrounded by a 24-hour police-and-military watch; 11 residential communities near the market have also been locked down as public health authorities try to contain the new outbreak.
An Advance in China
The Beijing-based pharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech yesterday announced encouraging preliminary data on its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, called CoronaVac. The company says that in a 600-person, Phase 2 study, the vaccine generated immune responses in patients and was safe, STAT News reports. Sinovac has yet to publish details about the study, but is already planning for the next steps in testing the vaccine, having announced a partnership with Brazil-based Instituto Butantan to take it to Phase 3 clinical trials in Brazil. This follows similar announcements last week from Massachusetts-based Moderna, which plans to being Phase 3 studies as early as next month.
A Shocking Medical Bill
A 70-year-old Seattle resident made news this weekend when his city’s daily newspaper reported that the man had entered the hospital with COVID-19 and left health, but also with a $1.1 million bill. “I had to look at it a number of times,” Michael Flor told TIME, “to see if I was seeing it right.” The 181-page bill included almost 3,000 itemized charges; Flor’s room in the intensive care unit alone had cost about $9,700 a day.
This isn’t the first report of unexpectedly high sticker prices for coronavirus care. Flor likely won’t pay anywhere near $1.1 million. He has insurance, and his provider has said it will waive most out-of-pocket costs for COVID-19 patients through 2020. Others may not be so lucky. There were about 28 million uninsured Americans before the pandemic hit, and countless others have lost their insurance due to job losses. Further, even if the ultimate bill was a fraction of the original price—let’s say 1%—that would be far beyond the reach of most Americans, even before the economic hardships of recent months.
IN MEMORY
When a cage door for Junior, a “hulking” Kodiak bear, was accidentally left open one day at the Baltimore Zoo in the mid-’90s and exposed him to a forbidden area, Mary J. Wilson, the zoo’s first Black senior zookeeper, knew just the solution. Without hesitation, Wilson walked into the front of the habitat and calmly called out for him while holding some apples, a favorite treat. It wasn’t long before Junior obediently returned.
“You couldn’t be around her for even just a couple of minutes and not notice that the lady was just trying to be compassionate, but confident,” says Mike McClure, who worked under Wilson for many years. “I think that also influenced how she interacted with the animals.”
After more than two weeks in the hospital, Wilson died on May 21 due to complications of the coronavirus. She was 83.
Wilson began her zoo career at age 23. Arthur Watson, who led the zoo during Wilson’s hire, once told the Baltimore Sun Wilson’s only qualifications were a “willingness to work hard and a love of animals. In these days of specialized training, she probably wouldn’t get past the front door.” Wilson would eventually become no stranger to breaking barriers: Undeterred by her lack of formal training, she excelled at working with big mammals.
Wilson retired from the zoo in the late ‘90s, but would often still attend meet-ups they hosted. Those close to Wilson noted that her legacy is her ability to respect all creatures as they are.
“They weren’t dumb animals there for her entertainment,” McClure says. “Mary really treated them like equals.”—Nadia Suleman
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 and edited by Elijah Wolfson.
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