From the start, most mainstream scientists and world leaders believed SARS-CoV-2 originated in a wet market in Wuhan, China. Former President Donald Trump and his allies, meanwhile, saw something more sinister at work: the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, they said, and Beijing was covering up the accident. That led Trump to give the virus racist nicknames like the “China Flu” and the “Kung Flu.” Arkansas Senator and Trump ally Tom Cotton likened the alleged leak to the Chernobyl disaster in the former U.S.S.R.
As my colleague Philip Elliot reports, that kind of hot rhetoric—coupled with a dearth of evidence to support the lab-leak claim—led many to simply dismiss the idea. But today, with President Joe Biden in charge, epidemiologists are increasingly giving the theory a second look. Just yesterday, Biden ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct a thorough study on the origins of the virus—with a special focus on the lab-leak possibility—and report back to him within 90 days.
Part of the reason for the new push is new intelligence, reported on by the Wall Street Journal, showing that at least a few workers in the Wuhan lab came down with suspiciously COVID-like symptoms in November of 2019, not long before the virus broke out into the world.That led Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to call for a fresh investigation into the virus’ origins, saying the probe must be swift and independent, setting up a distinction from a February study by the World Health Organization and China that concluded a lab jailbreak was not the source—and which critics say was compromised by China’s involvement.
All of this points not just to problems in epidemiological sleuthing, Philip reports, but in the powerful x-factor of presidential credibility. Trump may have received more than 74 million votes last November, but a Gallup poll last June found that only 36% of Americans considered him “honest and trustworthy,” the wages of what the Washington Post counted as the former President’s 30,573 misleading claims over the course of his four-year term.
This week, Trump claimed some vindication on the Wuhan front: “Now everybody is agreeing that I was right when I very early on called Wuhan as the source of COVID-19, sometimes referred to as the China Virus,” he said in a statement. “To me it was obvious from the beginning but I was badly criticized, as usual.”
Personal grievance notwithstanding, Trump’s original theory may be borne out. Maybe we’ll know in 90 days. But had the former president won the trust of more than 36% of his constituents while he was still in office, perhaps a thorough investigation—and a definitive answer—could have been forthcoming sooner.
About 361.3 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of this afternoon, of which 290.7 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. About 40% of Americans have been completely vaccinated.
France’s Sanofi and the U.K.’s GlaxoSmithKline are both launching Phase 3 trials of their respective vaccine candidates intended to target both the original variant of SARS-CoV-2 and the B.1.351 strain that was first identified in South Africa, reports Reuters. Both companies hope to have their vaccines approved by the end of 2021. Sanofi is especially sanguine about the B.1.351 formulation, citing early evidence that it might even work against other, more-transmissible variants of the virus.
The first vaccine millionaire was announced in Ohio yesterday, reports the Associated Press. Last week, the state announced a series of five once-a-week drawings in which one vaccinated person would be selected at random to win a $1 million prize. More than 2.7 million people entered the drawing and the first winner was Abbigail Bugenske, an engineer living in the town of Silverton. The drawing seems to be achieving its intended purpose: getting more Ohioans vaccinated. Vaccination rates jumped 33% in the state in the first week after the lottery was announced.
New York is following Ohio’s lead in incentivizing locals to get their shots, offering a free scratch-off lotto ticket for a chance to win up to $5 million to those vaccinated at a number of sites across the state. In addition, reports the New York Daily News , Gov. Andrew Cuomo yesterday announced a five-week drawing in which 10 vaccinated people a week from age 12 to 17 will have a chance to win free room, board and tuition at a state- or city-run college or university for a full four years. Cuomo cited the low rate of vaccination and comparatively high rate of infection among young people in the state as the reason for the strategy.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
The Global Situation
More than 168.4 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and nearly 3.5 million people have died. On May 26, there were 560,509 new cases and 12,655 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 2.5 million confirmed cases:
China is not responding well to Biden’s push for a renewed investigation into whether SARS-CoV-2 might have had its origins in a Chinese lab, according to the Washington Post . At a daily briefing today, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian charged that the U.S. “does not care about facts and truth, nor is it interested in serious scientific origin tracing.” Zhao called for the U.S. to open up its own labs to the same kind of inspection Biden is demanding, citing specifically the Naval Medical Research Center’s Biological Defense Research Directorate at Fort Detrick in Maryland.
Efforts to control an outbreak in Taiwan are being hampered not by a lack of vaccines, but by the island’s inability to test for the virus sufficiently, reports The Associated Press. Complacency led the government to under-invest in rapid testing, which is generally less reliable than the PCR variety, but can at least yield rapid results. As new infections climb to above 600 per day, one Taiwanese lab faces a backlog of 400 samples a day with the ability to process barely 120 of them. As a measure of how desperate the situation has become, Ko Wen-je, mayor of Taipei, the island’s largest city, admitted that he resorted to a decidedly non-scientific measure to search for more rapid tests: buying them online. “If you don’t know, and you try to know something, please check Google,” he said.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. had recorded nearly 33.2 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. Nearly 592,000 people have died. On May 26, there were 24,052 new cases and 1,009 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:
There is a new weapon in the treatment arsenal against COVID-19, as the Wall Street Journalreports . The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized a monoclonal antibody drug developed by Vir Biotechnology Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline. The drugs work by using lab-made antibodies that mimic the virus-battling function of those developed naturally after exposure to the pathogen.
President Biden’s call for the investigation into the origins of the virus is receiving rare bipartisan support, reports the New York Times. Last night, the Senate passed a bill introduced by Republican Senators Mike Braun of Indiana and Josh Hawley of Missouri, which would declassify any intelligence concerning the origins of SARS-CoV-2. The day before, the Senate unanimously agreed to Republican-introduced amendments to a bill intended to increase U.S. investment in global innovation, that will exclude any funds that could make their way to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab under investigation as the possible source of the virus.
Reflecting the increasing suspicion that SARS-CoV-2 may indeed have leaked from a lab in China, Facebook has ended its ban on posts asserting the once-discredited idea, reports the Wall Street Journal. “In consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps,” said the social media giant in a statement on its website yesterday. Facebook began the ban in February, at a time when it was trying to limit fringe—and politically charged—misinformation campaigns.
America’s economic fever chart continues to mirror its pandemic one, and today the vital signs are positive, reports Reuters. U.S. weekly jobless claims have hit a 14-month low, as employers ramp up hiring to keep up with increasing demand and the steady lifting of quarantine rules. It doesn’t hurt either that nearly half of U.S. adults are now fully vaccinated, nor that households are reportedly sitting on an estimated $2.3 trillion in money not spent during lockdown—and ready to be poured into the rapidly opening market now.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of May 27, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
The Woes of COVAX
The multinational plan to vaccinate the world against COVID-19 began with the best intentions, but as the Wall Street Journal reports, a series of snafus including shortage of supplies and feuding among countries have run the program aground. Read more here.
Things Get Tougher for Long-Haulers
It’s bad enough suffering from COVID-19 symptoms for months or more, but new research is showing that long-haulers are also being diagnosed with other illnesses, including postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS—a cardiac condition) and chronic fatigue syndrome. Read more here.
Long-Lasting Immunity
A pair of new studies, one published in Nature and the other published in BioRxiv (the latter has not yet been peer reviewed) show that vaccine-conferred immunity from COVID-19 may last for a year—or even a lifetime. Read more here and 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 Jeffrey Kluger and edited by Elijah Wolfson.
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