Deaths Among America's Homeless Are Soaring in the Pandemic
Homelessness is rising during the pandemic, spurring a health crisis all its own for the most vulnerable Americans. Deaths are rising for this group—tripling among San Francisco's homeless population over the past year, for instance. Some of these deaths are due to COVID-19. But many are a result of the crumbling safety net that typically helps the unhoused in normal times.
Photographer Rebecca Kiger spent months documenting homeless life in Wheeling, West Virginia during the pandemic. There, overdoses roughly doubled during lockdown, and people were cut off from care due to the recent closure of Wheeling's only psychiatric hospital. Many people in need of care ended up on the street during lockdowns.
Kiger found and photographed the people embodying these tragic statistics—and those looking out for them, like John Moses, who runs a winter shelter for the homeless. "You know we use that word 'less,'" says Moses, one of the people featured in Kiger's stunning photo essay published in TIME this week. "They're homeless, they're penniless, they're this-less. I think we start choking on these abstracts that we assign people that doesn't explain them."
More than 225.2 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of this morning, of which some 171.4 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. Approximately 32.2% of the overall U.S. population has received at least one dose, and about 19.4% of Americans have been completely vaccinated.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said today that it has found a "possible link" between the AstraZeneca vaccine and a rare blood clotting disorder, the Associated Press reports. Most of the reported cases have been in women under 60, but the EMA didn't name specific risk factors and didn't recommend restricting the vaccine's use by age, as some countries have done. Rare clotting should be listed as a possible side effect of the vaccine, the agency said, but it still recommends the shots for adults, saying the benefits outweigh the risks. Clotting issues have been reported among just dozens of the millions of people who have received the AstraZeneca shot.
Emergent BioSolutions, a Baltimore, Maryland biotech company where contamination errors discovered last week meant up to 15 million doses of the Janssen/Johnson & Johnson vaccine had to be destroyed, has a pattern of quality control problems, according to a new report from the New York Times . Mold problems, poor training of employees, inadequate disinfection of equipment and insufficient investigations have all recently plagued Emergent, the newspaper reports. In addition to the 15 million faulty J&J doses, another 62 million doses now have to be checked for contamination. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has yet to certify the company to manufacture doses for use; all J&J shots circulating today were manufactured elsewhere.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is launching a study to learn more about risk factors for rare allergic reactions caused by the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines, it announced today. In the trial, 3,400 adults—many of whom have a history of severe allergic reactions—will get one of the vaccines at allergy research centers, which are equipped to monitor and care for people who have any side effects. Results are expected late this summer.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
The Global Situation
More than 132.4 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and nearly 2.9 million people have died. On April 6, there were 605,501 new cases and 11,899 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 2 million confirmed cases:
Officials in Osaka, Japan have barred the public from attending Olympic torch relay events scheduled for next week as infections rise and overwhelm area hospital systems, CNN reports. Osaka recorded 878 new cases today, a record high, and 70% of hospital beds in the region are full. Officials have also declared a medical emergency in the region and asked residents not to leave home except for essentials—potentially foreshadowing problems with the Olympics, which are set to begin in July.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. had recorded more than 30.8 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 556,000 people have died. On April 6, there were 61,958 new cases and 933 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 B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant first identified in the U.K. is now the dominant strain in the U.S., Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a White House briefing today. More than 16,200 cases of B.1.1.7 have been reported in the U.S., and Florida has the highest number of any state. However, the country's ability to identify and track variants like B.1.1.7 remains limited.
Research submitted as a preprint to TheLancet last week linked NFL games where more than 5,000 fans were present with a subsequent rise in COVID-19 infections in communities near the stadiums. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed, and other early research on the topic is mixed, the New York Times reports. But the results cast a pall on the pro football league's hopes to open all stadiums at full capacity for the start of the season in September.
The U.S. Army has developed a new COVID-19 vaccine and will give the first doses to volunteers this week, the Wall Street Journalreports. Researchers are testing whether it's safe and effective, as well as whether it protects against several coronavirus variants. If it works, the vaccine could be used on its own or as a booster to increase immunity to variants. Preliminary results could be available by the middle of this summer.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of April 7, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Remembering the Lives Lost to COVID-19
Alex Hernandez, a 14-year-old boy with leukemia, recently became the first child to die of COVID-19 in Milwaukee. "Alex was a wonderful boy," one of his teachers wrote on a GoFundMe page for the family. "His health and his education were important to him until the end." Read more here.
Psychiatric Problems Are Disturbingly Common Among COVID-19 Patients
One in three people diagnosed with COVID-19 also have a psychiatric or neurological illness six months after being diagnosed, a new study shows. Most of the ailments are mood disorders, anxiety and substance use problems, Elizabeth Cooney reports in STAT, but to a lesser extent, they also include brain hemorrhages, stroke and dementia. Read more here.
What Loss Looks Like
At a time when public mourning has largely been confined to the internet, editors at the New York Times asked readers to submit photos that reminded them of a loved one who died of COVID-19 in the past year. The virtual memorial includes a toy cardinal, record and hat. 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 Mandy Oaklander, and edited by Alex Fitzpatrick.
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