In August, I wrote about a condition called “long-haul” coronavirus. I spoke to several young, healthy people who’d gotten COVID-19 and had yet to recover, even months later. Many of their doctors were stumped, unable to figure out why patients with “mild” cases weren’t getting better.
As soon as that story published, I got a wave of emails from readers who had pretty strong hunches about what was happening. Long-haul coronavirus, they told me, sounded a lot like another disease that’s been confounding doctors for decades: myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME/CFS.
One of those emails came from Christina Cooper, a woman who’d been living with ME/CFS for 11 years. Cooper got a flu-like illness on Christmas Eve in 2009 and still suffers debilitating exhaustion, chronic pain, brain fog and a slew of other symptoms. Before she got sick, she was a registered nurse who loved outdoor activities; now, even bathing saps her energy. Exertion, whether physical or mental, makes her condition worse—simply sitting or standing upright can be difficult. She told me she was pretty sure at least some COVID-19 long-haulers have what she has.
Experts agree. ME/CFS is a complex and largely misunderstood disease, but doctors know it often follows viral illnesses—so it stands to reason that COVID-19 could turn into ME/CFS. What we don’t know is why that’s happening, and why some people completely recover while others become chronically ill. ME/CFS researchers have had similar questions for a long time, and the pandemic offers new hope at getting answers. New studies into the connection between COVID-19 and ME/CFS are already underway, while a Congressional bill seeks to direct more federal funding toward such research.
The stakes are high. Hundreds of thousands of coronavirus patients—if not more—may eventually be diagnosed with ME/CFS, if researchers are right about what’s going on. And that’s on top of the roughly 2 million Americans who already have the condition and have long been fighting for support, treatment and recognition. For them, the wave of new studies and conversation promises a long-overdue change.
“It’s heartbreaking that for decades, ME patients were neither believed or lovingly received,” Cooper says. “As an ME patient, I’m thankful that the eyes of the world are being opened to how debilitating post viral syndrome is and the suffering it causes.”
More than 38.8 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 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. 15, there were 343,289 new cases and 5,210 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):
The European Union will pay U.S. pharmaceutical company Gilead $1.2 billion for up to 500,000 courses of its antiviral drug remdesivir, Reuters reports. Several studies have shown that remdesivir is an effective treatment for hospitalized patients with fairly severe cases of COVID-19. However, a large World Health Organization-funded study released today brings news likely to upset E.U. dealmakers. According to the study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, remdesivir “appeared to have little or no effect on hospitalized COVID-19 [patients], as indicated by overall mortality.” The findings show the risk of betting big on an experimental therapy.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa yesterday announced an ambitious plan to spark economic growth in Africa’s most industrialized nation, whose economy has stalled during the ongoing pandemic. Ramaphosa’s plan would focus on strengthening infrastructure nationwide, with the hope of creating up to 800,000 new jobs and $60 billion in investments. During the April to June quarter, South Africa’s gross domestic product dropped by 17% and 2 million jobs were lost, Al Jazeera reports.
In India, experts are worried about the interplay of air pollution and COVID-19, the New York Timesreports. Fall typically brings northern India’s worst-quality air, and doctors are concerned about what that will mean for coronavirus patients who already suffer breathing trouble. Long-term lung issues stemming from pollution could also make people more susceptible to severe cases of the disease. India currently has the world’s second-most coronavirus cases, behind only the U.S.; a smoggy fall could exacerbate an already bad situation.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. had recorded more than 7.9 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 217,600 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. 15, there were 63,610 new cases and 820 new deaths confirmed in the U.S. Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
Winter will be a crucial time for pandemic management in the U.S., as colder weather in many places forces people inside, where the virus can spread more readily. And much to experts’ dismay, cases appear to be spiking at exactly the wrong time. The U.S. is now reporting roughly 50,000 new COVID-19 cases each day; more than a dozen states set new record seven-day averages for case numbers yesterday. "The virus is now winning," New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said at a press conference yesterday, pointing to her state’s 8% testing positivity rate. "We're in uncharted waters."
New U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data also suggest the demographics of the American outbreak are shifting. As the virus’ epicenter moved from the Northeast to the South and West this past summer, people of Hispanic/Latinx origin accounted for an increasingly higher percentage of deaths, the CDC reports: about 25% in August, compared to 14% from February to May. (Approximately 18.5% of the U.S. population identifies as Hispanic/Latinx.) That’s in part because Hispanic/Latinx people make up larger portions of the population in the South and West, but the CDC says that doesn’t fully explain the shift. People of color are also disproportionately likely to work or live in environments with high risks of exposure, and to have underlying conditions that worsen the course of illness.
In lieu of a second presidential debate, U.S. President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden held separate televised town hall-style interviews last night. The virus featured prominently in both. Trump questioned the efficacy of masks (which have been widely shown to help curb viral spread) and repeated his claim that he did not enact more robust disease-prevention measures early in the pandemic because he didn’t want to “panic” the American public. Biden, meanwhile, said he’d like to make masks and coronavirus vaccines mandatory but questioned whether it would be possible to actually do so.
Finally, executives from pharmaceutical company Pfizer said it may be ready to apply for emergency-use authorization of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate by late November, assuming solid safety and efficacy data comes out of ongoing trials. That timeline would put a potential U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorization well after Election Day, despite President Trump’s push for a pre-election vaccine, but would still represent a historically fast progression from development to regulatory approval.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of October 16, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Inside the Fall of the CDC
ProPublica has a deeply reported look inside the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, exploring how the world’s preeminent public-health authority fell from grace as the world watched. (In related news: the Associated Press reports today that political operatives have been appointed to leadership roles within the agency to “keep an eye on” CDC scientists.) Read more here.
Quarantine TV Shows Are Here, and They’re Painful
For TIME’s TV critic Judy Berman, the flood of quarantine-focused television shows is bringing on a hefty dose of Zoom fatigue. Why, she wonders, would you want to watch people in quarantine when you’ve been living it for months? Read more here.
A Worrying Inflammatory Condition Is Showing Up in Adults
This spring, doctors began reporting cases of a rare, multi-system inflammatory condition in children who tested positive for the coronavirus. Now, NBC News reports, the condition appears to be popping up among small numbers of adult patients, too. 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 Jamie Ducharme and edited by Alex Fitzpatrick.
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