Russia's Invasion of Ukraine is Probably Going to Make COVID-19 Worse
As Ukrainians huddle in shelters or crowd into train cars and buses in an effort to flee, it’s not just the pressing danger of Russian rockets that people face—but also a rising risk of COVID-19 and a severe disruption to health services.
Understandably, immediate survival is likely top of people’s minds rather than the question of whether you’re standing six feet away from someone. The country—in which roughly a third of the population is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus—is, however, only just coming off its highest peak of infections since the pandemic began.
Between Jan. 15 and Feb. 25, the number of new daily COVID-19 cases skyrocketed by 555% in Ukraine. In the past 24 hours, there were over 11,600 newly recorded cases in Ukraine, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). At the same time, there are fears that Russian soldiers will further spread the coronavirus; in the past month, Russia has been experiencing an even bigger spike in COVID-19 cases than Ukraine.
It will be difficult to get a true sense of how the coronavirus is spreading. As the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs notes, actual case numbers may be higher than the official tally, due to a lack of testing. “During a war,” a recent Poynter article explains, “data collection takes a distance [sic] back seat, which could become deeply problematic for Ukraine in the weeks ahead.”
All of this will inevitably put pressure on local health care systems, already grappling with the impacts of war—a missile struck a hospital in Ukraine's Donetska region on Feb. 24 killing 4 people—and other health crises (the country has recently been trying to control a polio outbreak). Before Russia invaded, Ukraine was making significant progress in strengthening its health care systems—including ramping up its supply of oxygen, which is critical to treating COVID-19 patients. This progress is being undone now, however, with WHO warning yesterday that most hospitals could run out of oxygen supplies within 24 hours as trucks transporting supplies braced for Russian missile attacks. Add to this the risk of hospitals losing power, ambulances getting caught in crossfire, and other impacts to essential services, and the human cost of Russia’s war on Ukraine is likely to continue to increase.
The impacts won’t be isolated to Ukraine. At least 368,000 people have already crossed into neighboring countries as of Feb. 27, and many fear this will exacerbate the spread of COVID-19. Speaking about the toll this will have on hospitals across the region, Dr. Eric S. Toner, senior scholar at the Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, told the New York Times: “They’re going to be caring for Covid patients, along with war victims. … They’re going to be understaffed because of the war, and it’s going to harm their chances of keeping patients in isolation or have social distancing. It’s going to be a mess.”
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
Nearly 435.2 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 12 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 5.9 million people have died. On Feb. 27, there were more than 990,000 new cases and 4,267 new deaths confirmed globally.
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending, in terms of cases:
And in terms of deaths:
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 6 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded more than 78.9 million coronavirus cases as of 12 a.m. E.T. today. More than 948,000 people have died. On Feb. 27, there were 7,464 new cases and 182 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending in terms of cases:
And in terms of deaths:
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 Feb. 28, 12 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
A set of studies published over the weekend add more evidence suggesting that COVID-19 came from animals, not a lab. One of the studies traced the start of the outbreak to a large market in Wuhan, China, that sold live animals. The three studies were released as pre-prints and have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
But as two immunology and epidemiology experts at the Global Virus Network in Baltimore argued last week in TIME, knowing the true origin of COVID-19 might not change much about how the world tackles the spread of the virus. Rather than indulging a “politicized attempt” to determine the origins, they write, what’s needed is for the world to invest in “long-term international collaborative endeavors on SARS-CoV-2 and in preparation for future epidemics and pandemics.”
Meanwhile, Hong Kong is struggling to manage its biggest COVID-19 surge since the beginning of the pandemic, reports the New York Times. Reminiscent of the grim early days in 2020, overwhelmed hospitals are unable to move the dead to morgues quickly enough to clear up more space for new patients.
And in the U.S., nearly half of the 500 million free COVID-19 tests made available to the public by the Biden Administration have not yet been claimed. As the AP reports, fewer than 100,000 orders are now being placed each day compared to the 45 million orders submitted the first day the tests became available.
Yesterday, New York State announced it will no longer require students to wear masks in schools as of this Wednesday. This comes as COVID-19 cases decline; for the first time since Nov. 14, average daily hospitalizations in the past week were below 2,000, according to data released Saturday. New York also just recorded its lowest seven-day average of pediatric cases since July.
At the same time, the Pfizer vaccine is now shown to be less effective in preventing infection among 5- to 11-year-olds than in older children. Pfizer’s COVID-19 shot is currently the only one authorized in the U.S. for this younger age group, and while it does prevent severe illness, data collected by health officials in New York State show the vaccine does little to stop infection, even within the first month of being fully immunized.
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 Kyla Mandel and edited by Elijah Wolfson.
