India’s Crisis is Rapidly Becoming Everyone’s Crisis
You’d think that the summit of Mt. Everest would be one of the few places in the world you could escape the pandemic raging more than five miles below. But in the age of COVID-19, the hard work of the Sherpa—the local mountaineering experts who guide foreign climbers to the summit—now includes policing masking and social-distancing rules. That, as my colleague Billy Perrigo reports, is just one way that the coronavirus wildfire burning through India is touching off blazes in the rest of the world.
Nepal—which is home to Everest and shares a long border with India—is just one example of the growing crisis, but a dramatic one. From April 11 to May 11, COVID-19 cases in the small Himalayan nation increased thirty-fold, rising in lockstep with India’s caseload. You hardly must be right next door to be feeling India’s pain firsthand, however. Already, the B.1.617 variant of the virus, first detected in India in October, has been found in 44 countries and on every continent except Antarctica. And only 0.1% of COVID-positive samples are genetically sequenced in India, meaning other variants yet unidentified may have emerged. If so, they have plenty of hosts.
In addition, while India’s official daily case count has plateaued at about 400,000, that is almost certainly a dramatic undercount. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), for example, estimates the true number is around 8 million—the equivalent of the entire population of New York City being infected every day. Official reports say 254,000 people have died in India since the start of the pandemic, but the IHME estimates the true toll is more than 750,000—a number researchers predict will double by the end of August.
Epidemiologists are worried that as the B.1.617 strain continues to spread, it will hit especially hard in densely populated countries in Africa, many of which have yet to experience large outbreaks. The Indian variant has already been detected in Angola, Rwanda, and Morocco—and is not likely to stop there.
India bears a lot of responsibility for the current crisis, as Billy reports, having been late to begin manufacturing vaccines and having failed to produce enough for its own people. But with just 2.8% of the population in the 1.4-billion-person country currently vaccinated, finger-pointing does little good. Instead, other nations need to step in—especially the U.S., which is in the rare position of having three approved vaccines and so much on hand that appointments for vaccinations are going unfilled. In a world of porous borders, every nation that helps India now helps itself as well.
About 337 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of May 12, of which 264.6 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. About 35.4% of Americans have been completely vaccinated.
In one hopeful sign in India, the country’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, is in talks with drugmakers to spend the equivalent of $1.36 billion to purchase COVID-19 vaccines, reports Reuters. Even as other Indian states slow their vaccination rates in the face of shortages, Uttar Pradesh has been meeting with officials from Pfizer, the Serum Institute of India, the local distributor of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine and more in an attempt to increase import and domestic production of vaccines.
In a series of tweets, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced a new way to incentivize locals to get vaccinated: a cash-prize lottery. Beginning May 26, Ohio will hold the first of five weekly drawings in which one recently vaccinated individual will win $1 million. To be eligible, contestants must be 18 years old by the date of the drawing, be a state resident and have had at least one vaccine dose before the drawing.
Bangladesh—which is about 90% Muslim—today finished celebrating the two-day Islamic religious festival of Eid al-Fitr at the worst possible time in terms of public health, reports the Associated Press. The holiday, which involved mass gatherings at the country’s 300,000 mosques, occured at the same time the government suspended second doses of vaccines due to a nationwide shortage. Part of the problem, again, is a spillover from India. Bangladesh had inked a deal with India’s Serum Institute for 30 million doses by June, but so far only 7 million have been delivered.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
The Global Situation
More than 160.4 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 3.3 million people have died. On May 12, there were 760,099 new cases and 13,934 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:
Uruguay, which easily weathered the early months of the pandemic thanks to rapid lockdown rules imposed by the government and broad compliance by the public, is now experiencing a severe surge . As of today, Uruguay’s seven-day moving average of cases is 2,325—vastly worse than seven months ago when the number was in double digits. According to the Washington Post, the causes of the current explosion in cases include the arrival of the P.1 variant, which emerged in neighboring Brazil, and a breakdown in social distancing by a lockdown-weary population.
After news reports in Russia that the city of Ulyanovsk, 435 miles east of Moscow, had recorded 16 cases of India’s B.1.617 variant—all in Indian students studying in the country—the government quickly leapt to quash the stories, reports Reuters. In a statement carried by Russian news agencies, public health officials insisted that genomic analysis of the virus detected in the students “does not allow it to be classified as the Indian variant which people are afraid of now." The truth of the denial cannot be confirmed, but it may be a face-saving move, as it came shortly after Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova issued a statement assuring the public that the Indian strain had not been found anywhere within Russia’s borders.
The Red Cross yesterday sounded the alarm over just how serious the pandemic is becoming in Asia and the Pacific, with 5.9 million cases reported in the region over the past two weeks, according to the Associated Press—more than all other regions of the world combined over that period. Making things worse, according to the Red Cross: vaccine hesitancy and the difficulty in delivering the shots across the vast region.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. had recorded more than 32.8 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 583,600 people have died. On May 12, there were 35,878 new cases and 848 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:
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy stepped into the debate over whether to waive intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccines yesterday, telling The Wall Street Journal that he supports the idea. Murthy stressed that the waiver would be temporary, arguing that it is needed to speed availability of vaccines worldwide, by allowing developing countries to manufacture the shots on their own, rather than waiting for them to be shipped from elsewhere.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, today announced her support for a full reopening of U.S. schools in the fall—throwing the weight of her 1.7-million-member union behind the end of remote learning. Teachers’ unions have taken heat for slowing school reopenings, as they demanded strict measures to reduce the spread of the virus in classrooms. In her remarks, Weingarten conceded that full reopening is “not risk-free” but argued that such measures as masking, handwashing and limiting class size can mitigate the dangers.
Seven members of the New York Yankees baseball team—all non-players—have tested positive for COVID-19, despite having already received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, according to a statement by the organization. Six of the seven cases are asymptomatic, says Yankee’s manager Aaron Boone. As CNN reports , since April the team has been playing under relaxed health and safety protocols—which eliminate some masking and social distancing rules—after reaching 85% vaccination level. The Yankees are currently on the road in Tampa and so far, there has been no change in the team’s playing schedule.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier today issued updated guidance saying that fully vaccinated people can go unmasked in most public indoor places. Masks will still be required in buses, planes, prisons, homeless shelters and other high-risk areas, however. The move comes just two weeks after the CDC reiterated an earlier guidance that all people should remain masked in all public indoor settings.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of May 13, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
The First Shall Be Last
Wealthy nations like Japan, South Korea and New Zealand were seen as models of vaccine compliance shortly after the shots became available. But, as the Associated Press reports, vaccination rates in these countries are plummeting—often below those in the developing world—as vaccine hesitancy takes its toll. Read more here.
Vax Americana
With the U.S. facing a glut of vaccines while the developing world does without, the Biden Administration should launch a Marshall Plan to get the world vaccinated, argues Christian Paz in the Atlantic. Read more here.
The Anti-Vax Industry
Spreading myths about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines is becoming big business for what the Chicago Tribune calls “an ecosystem of for-profit companies, nonprofit groups, YouTube channels and other social media accounts.” Some are established anti-vax groups that were around before the pandemic, but others have appeared in just the last year. Read more here.
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Today's newsletter was written by Jeffrey Kluger and edited by Elijah Wolfson.
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