No images? Click here
Click here to subscribe to the daily brief.
September 29, 2020 - Brief Issue 96
The Coronavirus Daily Brief is a daily news and analysis roundup edited by New America’s International Security Program and Arizona State University.
Subscribe or listen here to get the top weekly stories as a podcast.
Top Headlines
The U.S. Has Surpassed 7 Million Coronavirus Cases; Several States Do Not Have Sufficient Tests; Wisconsin, South Dakota, and North Dakota Have Escalating Numbers; Florida Is Improving But Her Governor Rolled Back Restrictions on Bars and Restaurants (Health & Science)
A Lack of Working Interferons Gives the Coronavirus a Path into the Body, Say Scientists (Health & Science)
Vaccine Candidates: FDA Questions Slow Inovio’s Progress; Johnson & Johnson Recently Began a 60,000 Participant Study (Health & Science)
More Than One Million People Worldwide Have Died of COVID-19 (Around the World)
Brazil Sees COVID-19 Resurgence In Amazonian City, Dashing Herd Immunity Hopes (Around the World)
Quebec Moves To Highest Alert Level Amid New Outbreak (Around the World)
Authorities Tighten Restrictions in Northeast England (Around the World)
French Healthcare System Risks Being Overwhelmed Soon, Says Top Doctor (Around the World)
Germany’s Infections Could Surpass 19,000 Daily, Warns Merkel (Around the World)
Beijing City Officials Order Importers to Avoid Frozen Food from Foreign Hotspots (Around the World)
Myanmar Caseload Surges After Months of Virtually No Spread (Around the World)
New York Governor Cuomo Addresses Spike in Cases as State Nears Warned-About Positivity Rate Threshold (U.S. Government & Politics)
United Airlines Trims Furlough Plan (U.S. Economy)
Workers Face Health Insurance Cut Offs (U.S. Economy)
Coronavirus Disproportionately Killing the Uninsured, Life Insurance Companies Paying Out Less than Initially Expected (U.S. Society)
Health & Science
There have been 7,150,118 coronavirus cases in the United States, and 205,091 people have died (Johns Hopkins). Around 2,794,608 people have recovered, and the United States has conducted 102,342,416 tests. Worldwide, there have been 33,389,891 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 1,002,394 deaths. At least 23,177,193 people have recovered from the virus.
The U.S. Has Surpassed 7 Million Coronavirus Cases; Several States Do Not Have Sufficient Tests; Wisconsin, South Dakota, and North Dakota Have Escalating Numbers; Florida Is Improving But Her Governor Rolled Back Restrictions on Bars and Restaurants
The confirmed number of people infected by the coronavirus in the United States rose above 7 million on Friday, constituting more than one fifth of the world’s confirmed cases, although the US has only about 4 percent of the global population. The U.S. continues to have the highest number of infections, followed by India and Brazil (Johns Hopkins).
The U.S. reached 7 million coronavirus cases less than a month after it reached 6 million confirmed coronavirus cases (Politico). The United States has been experiencing a surge in the number of daily cases since Labor Day holiday, says Ashish Jha, Adjunct Professor of Global Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (Twitter). The U.S. is “not in a good place,” especially since we’re heading into the cooler days of fall, said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (CNBC). Within the U.S., almost half of the states are reporting increasing case numbers, mostly located in the Midwest and Utah, while the areas along the West Coast and East Coast from Virginia to Maine are doing better (NYT, Pandemics Explained). It's not “only that the number of infections keeps on going up. It's also that the test positivity rates are trending in the wrong direction," said emergency medicine physician Leana Wen Monday. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that the test positivity rate stays at or below 5 percent before lifting restrictions. "We're seeing more than a dozen states with a test positivity is over 10 percent. And there are two states -- Idaho and South Dakota -- where the test positivity is over 20 percent," Wen said. "That means that not only do we have increasing infections in these states, we also don't have nearly enough testing" (CNN).
Wisconsin reported a new record in confirmed new cases, 2,817, on Saturday, breaking the state’s previous record of 2,553 on September 18 (NPR). The outbreak started about a month ago, with college students returning for classes, but now cases include people of all ages (Atlantic). At the same time, the state reports fewer coronavirus tests a day now than in late July, which makes it harder for experts to forecast the size of the outbreak. “Wisconsin is now experiencing unprecedented, near-exponential growth of the number of Covid-19 cases in our state,” Governor Tony Evers wrote Friday, with people between the ages of 18 and 24 driving the spike (CNBC, Twitter). In addition, some parents in Milwaukee sent their children to school with coronavirus; health officials will investigate 25 schools (WaPo). There have been no outbreaks so far, but health officials will need to take drastic action if sick children keep coming to school.
South Dakota reported a record number of 579 new cases on Saturday, the third time the state broke its record in a week (Newsweek). Overall, the rate of hospitalized patients has tripled since the motorcycle rally at Sturgis drew hundreds of thousands to the state (Forbes). North Dakota’s department of health reported a record 343 new coronavirus cases, following a stretch of days, since September 21, where their numbers of new cases have broken the pre-existing record (Newsweek). The state also has the highest rate of infection per capita: 363 cases for every 100,000 people. The state is preparing to launch a $1.8 million public education campaign to encourage people to wear masks, but there is no mandate (Grand Forks Herald).
Florida’s number of coronavirus cases dropped by about 15 percent since the week before, but the overall number of cases is high, reporting over 2,500 new cases a day. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said Friday that he would lift restrictions and allow bars and restaurants to operate at full capacity. Anthony Fauci found the move “very concerning,” he told Good Morning America on Monday. “That is something we really need to be careful about because when you’re dealing with community spread and you have the kind of congregate setting where people get together, particularly without masks, you’re really asking for trouble” (CNBC).
A Lack of Working Interferons Gives the Coronavirus a Path into the Body, Say Scientists
A report in Science last week may shed some light on how the coronavirus attacks some people and why there is so much variability among COVID-19 victims (Science). In addition to the risk factors that we know about – higher age, being male, obesity, and heart disease – there may be a new one: auto-antibodies to endogenous interferons. Interferons are complex in their activities and fall into three broad classes (Types I, II, and III). Every cell in the body makes them and they are the first to “launch an immediate, intense local response when a virus invades a cell, triggering infected cells to produce proteins that attack the virus,” writes Science's Meredith Wadman (Science). Derek Lowe writes, “they are proteins whose synthesis is generally induced by some sort of viral or bacterial infection, and they go on to modulate a wide range of immune functions and affect the transcriptional activity of hundreds of different genes downstream. They’re of great interest not only in infectious disease, but in cancer and autoimmune disease as well, and we’re still working out all the pathways involved” (In the Pipeline). Some people have mutations in their interferons, while others have developed an immune response to their own interferon, in a way that is not completely understood.
In the Science study, the authors found that among 1,227 healthy controls, only four had antibodies to their own interferons; and in 663 patients with mild coronavirus infection, there were none who had antibodies. But in 987 patients with severe illness, there were 101 that had antibodies; they also skewed older, and 95 of them were male. About 37 percent of the 101 ended up dying from COVID-19. “These findings provide a first explanation for the excess of men among patients with life-threatening Covid-19 and the increase in risk with age,” said researchers led by Jean-Laurent Casanova, head of Rockefeller University’s St. Giles Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases in New York. “They also provide a means of identifying individuals at risk of developing life-threatening Covid-19” (Bloomberg).
The study was large, with a huge team from over 70 institutions, and they recommended actions. First, coronavirus patients can be screened to see if they have antibodies, so that they can be identified as being at risk for developing life-threatening pneumonia; they should also not give convalescent plasma. Second, giving these patients alpha interferon won’t work, but beta-interferon might be effective because antibodies against that seem to be rare.
Vaccine Candidates: FDA Questions Slow Inovio’s Progress; Johnson & Johnson Recently Began a 60,000 Participant Study
The combined Phase II and III for Inovio’s vaccine candidate has been delayed, probably until November at the earliest, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) raised questions about the vaccine (Reuters, WSJ). Inovio said the FDA’s questions included the delivery device used in giving the shot, and were not concerned with the safety events from the ongoing early stage trial, but did not offer any more details. Inovio had planned to use a device called Cellectrak which “sends out an electrical pulse to open the walls in the cell so DNA molecules,” like the ones in their vaccine candidate, can enter (Reuters).
Johnson & Johnson (J&J) began a 60,000 participant Phase III trial of their coronavirus vaccine candidate, they announced Wednesday (BioCentury, Cicion PR Newswire, CNN, WSJ). J&J is planning to recruit people from the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Mexico, Peru, and South Africa (NYT). The trial is about twice as big as Moderna’s, and significantly larger than Pfizer’s; their role is to get a better picture of the vaccine candidate’s safety and possibly reduce the amount of time to determine if it is effective. Unlike the three other leading candidates (AstraZeneca, Moderna, and Pfizer), J&J is testing the vaccine as a single shot. J&J is evaluating both safety and efficacy. The vaccine candidate is expected to be stable for two years at -20°C and for three months or longer in the 2°C to 8°C range used to keep many biologics. J&J said the candidate is “compatible with standard vaccine distribution channels and would not require new infrastructure to get it to the people who need it” (Fierce Biotech).
Meanwhile, Pfizer has delivered the second of two doses to more than 24,000 of its 44,000 participants in its clinical trial. Moderna has delivered both doses of its vaccine to more than 15,000 of its 30,000 trial participants (Politico). AstraZeneca is still on hold in the U.S. and waiting for regulators to come to a conclusion about whether a case of neurological illness was related to the vaccine candidate, but trials have resumed in the U.K. (CNN).
Bonus Reads: "CDC’s Credibility is Eroded by Internal Blunders and External Attacks as Coronavirus Vaccine Campaigns Loom," (WaPo); "New Document Reveals Scope and Structure of Operation Warp Speed and Underscores Vast Military Involvement," (STAT); "COVID-vaccine Results Are on the Way — and Scientists’ Concerns Are Growing," (Nature).
Around the World
COVID-19 Deaths Pass One Million Worldwide
The total COVID-19 fatality tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University passed the one million mark on Monday nine months after Chinese authorities first reported a cluster of unusual pneumonia cases in Wuhan. The Johns Hopkins study counted 1,000,555 deaths late Monday night Eastern Standard Time as thousands continue to die everyday from the virus. But the true count, according to experts, may be much higher as some countries undercount infections due to resource limitations or political considerations. “If anything, the numbers currently reported probably represent an underestimate of those individuals who have either contracted Covid-19 or died as a cause of it,” said Mike Ryan, the WHO’s top emergencies expert, at a briefing in Geneva (Guardian).
The Americas
Brazil Sees COVID-19 Resurgence In Amazonian City, Dashing Herd Immunity Hopes
Officials in Manaus ordered bars and river beaches closed and public gatherings restricted amid a coronavirus resurgence in a city that experts had hoped may have achieved some degree of herd immunity. Manaus, the largest city in Brazil’s Amazonas state, was devastated in April and May by the coronavirus as residents and businesses largely ignored lockdown rules and social distancing guidelines. But as deaths suddenly plummeted in the summer, experts speculated that the outbreak had been widespread enough to confer herd immunity in the city. A study currently under review conducted by the University of Sao Paulo’s Institute of Tropical Medicine seemingly confirmed the suspicions when it estimated that 44 to 66 percent of the population had antibodies based on samples gathered from blood banks. But with cases once again on the rise, city officials are imploring residents to observe a 30-day ban on parties and other gatherings. Manaus Mayor Arthur Virgilio blamed President Jair Bolsonaro, who has downplayed the impact of the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, for encouraging people to return to their normal habits too soon. “The government must take this seriously and speak the truth. If it says there is no problem, that encourages people to ignore our decrees,” said the mayor (Reuters).
Bonus Read: “Abandoned in the Amazon: How Indigenous Brazilians Fought COVID-19,” (Economist).
Quebec Moves To Highest Alert Level Amid New Outbreak
Quebec provincial authorities have announced a “red alert” for three regions amid rising coronavirus infections. Montreal, Quebec City and Chaudière-Appalache will see all restaurants, bars, cinemas, and other entertainment venues shuttered for 28 days starting on Thursday. Libraries and museums will also be closed while home gatherings will be forbidden. Schools and most businesses outside of hospitality, however, will remain open. “Schools must remain open," said Quebec Premier François Legault. "Businesses are open so parents can continue to work and earn money,” he added. Montreal remains the epicenter of the new outbreak in Quebec, with Montreal Island accounting for 245 of the 750 new cases reported on Monday. Cases have ticked consistently upward in Quebec all month, with only 157 new cases reported on September 1 (CBC).
Europe
Authorities Tighten Restrictions in Northeast England
New public health restrictions will go into effect on Wednesday in northeast England as the coronavirus continues to rapidly spread. For the first time, people who do not live together will be prohibited to meet in pubs, bars or restaurants. While public health guidelines had previously suggested against people from different households meeting indoors, violators will now be fined £200 for the first offense and up to £6,400 for subsequent ones. The new rules, which will be enforced in Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle, Northumberland, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Sunderland, will affect almost two million people. The region has an infection rate of more than 100 per 100,000 people, double England’s average (Guardian). England has also instituted a fine of up to £10,000 for those who ignore medical orders to self-isolate following a government study showing that only 18 percent of people with symptoms choose to quarantine. The new quarantine law applies to those who test positive for the coronavirus, or who have been ordered to self-isolate owing to close contact with a carrier of the virus (BBC).
French Healthcare System Risks Being Overwhelmed Soon, Says Top Doctor
A top French doctor warned the nation that the country’s health infrastructure could be overwhelmed within weeks without prompt action. "The second wave is arriving faster than we thought," Patrick Bouet, head of the National Council of the Order of Doctors, told the weekly Journal du Dimanche in an interview published Sunday. Warnings from the health ministry, he said, had not gone far enough to convey that the crisis may be imminent. "He (Health Minister Olivier Veran) didn't say that in three to four weeks, if nothing changes, France will face a widespread outbreak across its whole territory, for several long autumn and winter months," said Bouet, referring to recent comments made by the minister. Health workers, he added, are too “exhausted, traumatized” to deliver the same “spring miracle” that helped curb the death toll at the pandemic’s start. France saw a record 16,096 new cases on Thursday, with the caseload easing to 11,123 by Sunday (AFP).
Germany’s Infections Could Surpass 19,000 Daily, Warns Merkel
German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned officials on a Monday video conference that the nation may see more than 19,200 new daily cases if the current surge is not stemmed, according to sources present at the meeting. While last week’s average of 2,000 new cases a day is well below the highs of more than 6,000 reported in March and April, the rate of infection has nonetheless been at its highest level since the pandemic’s early months and continues to rise. Daily new infections fell somewhat at the beginning of this week, with 1,192 cases reported on Monday. When asked for comment at a press conference, Merkel’s spokesman replied: "The development of infection numbers is of great concern to us” (Deutsche Welle).
Bonus Read: “Fear and Confusion Over Looming Border Closures in Tri-Border Region,” (Deutsche Welle).
Asia-Pacific
Beijing City Officials Order Importers to Avoid Frozen Food from Foreign Hotspots
Beijing municipal authorities on Monday ordered importers to avoid frozen food from countries with major coronavirus outbreaks in the wake of viral detections within shipments. The Beijing Municipal Commerce Bureau said in a statement that "customs and local governments have repeatedly detected the coronavirus in imported cold chain food, proving it risks contamination.” It has therefore ordered firms to “take the initiative to avoid importing cold chain foods from areas severely hit by the pandemic.” Chinese authorities in recent months have repeatedly documented incidents of coronavirus infection on frozen imported food, from Brazilian chicken wings to Norwegian salmon. It suspended imports in June from an Iowa-based Tysons Foods plant over an outbreak at the facility. More bans against other companies followed in September, spanning 19 countries and regions. While both the World Health Organization and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintain that the risk of frozen food transmission is low, China is evidently not taking chances as it seeks to preserve its largely successful suppression of domestic coronavirus transmission (CNN).
Myanmar Caseload Surges After Months of Virtually No Spread
Myanmar reported a record 897 new coronavirus cases on Monday as the Southeast Asian nation became the fourth-most infected country in the region following months of virtually no spread. Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city and epicenter of the outbreak, has been under stay-at-home orders since September 21 while motorists must possess passes to travel between the city’s townships. The issuance of all visa types has also been suspended (Myanmar Times). Myanmar, the poorest country in Southeast Asia, had only reported a few hundred cases of coronavirus prior to mid-August. The national caseload exploded in September for reasons not yet fully understood. With the total number of infections now standing at more than 10,000, the nation’s extremely impoverished health care infrastructure has been left struggling to keep up with new cases. The total death toll now stands at 256, up from just six reported at the beginning of September (Al Jazeera).
Bonus Read: “COVID-19 Spirals Ahead of Myanmar Election,” (The Diplomat).
U.S. Government & Politics
New York Governor Cuomo Addresses Spike in Cases as State Nears Warned-About Positivity Rate Threshold
On Monday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo addressed a recent spike in coronavirus cases in New York state, which had reported promising signs in its effort to prevent the virus’ spread for months (NYT). Cuomo pointed to the importance of hotspots in Brooklyn and in Rockland and Orange Counties. New York City reached a 1.93 percent test positivity rate, according to data released on Monday, and Governor Cuomo had previously identified a 2 percent positivity rate as cause for concern. According to the Times, “Officials are particularly concerned about eight neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens, some with large Orthodox Jewish communities, that have accounted for about one-fourth of New York City’s new cases in the past two weeks, despite representing about 7 percent of the city’s population.” Cuomo said the state would make more rapid tests available and that “the key with these clusters is to jump on them quickly.”
U.S. Economy
United Airlines Trims Furlough Plan
United Airlines is trimming its plans to furlough workers due to the impact of coronavirus on the aviation industry, the company stated on Monday (WSJ). United had previously stated that it planned to furlough up to 36,000 workers before reducing that number to 16,000 last month, and now the company says it plans to furlough a total of 12,000, reducing the previous number of expected furloughs by a quarter. The Wall Street Journal reports, “United said Monday that around 7,000 staff had taken voluntary buyouts and that others who agreed to extended leave and work-share deals had reduced the number of compulsory cuts.” Federal support for airlines will run out at the end of September, putting many companies in a position of needing to make cuts.
Workers Face Health Insurance Cut Offs
Millions of workers either have already had their health insurance cut off or are facing losing health insurance amid the pandemic and its impact on the economy, according to a report in the New York Times on Monday (NYT). The Times writes, “While estimates vary, a recent Urban Institute analysis of census data says at least three million Americans have already lost job-based coverage, and a separate analysis from Avalere Health predicts some 12 million will lose it by the end of this year. Both studies highlight the disproportionate effect on Black and Hispanic workers.” Sara R. Collins, a vice president at the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that works on health policy, told the Times, “There is this expectation that we are going to see big losses in employer-based coverage.” The concerns come as government aid for businesses runs out with little sign of a forthcoming deal on further support. One report by researchers at Harvard Business School found that about a third of small businesses said they would not be able to pay insurance premiums in a June survey. Mark Hall, the director of health law and policy at Wake Forest University, told the Times “We will probably really start to see it during renewal time, November and December.”
Bonus Read: “How to Climb the Corporate Ladder While Working Remotely,” (WSJ).
U.S. Society
Coronavirus Disproportionately Killing the Uninsured, Life Insurance Companies Paying Out Less than Initially Expected
Life insurance companies are paying out less than they initially expected as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, in large part because the virus is disproportionately killing America’s uninsured, according to a report Monday in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). The Journal writes, “In the past few weeks, many life-insurance companies have sharply reduced estimates of their exposure, as measured by payouts per 100,000 U.S. COVID-19 fatalities. Estimates have come down by an average of 40 percent to 50 percent, according to Credit Suisse stock analyst Andrew Kligerman.” Two groups that tend to have less life insurance coverage have been particularly hard hit by the virus - older Americans, who being out of the workforce often are insured at lower levels, and members of minority communities. The Journal writes, “More than a fifth of COVID-19 deaths have been non-Hispanic Black people, above their roughly 13 percent representation in the overall population, according to government data. In a pattern dating back decades, Black Americans typically have bought modest policies aimed at paying burial and related costs, rather than bigger face-value policies, according to life-insurance agents and historians.”
Analysis & Arguments
Readers can send in tips, critiques, questions, and suggestions to coronavirusbrief@newamerica.org.
The Brief is edited by David Sterman and Narisara Murray and co-edited by Emily Schneider and Bennett Murray with Senior Editor Peter Bergen.
Read previous briefs here and stream and subscribe to our weekly podcast here.
About New America
New America is dedicated to renewing the promise of America by continuing the quest to realize our nation's highest ideals. Read the rest of our story, or see what we've been doing recently in our latest Annual Report.
Help us to continue advancing policy solutions and journalism by making a donation to New America.