TimeMagazine When Eric Freeland, 34, started coughing at the end of March, he didn’t think much of it. But when his symptoms grew worse, Freeland’s mother began to worry. Freeland is a Native American living with his family in the Navajo Nation in the southwestern U.S., where access to healthcare is limited. He is also diabetic, … Read more
Days before she tested positive for COVID-19 in early April, Tanya Beckford was already worried about dying because of the conditions in the Connecticut nursing home where she has worked for 23 years. She wasn’t feeling well and says she and her co-workers, facing a shortage of masks, gloves and gowns, had started wearing plastic … Read more
As nations around the world scramble to bring coronavirus outbreaks under control, Dr. Raj Panjabi is worried that the world’s poor populations will be excluded from accessing treatments and prevention measures, a scenario he calls “viral apartheid.” “I don’t use that term lightly,” said Panjabi, speaking with TIME Senior Writer Alice Park during a TIME … Read more
On May 7, Craig Martin sent what would be the first of many emails to administrators at the company that runs The Wellington at Lake Manassas, his mother’s assisted living facility in Gainesville, Va. Another resident had tested positive for COVID-19 days earlier while being treated at a local hospital, and Martin and his brother … Read more
In one cruise-ship coronavirus outbreak, more than 80% of people who tested positive for COVID-19 did not show any symptoms of the disease, according to a new paper published in the journal Thorax. The research shows just how prevalent asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19 may be—a reality that both suggests official case counts are drastic underestimates, … Read more
Four months after the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in the U.S., the nation’s coronavirus death toll has surpassed 100,000, hitting 100,047 as of 6 p.m. Eastern Time on May 27, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. That’s the most confirmed deaths of any … Read more
Only about half of Americans say they would get a COVID-19 vaccine if the scientists working furiously to create one succeed, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s surprisingly low considering the effort going into the global race for a vaccine against the coronavirus that has sparked … Read more
Aspen was an early COVID-19 hot spot in Colorado, with a cluster of cases in March linked to tourists visiting for its world-famous skiing. Tests were in short supply, making it difficult to know how the virus was spreading. So in April, when the Pitkin County Public Health Department announced it had obtained 1,000 COVID-19 … Read more
Dr. Jane C. Burns has studied Kawasaki disease for four decades. It took only four months for COVID-19 to turn her life’s work upside down. Unusual numbers of children and teenagers living in COVID-19 hotspots like Lombardy, Italy and New York City have developed an inflammatory condition (officially called Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children, or … Read more
Dr. Mark Sklansky has always hated shaking hands. He can think of about a dozen better ways to greet patients than the icky exchange. “Hands are warm, they’re wet, and we know that they transmit disease very well,” says Sklansky, chief of pediatric cardiology at UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital. “They’re a phenomenal vector for disease.” … Read more