For a nation trying to survive a pandemic, it doesn’t help if its most populous state is well on the way to becoming one of its sickest, too. But that’s the case as California, which was hit hard early by the COVID-19 pandemic but appeared to be recovering, is now scurrying back under cover as infection counts rise.
As of July 13, California had 330,000 cases and more than 7,000 deaths, with an alarming seven-day average of 8,211 new cases a day. By comparison, in early June, the state was recording about 2,500 new daily cases.
California’s spike comes after governor Gavin Newsom and California Department of Public Health Director Dr. Sonia Angell lifted on June 12 restrictions meant to curb the spread of the virus. That move allowed a much-celebrated reopening of various businesses and gathering places, including retail stores, bars, restaurants with indoor dining, and houses of worship. More ambitiously—and perhaps more recklessly—Newsom and Angell also reopened high-contact indoor establishments, like gyms, nail and massage salons, and tattoo parlors.
The virus appears to have loved that. On the day of the reopening, California recorded 3,756 new cases. By July 1, the daily count was more than twice as high, at 7,611. The current 8,000-plus figure thus demanded action.
For Newsom, that action involves what he calls a “dimmer switch” approach. He’ll monitor each of California’s 58 counties, and those that exceed certain infection benchmarks will be put on a watch list, required to close many businesses, and essentially return to pre-June 12 quarantine conditions. At the moment, 29 counties are on the list, but they’re home to 80% of the state’s population.
Meanwhile, with September 1 barely six weeks away, California is facing tough decisions about whether and how to reopen schools. The state’s two largest school districts—San Diego and Los Angeles—have decided straightforwardly: they won’t. All of those districts’ 825,000 students will be attending classes virtually in the fall, with no predictions being made about how long that remote learning will last.
“There’s a public health imperative to keep schools from becoming a petri dish,” Los Angeles School Superintendent Austin Beutner told The New York Times.
The same could be said about the state’s entire population of 39.5 million people.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
The Global Situation
More than 13.1 million people around the world had been sickened by COVID-19 as of 1 AM eastern time today, and just over 573,000 people had died.
Here is every country with over 200,000 confirmed cases:
Mexico passed a bleak milestone on July 13: with more than 35,000 deaths from COVID-19, it overtook Italy—the one-time viral disaster zone—for the fourth-most deaths in the world, trailing only the U.S., Brazil and the United Kingdom. Lax observance of safety measures like masks and social distancing are partly to blame. But so might be the too-sanguine approach of Mexican President Andres Manuel Obrador. "The bottom line is that the pandemic is on the downside, that it is losing intensity," Lopez Obrador insisted on Sunday, Al Jazeera reports, despite evidence to the contrary.
Thailand has gotten ahead of the virus, with no cases of local infection reported in the past 50 days and only 50 deaths overall. And as Bloomberg News reports, it aims to keep things that way. While travelers from overseas have been required to quarantine for 14 days after entering the country, there was an exception for diplomatic travelers and foreign military members. But those waivers were scrapped today after the daughter of a Sudanese diplomat and a member of the Egyptian Air Force recently tested positive for the virus in the country.
The European Union is in no rush to reopen its shores to foreign visitors. With the coronavirus still raging in hot spots like the U.S. and Brazil, EU officials are extending their ban against travel from all but a select group of 15 countries, with Canada, Japan, South Korea and China among the lucky few, according to Bloomberg News. Indeed, the bloc is actually pruning the welcome-in list by two, after Serbia and Montenegro reported spikes in infections.
Brazil may be better known for the coronavirus misinformation being peddled by its president, Jair Bolsonaro, but the science sector is hitting back. As Forbes reports, the country’s Center for Research in Energy and Materials in Sao Paulo state turned to a technique known as macromolecular crystallography—often used for protein studies aboard the International Space Station—to model the novel coronavirus’s 3CL protein, which is critical to the viral replication process. When you know how the protein works, the thinking goes, you can better interfere with its function.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. recorded nearly 3.4 million coronavirus cases as of 1 AM eastern time this morning. Over 135,600 people have died.
On July 13, there were 58,114 new cases and 400 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
Miami is the new Wuhan—the Chinese city where the novel coronavirus first emerged. That’s the view of University of Miami infectious disease expert Lilian Abbo, who spoke at a Monday news conference with Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez, per CNN. “What we were seeing in Wuhan—six months ago, five months ago—now we are there," Abbo said. Cases exploded in Florida after beaches and businesses reopened in the spring; the state is now seen as the U.S.’ new epicenter. With 2,000 people hospitalized and hundreds in intensive care, Miami may be that epicenter’s own epicenter.
The White House is not letting up on its broadsides against Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, after he strayed from the Administration’s all-is-well attitude regarding the pandemic. After the Administration circulated a list of all of the times Fauci was ostensibly wrong about the outbreak, U.S. President Donald Trump made nice, telling reporters at the White House on Monday, “I have a very good relationship with Dr. Fauci, [but] I don’t always agree with him.” Trump may have framed things amiably, but the rest of his Administration hasn’t. In an email to the Associated Press, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said that Fauci has “a good bedside manner with the public but he has been wrong about everything I have ever interacted with him on.”
COVID-19 continues to hit people of color harder than white Americans. As the Washington Post reports, nowhere is this truer than in relatively affluent Montgomery County, Maryland. The county is home to 200,000 Hispanic residents, who account for just 20% of the population, while representing 74% of new patients. Contributing to the problem: poor staffing at a bilingual hotline has forced callers to leave voicemails rather than talking to a human being, and a key testing site in a Latinx neighborhood was moved without adequate notice.
It should not need to be said, but the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the scientific experts of the White House coronavirus task force are not in the habit of lying about the pandemic. But task force member Adm. Brett Giroir felt compelled to say so anyway, after President Trump retweeted accusations by former game show host Chuck Woolery that health officials and Democrats were ginning up virus fears to hurt the President’s reelection chances. “None of us lie. We are completely transparent with the American people,” he said on TODAY this morning. “We take that as really a sacred oath.”
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of July 14, 1 AM eastern time. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Maryland Hit Hard by Relapse
Before this week, Maryland’s all-time high for new daily coronavirus cases was 1,730, set on May 1. But that standing record was broken yesterday, when the state recorded 1,784 new cases, according to the Baltimore Sun. Officials blame a backlog in tests for inflating the totals, but others say the state reopened businesses dangerously early. Read more here.
Harsh Words From Boston’s Mayor
Give Martin J. Walsh credit for frankness; when the Boston mayor looks out across the landscape of the nation, he doesn’t like what he sees. The U.S. is currently in “the worst place it’s ever been in,” he said at a press conference today, according to the Boston Globe. “It’s quite honestly devastating.” Boston has done a creditable job of keeping its case count under control, and the state of Massachusetts as a whole is one of only 11 in the nation meeting CDC targets for testing capacity. Still, Walsh warned Bostonians to remain vigilant: “We are at risk of moving backwards.” Read more here.
The Babies May Save Us
Babies and infants account for only 0.3% of all coronavirus infections in the U.S., according to Scientific American, and scientists want to know why—hoping that the relative immunity of the very young might provide clues to protect the rest of us. One guess: compared to adult cells, infant cells have fewer of the ACE2 receptors to which the virus attaches. Read more here.
Did the Virus Arrive Last Year?
There’s growing evidence, according to Nature, that the novel coronavirus arrived on our shores in late 2019, well before it showed itself as the menace it is. The journal pored over studies of travel patterns and found that ports of entry like New York and San Diego may have been breached by the virus long before it was detected there. 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 Jeffrey Kluger and edited by Alex Fitzpatrick.
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