How the Pandemic Is Destroying Livelihoods—and Lives—in India
When freelance journalist Neha Thirani Bagri drove from her home in Mumbai to Pune—the region of India most affected by the coronavirus—she wondered if migrant workers displaced and unemployed by the pandemic would talk to her. “Reporting a narrative feature requires you to spend time with people, make them comfortable and ask intimate questions,” she says. Would anyone want to do that from six feet away, with a mask on?
To her surprise, they were eager to share their stories and grievances. “The hardest thing was to turn down the many cups of tea and snacks that people so graciously offered when I visited their homes because I didn't want to remove my mask,” she says.
India’s 40 million migrant workers are essential to the economy. But their work has proven to be uniquely vulnerable to the coronavirus, which has infected more than 2.8 million people in India. The country now has the third-largest number of cases globally, behind the U.S. and Brazil.
When the coronavirus began tearing through India in March and Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a months-long lockdown, work evaporated in this sector, Thirani Bagri explains in a new feature for TIME, co-authored by TIME reporter Billy Perrigo. Even in the best-case scenario, economists are predicting that the pandemic will plunge millions of people in India into poverty. “We might die from corona, but if there is nothing to eat, we will die either way,” one construction worker in Pune told Thirani Bagri.
One issue is that welfare is administered at a state level in India, so many who live and work outside of their home state—like migrant workers—have to spend their earnings to travel to their home villages to collect it. In the early months of the pandemic, with train and bus travel suspended, many had to walk. Even after enduring months of lost wages, the poor haven’t benefited much from the government’s relief package, which mostly went to businesses. The spread of the pandemic is sure to exacerbate these gaps. Outbreaks are moving from cities, where most hospitals and health care facilities are based, into rural areas “where the public-health infrastructure is weak,” one expert told Thirani Bagri.
“Across the world, the pandemic has laid bare inequities that were just below the surface,” Thirani Bagri says. “In India, that has meant coming to terms with how much the economy relies on informal labor provided by migrant workers and just how vulnerable and underserved they are.”
More than 22.4 million people around the world had been sickened by COVID-19 as of 1 AM eastern time today, and more than 787,000 people have died.
Here is every country with over 300,000 confirmed cases:
With New Zealand struggling to stuff its coronavirus genie back into the bottle, researchers are looking deeper into how the country that was once considered the gold standard of flattening the curve has suddenly seen a return of the bug. As ABC reports , the investigators believe it wasn’t due to New Zealanders letting their guard down when it comes to practices like social distancing or handwashing. Rather, they blame the reappearance on “smoldering transmission,” or long-term asymptomatic people harboring the virus for weeks or even months and then finally—in New Zealand’s case, after a record 102 days of no community spread— becoming symptomatic. So the good news: New Zealand’s efforts to control the spread of the virus does seem to have been working all along. The bad news: even that may not be enough.
Olympics fans who had reconciled themselves to waiting until 2021 for the Japan summer games, which were supposed to have begun last month, may have to wait yet another year longer—or even give up the dream altogether. As The New York Times reports, a survey of 13,000 Japanese companies found that a majority—53.6%—want the games either postponed to sometime past 2021 or canceled altogether. Both the International Olympic Committee and Japanese organizers are already on the record saying that if the games can’t be held in 2021 they should be scrapped. The cancellation would come at a cost: Japan has spent an officially announced $12.6 billion on planning and preparations, though speculation is that the actual figure could be twice as high.
Germany, which recorded as many as 6,000 new coronavirus cases per day back in the spring, had seen its numbers fall since, but they began to climb again in July. Yesterday, the country recorded 1,707 new cases—low by earlier standards but the highest total since April 26. According to public health officials, part of the increase can be explained by increased testing: In the week from July 27 to Aug. 2, a total of 578,000 tests were conducted. In mid-August, that figure jumped to 875,000 per week. But that’s only part of the story. Officials also blame the rise on vacationers returning from overseas—bringing the virus with them—and a more casual adherence to social social distancing rules.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. had recorded more than 5.5 million coronavirus cases as of 1 AM eastern time today. More than 173,000 have died. Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
On August 19, there were more than 47,000 new cases and 1,356 new deaths confirmed in the U.S. Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
Add Auburn University in Alabama to the list of schools that have opened for classes—and now question the wisdom of having done so. The AP reports that four more cases of COVID-19 have been reported in a residence hall and a fraternity house, leading to a quarantine of an unspecified number of possibly exposed students. This follows the announcement last week that 32 students and eight employees of the school already tested positive. For now, the school remains open, though face coverings are required everywhere on campus, both indoors and outdoors.
After suffering for so long as the nation’s coronavirus ground zero and finally flattening the curve, New York does not intend to let the upcoming presidential election cause it to backslide. Today, governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill allowing voters to request a ballot by mail without having to offer an excuse or explanation. The move helps keep a potential 12 million registered voters safely home and away from the polls.
Florida, which is still paying the price for its premature reopening, passed another tragic milestone today: its death toll from COVID-19 crossed 10,000. The state’s overall caseload now exceeds 588,000. But there are glimmers of good news: Florida has now gone eight straight days with positivity-test rates under 10%.
It's lights out—literally—for Los Angeles homes that defy local rules against large gatherings. Yesterday, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti ordered power cut to a home in the Hollywood Hills that was a serial violator of the party ban, NPR and others report. Saying that the house had turned into “a nightclub in the hills,” Garcetti gave the order after the homeowner ignored repeated warnings to knock off the misbehavior. On August 5 , Garcetti originally announced that homes hosting large parties could face power and water shut-offs and now he has made good on the threat.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of August 20, 1 AM eastern time. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
The Economy Remains Sickly Too
Even as the stock market continues to soar, new unemployment claims in the U.S. leapt last week to a disturbing 1.1 million, as overall unemployment remains stalled at 10.2%. “It definitely suggests that momentum in the recovery is slowing,” Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West, told The New York Times. Read more here.
No Refuge in the Constitution for Anti-Maskers
Helena Rosenblatt, professor of history at the Graduate Center CUNY, makes a trenchant argument in The Washington Post that, based on constitutional law, you’d better mask up whether you like it or not. Part of her argument: That famous John Locke quote upon which so many Constitutional arguments lie (the one about the right to “life, liberty and property”) is superseded by another of his beliefs “that a binding law of nature obliged every human being not to harm ‘the life, the liberty, health, limb, or possessions’ of another.’” Read more here.
A Missed Opportunity for Mayors
One possible upside to coronavirus lockdowns is mayors taking the opportunity to make changes to local infrastructure while vehicular and foot traffic are low. In Europe, Milan indefinitely lowered speed limits, the U.K. devoted the equivalent of $2.6 billion to infrastructure improvements, and Paris planned 400 miles of new bike lanes. But the U.S.? Not so much. Seattle was applauded for closing a mere 20 miles of streets that were low-traffic anyway and Los Angeles and New York, while closing some of their roads and setting aside more street space for outdoor dining, have made no plans to make any of the changes permanent. Read more here.
Making Sense of the Test Menu
So you’ve gotten a coronavirus test? Which one? That’s a better question than you think because they come in a staggering 200 different varieties. Yes, that huge group can be distilled down into three main categories: PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests, which look for the genetic material of the coronavirus; antigen tests, which look for proteins that live on the virus’s surface; and antibody tests, which look for protective agents the body produces in response to infection. But there’s a lot more to it than that, and it pays to have a one-stop place to learn the pros, cons and differences. Read more here
COVID-19 and the Flu Both Cause Loss of Taste and Smell—But Not in the Same Way
As summertime allergies persist and autumn colds approach, there are going to be a lot of frightened people who lose their sense of taste and smell and leap to the conclusion that they are experiencing one of the signature symptoms of COVID-19. Only a test can determine for sure, but in a new study, British researchers explain exactly what may cause the loss of taste and smell in COVID-19 and how cold and allergy victims may tell the difference. Read more here.
Are Children Silent Super Spreaders?
In a paper published today, researchers studied 192 pediatric coronavirus patients and found that those who were displaying no symptoms at all often had levels of virus in their airways that were significantly higher than those in even the most severely ill adults. The absence of symptoms by no means indicates an absence of communicability—and the study suggests kids pose an even greater danger of silently spreading the disease than previously believed. Read more here.
An Immunity Study At Seas
In May, a fishing vessel left a Seattle port in May for 18 days at sea and returned with over 100 crewmembers sick with COVID-19—and only three who were spared. A new study on the event is small and not yet peer-reviewed, which usually means it wouldn’t merit much public attention. But in this case, it’s worth a second look: all of the lucky three all carried antibodies to the virus before they shoved off, which offers hope that previous infection could confer at least temporary immunity. Read more here.
— Jeffrey Kluger
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 Mandy Oaklander; it was edited by Elijah Wolfson.
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