May 21, 2020 — A roundup of the latest news about COVID-19
The world passes a gruesome milestone. One week could’ve saved 36,000 American lives. And scientists are hopeful about finding an effective vaccine quickly. Here are this morning’s updates on coronavirus:
More than 100,000 coronavirus cases were reported to the World Health Organization in the previous 24 hours, “the most in a single day since the outbreak began,” Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said yesterday. The world now has more than 5 million confirmed cases, with almost 329,000 deaths and 1.9 million recoveries. Here in the U.S., we’ve had 1.55 million confirmed cases. More than 93,000 Americans have died, and more than 294,000 have recovered.
Dallas, Houston, Southeast Florida’s Gold Coast, the entire state of Alabama, and several other places in the South that have been rapidly reopening their economies are in danger of a second wave of coronavirus infections over the next four weeks, according to a research team that uses cellphone data to track social mobility and forecast the trajectory of the pandemic.
Guidance for reopening houses of worship amid the coronavirus pandemic has been put on hold after a disagreement between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the White House, which was resistant to putting limits on religious institutions, according to administration officials.
Scientists are increasingly optimistic that a vaccine can be produced in record time. But getting it manufactured and distributed will pose huge challenges. The U.S. has secured almost a third of AstraZeneca’s one billion possible COVID-19 vaccine doses by pledging up to $1.2 billion, as the world’s biggest powers scramble for medicinal supplies to get their economies back to work. President Trump’s talk of developing a vaccine at “warp speed” has led the anti-vaccine movement and some others into forswearing it. In the meanwhile, a top scientist here warned that governments shouldn’t count on a successful vaccine being developed anytime soon when deciding whether to ease restrictions.
Nursing homes in the U.S. where African-Americans and Latinos make up a significant portion of the residents — no matter their location, no matter their size, no matter their government rating — have been twice as likely to get hit by the coronavirus as those where the population is overwhelmingly white.
Nearly half the Twitter accounts discussing the coronavirus appear to be bots. Researchers identified more than 100 false narratives that are proliferating on the platform.
There are no daily public displays of gratitude for Russian doctors and nurses during the coronavirus crisis like there are in the West. Instead of applause, they face mistrust, low pay and even open hostility.
With more than half of cases in the country going uncounted according to some doctors’ estimates, Peruvian officials call the coronavirus pandemic the most devastating to hit the country since 1492, when Europeans began bringing diseases like smallpox and measles to the Americas.
Capt. Tom Moore, the 100-year-old British World War II veteran who raised more than $39 million to support health workers by walking laps for charity in his garden, is being awarded a knighthood.
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