When COVID-19 first spread in the U.S., it claimed lives while robbing families of the chance to properly say goodbye, due to the fact that many were barred from hospital bedsides and were forced to forgo funerals. The issue was especially acute for Black Americans, who were nearly twice as likely to die from the disease as white people early in the pandemic.
Last year, photographer Andrea Ellen Reed launched a project to illustrate the scale of that grief through a moving photo essay and interviews with Black midwesterners who had lost parents, children, and other loved ones to COVID-19. Reed traveled from her home in Minneapolis to five Midwest cities and met people like Akeya Watley, who told Reed how it felt to lose her 74-year-old father to the disease in April 2020. “On my last visit, a nurse promised me that she wouldn’t let him die alone,” Watley said. “She gowned up and went back into his room, but by then he was already gone. He ended up dying alone. It felt like he was stolen from me.”
Painful stories like these deserve to be seen and heard, Reed told my colleague Simmone Shah. “In the Black community, our grief and our struggle are often overlooked. This project really does highlight that in a way that we don't always see,” Reed said. “A lot of people felt as though their loved one was forgotten.”
The interviews also helped Reed confront her own grief, as she lost her mother-in-law and endured a third miscarriage over the course of the pandemic. Reed said that in the past, she probably wouldn’t have spoken up about her losses, since sharing her suffering would have made her feel weak. However, she says, photographing other grieving Black Americans and hearing their stories showed her “it’s ok to go through those things. But more importantly, it’s ok to share them,” Reed said. “I learned from them talking so openly and beautifully about their grief.”
More than 535.2 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 10 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 6.3 million people have died. On June 12, there were 198,277 new cases and 463 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 10 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded more than 85.5 million coronavirus cases as of 10 a.m. E.T. today. More than 1 million people have died. On June 12, 14,819 new cases were reported and 15 new deaths were 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 June 13, 12 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Friday that it no longer requires travelers flying into the U.S. to show a negative COVID-19 test result or proof of recovery, explaining that the pandemic is in a “new phase” now that effective vaccines and therapeutics are available and that most Americans have some immunity. However, the CDC still recommends that people test before boarding a flight to the U.S. and skip travel if they’re sick.
Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 6 months to 4 years appears to be safe and effective, according to a briefing document posted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday in advance of the agency’s emergency-use authorization review of the shots later this week. Though there were very few cases overall among both vaccinated and unvaccinated kids in this age group, the vaccine, delivered in a three-shot series, was shown to be 80% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in company studies. If authorized by the FDA and recommended by the CDC, vaccines for young children could be available as soon as next week.
Many people with Long COVID experience thoughts of suicide, my colleague Jamie Ducharme reports. Recent research suggests that people with Long COVID are at increased risk for mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, and PTSD. There are many potential reasons why: COVID-19 has well-documented effects on the brain, and Long COVID can cause severe pain that hinders everyday life.
Officials believe over 200 people were infected by COVID-19 at a Beijing nightclub last Thursday, and in the days since, Chinese authorities have been imposing new restrictions in the surrounding Chaoyang district, where more than 3 million people live. Most schools in the district were closed and classes were moved online; nearby businesses were also closed, and residents were required to do three consecutive days of mass testing, the Associated Press reports. Despite the outbreak, cases remained low in China. Just 143 were reported nationwide on Monday, including 51 in Beijing.
A large new clinical trial found that ivermectin has little effect on treating COVID-19, according to data posted yesterday (which have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal). The researchers gave half of the 1,500 participants ivermectin and half a placebo, and found that there was no significant reduction in the risk of hospitalization or death between the groups. The study notes that among participants with severe COVID-19, ivermectin appeared to be more effective. But this subgroup of people was so small that the findings need to be validated in a future trial, the researchers wrote.
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 Tara Law and edited by Mandy Oaklander.
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