The coronavirus is having its way with the United Kingdom. The U.K.—the world’s 21st most populous country—is 11th in total number of COVID-19 infections. Its daily infection rate is doubling every seven to eight days in some regions, while more people are now hospitalized there than on March 23, when the country first went into general lockdown. With cold weather coming on and flu season beginning, things look darker still. "We could sleep-walk into a long and bleak winter," Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer warned in an address last week.
The answer may be another lockdown—sort of. British policymakers are considering expanding what’s sometimes called a “circuit-breaker” strategy: a short, sharp lockdown of just two to three weeks to get ahead of the virus and, if nothing else, buy a little time. If the strategy works in the U.K., it could serve as a model for other comparable countries. Portions of Scotland and Northern Ireland already have circuit breaker programs in place, but officials are now considering expanding the measures across the U.K.
Circuit-breaker proponents argue the strategy hits the brakes on the pandemic’s spread, eases pressure on hospitals, and imposes restrictions with a known end date—making it more palatable. "If you can say to [people], 'O.K., you do this for two to three weeks and come hell or high water we're going to lift the restrictions afterwards,' you have a greater likelihood of compliance,” says Michael Tildesley, professor of infectious disease modeling at the University of Warwick.
The circuit-breaker approach’s biggest goal is to reduce what's known as the R factor, or the number of people any one infected person goes on to infect in turn. When the R is above one, you're in an exponential growth phase; when it's below one, you flip to exponential reduction. Taking R from above one to below one even for a short period is a powerful way to buy time. "It doesn't just put things on pause," says Tildesley, "it hits the rewind button."
Indeed it does. As a Welsh government study points out, trading two weeks of viral increase for two weeks of viral "decay" could put the pandemic back by 28 days or more. That could curb the infection rate and save many lives: One estimate predicts that a two-week lockdown could lower deaths from 79,800 at their current projected rate to 39,300.
The U.K. is not the first to try or consider the circuit-breaker approach. It’s shown results in Singapore and New Zealand, and Israel is implementing it, too. But all three are small in terms of both geography and population. The U.K.’s more sprawling 67 million people makes it a better case study for other large, diverse countries; epidemiologists around the world will be watching closely.
Nearly 40.4 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 1.1 million people 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 Oct. 19, there were 439,890 new cases and 4,981 new deaths confirmed globally. Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending:
Here is every country with over 500,000 confirmed cases ("per cap" is number per 100,000 people):
Argentina passed 1 million cases yesterday, with small cities, not just the big ones, suffering from newly rising caseloads. In Ushuaia, far in the south, for example, hospitalizations have quadrupled and 60% of tests are coming back positive, the Associated Press reports. The country’s response has been hampered by a weak public health system, poverty and poor mitigation policies early on. Three other nearby countries—Colombia, Mexico and Peru—are also expected to pass the 1 million case mark in the next few weeks.
The British government has signed a contract with medical research company hVIVO and Imperial College London to conduct a so-called “challenge trial,” in which 90 healthy volunteers between 18 and 30 years old will be given one of three vaccine candidates and then be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19, CNN reports. It’s a potentially dangerous job—if the vaccine they’re given doesn’t work, a participants could develop symptoms and even die. But it’s a more direct way of testing a vaccine, requiring far fewer volunteers, than the more common method of injecting a large sample group with either a vaccine or a placebo and sending them out into the world, waiting to see what happens. That three vaccines are being tested at once also speeds the availability and diversity of results.
The pestilential year of 2020 has prompted many people to joke, “What’s next, locusts?” Well, yes, apparently: Ethiopia is experiencing its worst locust outbreak in 25 years, Reuters reports. It’s in part due to heavy seasonal rains and partly thanks to coronavirus lockdowns, which have limited supplies of pesticides. A locust swarm attacking a 1 km (0.4 mi.) area can consume as many crops in a day as 35,000 people; the insects have so far laid waste to more than half a million acres of Ethiopian farmland.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. had recorded more than 8.2 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 220,000 people 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 Oct. 19, there were 58,387 new cases and 445 new deaths confirmed in the U.S. Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
The U.S. suffered 299,000 more deaths from January to October of this year than during the same period last year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports today. Two out of three of those deaths were directly attributable to COVID-19—those identifying as Hispanic/Latinx, aged 25-44, were the hardest-hit demographic. In a second study, the CDC reports the coronavirus carries a five times greater likelihood of complications and death compared to seasonal flu, with those risks disproportionately hitting Black and Latinx communities.
The bad blood between U.S. President Donald Trump and Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is growing worse. On a conference call with campaign staffers yesterday, Trump called Fauci a “disaster.” “People are tired of COVID,” Trump said. “People are tired of hearing Fauci and these idiots, all these idiots who got it wrong.” Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, once routinely met with the President, but has not spoken to him in person since Aug. 11.
Trump has either three months or four years left in office, depending on how things go on Nov. 3. But as long as he’s in the White House, he insists that the U.S. will have no nationwide shutdowns—no matter how bad the pandemic becomes. “We’re doing much better, and we will never shut down,” Trump said on Fox & Friends this morning, even though public health experts are warning of a tough winter ahead.
The World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Tampa Bay Rays will open tonight before a crowd of just 11,000 people—the smallest since 1909, the AP reports. The entire Series will be played in a single neutral stadium: Globe Life Field, home of the Texas Rangers. Umpires will be masked throughout the games and celebrations among players are likely to be discouraged. Still, even so constrained a World Series before any crowd at all is likely to seem celebratory to the players, who played a dramatically shortened season that amped up the importance of each game, even without fans in attendance.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of October 20, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
California Will Independently Test Coronavirus Vaccines
President Trump’s push to have a pre-Election Day coronavirus vaccine has caused plenty of worry that the testing and approval process will be rushed. As a hedge against that, California has announced that a panel of epidemiologists, biostatisticians and others will conduct its own certification procedures before state residents are issued a vaccine. Read more here.
How Safe Is Your Mask?
As cloth facial coverings have become fashion statements, with boutiques, online companies and even sports teams selling different versions, some are concerned about how much protection the non-medical-grade gear really offers—the tightness of weave and the number of layers can make one mask more effective than another, for instance. Manufacturers are now working with scientists to consider standards and labeling to tell consumers exactly how safe any one model of mask is; an industry group hopes to issue a report before the end of October. Read more here.
Athletes Are Struggling With Mental Health Amid Shutdowns
Dedicate your life to training hard and getting out on the field to pursue victory and it can become awfully discouraging when the word comes down that, sorry, the games are scrapped. A study released today from Stanford University and Strava, a social network of exercise enthusiasts, finds that 22.5% of professional endurance athletes surveyed reported feeling down or depressed on more than half of the days of the week in the period between mid-March and August of this year, when restrictions on athletic training and competition were in place, compared to 3.9% reporting the same struggles earlier this year before the pandemic hit. 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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