In the early days of the pandemic, when the coronavirus was still a mysterious new respiratory disease in Asia, Lauren Gardner started tracking its spread via easy-to-understand maps and charts posted online. Soon she was getting just a few hours of sleep a night, inundated with requests and pressure to keep the data fresh and accurate—especially as the virus started jumping to other continents.
At the time, Gardner's endeavor, the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) COVID-19 dashboard, filled an enormous void: it was the first website to aggregate and publish coronavirus case and death figures in almost real time. It helped policymakers and concerned citizens make sense of how and where the virus was spreading. For 18 months, I've started my day by zooming into the virus stats for my county in Pennsylvania. In doing so, I began to take this data for granted. But as my colleague Emily Barone reports, the JHU team's access to comprehensive data depends on a fragile system—and the COVID-19 picture is getting fuzzier.
Even as the pandemic rages on, some U.S. states have started removing certain coronavirus metrics entirely; others are only updating their dashboards a few times a week, or less. As Emily points out, Georgia stopped providing data on prisons and long-term care facilities, and Nebraska eliminated county-level data. Plus, it's frustratingly confusing for everyday users to figure out where to look for the precise data they're interested in, like hospital capacity stats or demographic trends.
Gardner, who's an associate professor of engineering at JHU, described the challenges of running the JHU dashboard—including sifting through data disparities and anomalies. "I wouldn't have proactively sought out this job," she told Emily. "I am a data user, not a data provider." Almost accidentally, she entered a space that many experts agree is long overdue for an overhaul.
"Our public health data are way outdated," Marcus Plescia, the chief medical officer at the Association for State and Territorial Health Officials, told Emily. Paula Yoon, director for health informatics and surveillance at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), added that "the lack of investment in the public health infrastructure for these past 10, 15, 20 years have left us unable to have the timely and complete data that we—CDC and state and local entities—need to respond more quickly."
About 471.8 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of yesterday afternoon, of which nearly 390.7 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. About 55.4% of Americans have been completely vaccinated.
More than 232.7 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and nearly 4.8 million people have died. On September 28, there were 429,757 new cases and 8,990 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's every country that has reported over 4.5 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded more than 43.2 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. Nearly 692,300 people have died. On September 28, there were 111,162 new cases and 2,543 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:
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of Sept. 28, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
YouTube is taking action against high-profile anti-vaccine activists and banning all vaccine misinformation from its platform, the company announced today. In a blog post, YouTube said it was removing accounts associated with Joseph Mercola and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who were among those spreading false claims about vaccines for COVID-19 and other diseases. While YouTube previously banned misinformation about the coronavirus vaccines, it's expanding its policy to include claims about other vaccines, such as those that protect against measles and hepatitis B.
A new CDC advisory "strongly recommends" vaccination for those who are pregnant, recently gave birth or are trying to become pregnant. Those who are infected with the virus while pregnant have twice the usual risk of ending up in the ICU and a 70% increased risk of death, the agency says, as well as a heightened risk of complications such as preterm birth and stillbirth.
Alaska has hit a grim new milestone: it's reporting a seven-day average of about 180 new cases per capita, the most of any U.S. state at any point during the pandemic. Yesterday, Alaska reported 10 deaths and 726 new infections, the first time the latter number has dropped below 1,000 in a week. The state's hospitals have been forced to ration care amid the surge, which comes as temperatures drop and only about half the population is vaccinated:
Harvard Business School has shifted most of its graduate classes online following an outbreak on campus. Breakthrough infections among M.B.A. students increased by 20% in three days, which prompted the school to pivot away from in-person classes until at least Oct. 3, the Wall Street Journal reports. Harvard did not disclose the exact number of positive cases.
United Airlines is firing about 600 employees who refused to comply with its vaccine mandate, according to a memo sent to staff yesterday. That equates to less than 1% of the company's 67,000-person workforce. "This was an incredibly difficult decision but keeping our team safe has always been our first priority," airline officials said.
A Missouri hospital is issuing panic buttons to staffers amid a surge in coronavirus-related attacks, the Associated Press reports. Nurses and hundreds of other employees at Cox Medical Center Branson will soon begin wearing the buttons, which they can push to instantly alert hospital security that they're in danger. The number of security incidents at the hospital jumped from 94 in 2019 to 162 in 2020, while assaults increased from 40 to 123 and injuries rose from 17 to 78.
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 Angela Haupt and edited by Alex Fitzpatrick.
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