Calls to cancel rent during the COVID-19 pandemic often bring to mind images of wealthy mega-landlords cashing in on their struggling tenants. The reality, as TIME's Abby Vesoulis highlights in her latest piece, is often much more complicated.
Many tenants in the U.S. are struggling during the pandemic, no doubt about it. "So many families are just a few paychecks away from not being able to afford rent," Abby says, and widespread job losses during the pandemic have made that terrifying reality into an even likelier possibility for countless people. COVID-19 eviction moratoriums and rent freezes have kept many families sheltered so far, but when those protections expire, the U.S. may find itself in a homelessness crisis.
At the same time, many small landlords are struggling, too. More than 70% of small apartment buildings in the U.S. are owned by "mom-and-pop" landlords who rely on rental income to pay their own expenses, Abby reports. And for them, the eviction moratoriums and rent freezes that have saved their tenants could spell financial disaster. Some landlords Abby spoke to are short tens of thousands of dollars as a result of missed rent payments.
Taken together, those intertwined problems could set the U.S. up for a housing crisis unlike any it's ever seen. When rent protections run out, tenants will have nowhere to go. And after going without rental income for a year or even longer, independent landlords may be in trouble, too.
So what to do? To start, Abby says, Congress should authorize "more cash payments, and ASAP: to small landlords with mortgages, to low-income tenants who are behind on rent, and to the people who are just a couple hundred dollars away from being behind on rent."
But those payments, while crucial, are more a Band-Aid than a cure. The federal government has yet to produce a long-term plan to prevent such a housing crisis—or to address the systemic problems that gave rise to the one currently brewing.
48.9 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of this morning, while about 41 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker—representing 12.4% of the overall U.S. population who have received at least one dose. Almost 5% of Americans have gotten both doses.
U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to pledge $4 billion to COVAX, the initiative aimed at ensuring equitable vaccine access around the world, at the G7 Summit today. That's big news, since former President Donald Trump conspicuously declined to support the World Health Organization-backed group (and threatened to pull out of the WHO itself). Biden's commitment could not only provide COVAX with sorely needed funding, but also encourage other robust economies to kick in more money.
Pfizer is asking the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to relax the storage requirements for the vaccine it co-developed with BioNTech, which could greatly simplify distribution of the shot. Currently, the Pfizer vaccine must be stored in specialized ultra-cold freezers, which are too costly for many smaller clinics and hospitals. Based on new data, Pfizer says its vaccines can actually be kept at slightly warmer temperatures, which standard pharmaceutical refrigerators and freezers can maintain.
Researchers announced today that they will test the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in 4,000 pregnant people around the world, in the long-awaited first study on COVID-19 vaccines and pregnancy. At the moment, pregnant people must decide whether to get vaccinated with almost no data on how the shots affect them and their fetuses. The bad news: The trial may not be finished for more than a year.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
The Global Situation
More than 110.3 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 2.4 million people have died. On Feb. 18, there were 403,171 new cases and 11,409 new deaths confirmed globally.
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
And here is every country with over 1.5 million confirmed cases:
Good vaccine news keeps pouring in from Israel. In a paper published yesterday in The Lancet, Israeli researchers estimate that a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot is about 85% effective at preventing symptomatic disease 15 to 28 days after vaccination. Those encouraging results raise the question of whether a single dose, rather than the intended two, may be enough—or if, as countries including the U.K. have proposed, it makes sense to delay giving second doses in favor of prioritizing first doses for more people.
Africa, which has so far not reported the gargantuan death tolls recorded on other continents, has surpassed 100,000 recorded deaths related to COVID-19. Cases are surging across the continent, apparently driven by a new, more contagious variant that originated in South Africa. Almost half of Africa's official deaths have come from South Africa alone, where nearly 49,000 deaths and almost 1.5 million cases have been reported so far.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. recorded more than 27.8 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 493,000 people have died. On Feb. 18, there were 69,228 new cases and 2,558 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today released reassuring new data on vaccine safety. During the first month of rollout, 13.8 million vaccine doses were administered in the U.S. While many people experienced temporary side effects like fatigue, muscle aches, and headaches, serious reactions were rare, the data show. Out of every million doses administered, fewer than five people had a severe allergic reaction. And while 113 people died after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, most were elderly people with preexisting health problems who died of numerous causes—suggesting that these deaths coincidentally followed vaccination.
In other positive news, COVID-19 infections are way down in U.S. nursing homes, suggesting that widespread vaccine coverage among long-term care residents is making a difference. About 5,700 COVID-19 cases were detected in U.S. nursing homes during the week ending Feb. 7, compared to more than 33,000 during the week ending Dec. 20. More than 4.3 million nursing home residents and staff have gotten at least one dose, which likely helps explain the dramatic improvement.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of Feb. 19, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Why Is the 'Pharmacy of the World' Struggling to Vaccinate?
Before the pandemic, India made 60% of the world's vaccine supply and delivered 390 million vaccines to its more than 1 billion citizens each year. So why is it struggling to provide COVID-19 shots? Read more here.
'Tomorrow I'll Feel Better'
Much has been written about long-haul coronavirus, but few articles have captured it as poignantly as this Washington Post essay from Kaitlin Denis, a 30-year-old who has been sick for almost a year. Read more here.
The Indian Health Service Got Vaccine Rollout Right
As NPR writes, most U.S. tribal health systems that coordinated vaccine distribution through the federally-run Indian Health System are reporting far higher vaccination rates than those that used state systems. Read more here.
Put Faith In Cities
As the U.S. re-enters the Paris Agreement, the mayors of Paris and Pittsburgh write for TIME about why cities may be the key to combating the consequences of climate change and the pandemic. 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. If you have specific questions you'd like us to answer, please send them to covidquestions@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Jamie Ducharme and edited by Alex Fitzpatrick.
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