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on October 13, 2020October 13, 2020health

Amid rising Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations, local leaders and public health experts worry of a coming surge

With 33 states reporting a rise in new Covid-19 cases and a nationwide uptick in hospitalizations, local officials worry this could be the beginning of the coming surge experts have warned about.

© CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP/Getty Images
A medic prepares to transfer a patient on a stretcher from an ambulance outside of Emergency at Coral Gables Hospital where Coronavirus patients are treated in Coral Gables near Miami, on July 30, 2020. – Florida has emerged as a major new epicenter of the US battle against the disease, with confirmed cases recently surpassing New York and now second only to California. The state toll has leapt over the past week and more than 6,500 people have died from the disease there, according to health officials. More than 460,000 people have been infected with the virus in Florida, which has a population of 21 million, and a quarter of the state’s cases are in Miami. The US has tallied a total of 151,826 deaths from COVID-19, making it the hardest-hit country in the world. (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP) (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)

In Colorado, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock said Covid-19 cases are rising at a “concerning rate,” while the city’s seven-day average daily case rates are as “high right now as they were at the height of the pandemic back in May.”

The seven-day average of hospitalizations also rose about 37% in a little more than a week, he said during a Monday news conference, and warned residents could soon see tighter Covid-19 restrictions if the city’s numbers continue to trend in the wrong direction.

Officials across the country warn of similar patterns. White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx last week warned the Northeast was seeing “early surggestions” of alarming trends. Kentucky’s governor said recently the state is seeing a third major escalation in infections. In Wisconsin, a field hospital is opening this week in response to a surge of Covid-19 patients — days after the state reported record-high numbers of Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and daily deaths.

The US is now averaging more than 49,000 new infections daily — up 14% from the previous week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. And last week, the nation recorded more than 50,000 new cases for at least four days in a row. The last time that happened was in early August.

“I think we’re facing a whole lot of trouble,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNBC on Monday. “We’ve got to turn this around.”

That doesn’t have to mean another lockdown, the infectious disease expert has previously said. Instead, it means more people heeding to safety guidelines like wearing masks and social distancing.

Otherwise, the US could be in for a devastating winter. Researchers from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation project more than 135,000 Americans could die within the next three months.

Healthcare professionals ‘deeply afraid’

Hospitalizations nationwide are also on the rise. At least 10 states have recorded record-high hospitalization

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on October 12, 2020October 12, 2020health

State and city leaders blame social gatherings, not businesses or schools, for coronavirus uptick in New London

Connecticut and local officials said Monday that the recent uptick in coronavirus cases in New London can be traced back to a series of social gatherings and other small social interactions — not to local school or business reopenings, or to the nearby casinos.

“We’re being told by the contact tracers that it’s not coming from any institutional or business setting, it’s coming predominantly from social spread … where people are letting their guard down,” said New London Mayor Michael Passero.

He pointed to situations — such as small family gatherings that are well within the state limits on gathering size — where people may feel relaxed enough that they remove their masks or sit nearby one another. But COVID-19 can still spread, even among a small group of people and even from people who aren’t displaying any symptoms.

“The institutional environments — nursing homes, schools, even the casino — they have these strict protocols in place, people are less likely to let their guard down,” Passero said. “So where it’s spreading now is where people are more likely to be relaxed and let their guard down.”

The state issued a COVID-19 alert for New London on Thursday, after a steep increase in cases in the city. New London and the surrounding areas saw relatively few cases in the spring, and by Sept. 25 New London had recorded a total of 229 confirmed or probable COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began in March. But from Sept. 25 to Oct. 9, New London’s cases jumped up to 368 — an increase of 139 in just two weeks.

The reported cause of the New London uptick align with comments made by Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, during a visit to UConn’s Hartford campus last week.

“This is really a message to everyone in Connecticut: the kind of spread that we’re seeing now is very different from the spread we experienced in March and April,” Birx said.

At the Monday afternoon press briefing in New London, Gov. Ned Lamont pointed back to Birx’s comments.

It’s “informal social events, that’s where we’ve got to the track and trace, that’s where we need families to be particularly careful,” Lamont said.

Dr. Deidre Gifford, the interim commissioner of the state Department of Public Health, listed off a couple specific spreading events that have been identified by contact tracers — including carpooling, lunch breaks and family gatherings that brought together multiple households. (It’s unclear if she was referencing spreading events across the entire state or specifically in New London.)

The state’s response to the spread is “nothing new,” Gifford said. “But it’s just … the vigilance. We keep reminding ourselves: mask on, over the nose and mouth, if you’re with anybody that’s not part of your household.”

Also at Monday’s briefing, Lamont said that he expects to release an executive order “within the next couple of days” that will allow municipalities with rising cases of COVID-19, including New London, to remain

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on October 12, 2020October 12, 2020medicine

5 must-know leaders in medicine, science and tech

Now more than ever, it is undeniable how integral science and research have become to public health. Nationwide, doctors, scientists and experts are working around the clock to find the most up-to-date and reliable information to prevent and stop the spread of Covid-19.

Here are five must-know women who are shattering ceilings, making groundbreaking discoveries, and spreading public awareness during the global pandemic.

Joy Buolamwini

Joy Buolamwini, founder of Algorithmic Justice League, speaks in New York on March 27, 2019.Bess Adler / Bloomberg via Getty Images

Joy Buolamwini is the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League (AJL), a computer scientist and an expert in artificial intelligence bias. Four years ago, when Buolamwini was a graduate student at MIT’s Media Lab, she began looking into the racial and gender disparities in commercially-available facial recognition technologies. Her research culminated in two groundbreaking, peer-reviewed studies, published in 2018 and 2019, that revealed how systems used by Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and others were unable to classify darker female faces as accurately as those of white men—essentially shattering the myth of machine neutrality.

Buolamwini’s research helped persuade these companies to put a hold on facial recognition technology until federal regulations were passed. Through her nonprofit AJL, she has testified before lawmakers at the federal, state and local levels about the dangers of using facial recognition technologies with no oversight.

In the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd, Buolamwini has called for a complete halt to police using such facial surveillance and is providing activists with resources and tools to demand regulation.

It’s not easy to go up against some of the biggest tech companies when you know they can deploy all of their resources against you. I am still very aware that I am a young Black woman in America. And in the field of AI, the people I was aiming to evaluate held all the purse strings. – Joy Buolamwini

Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett

Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, left, senior research fellow and scientific lead for coronavirus vaccines and immunopathogenesis team in the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory, talks with President Donald Trump as he tours the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., on March 3, 2020.Evan Vucci / AP

Dr. Corbett is a viral immunologist and research fellow in the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). She went viral on social media this spring after news broke that Dr. Corbett, a Black female scientist, was leading the team of researchers working on a Covid-19 vaccine at the NIH.

Dr. Corbett’s passion for science stems from her summer break during high school, when she began working in a chemistry lab at the University of North Carolina. After being paired with Black grad student and future mentor, Albert Russell, she was able to see how it was possible for her to impact science through representation. Dr. Corbett has stressed the importance of mentors and advocates, crediting her boss, Dr. Barney Graham,

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on October 9, 2020October 9, 2020medicine

New England Journal of Medicine Says US Leaders Turned the COVID-19 Crisis Into a Tragedy

“Dying in a Leadership Vacuum” – that’s the title of a new editorial published by editors from the prestigious medical journal New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on Oct. 8, less than a month before the general election. With Election Day fast approaching, the journal, which has been nonpartisan for over 200 years since its inception, took an opportunity to change course and urged Americans to vote our current administration out of office due to what they describe as our leaders’ failure of a response to COVID-19.

a woman standing in front of a building: New England Journal of Medicine Says US Leaders Turned the COVID-19 Crisis Into a Tragedy

© Getty / MarioGuti
New England Journal of Medicine Says US Leaders Turned the COVID-19 Crisis Into a Tragedy

The editorial was the only one in NEJM’s history that was signed by all of its editors, and it begins by stating that the COVID-19 pandemic, a worldwide crisis, tested leadership across the globe. “With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy,” the editors, who are all doctors, wrote.

They pointed to the fact that the US leads the world in COVID-19 cases and deaths – over 211,000 have died and seven million have contracted the virus – and that we did not behave aggressively or adequately enough; we have behaved “poorly” for a number of reasons (other countries have outperformed us, they said). Those reasons include lack of testing early on and distribution of PPE to healthcare workers and the public despite having “ample warning” when the disease first arrived.

And, while the editors said testing has increased substantially, “the more useful metric is the number of tests performed per infected person,” and our numbers are far below that of other countries. “Moreover, a lack of emphasis on developing capacity has meant that U.S. test results are often long delayed, rendering the results useless for disease control,” they wrote.

Why has the United States handled this pandemic so badly? The Editors note that although we came into this crisis with enormous advantages, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent.

– NEJM (@NEJM) October 7, 2020

Another big misstep for the US, according to the editors? Lack of universal guidelines and enforcement when it comes to lockdown measures, which they call inconsistent (doctors POPSUGAR has spoken to in the past have talked about this as well). “Our rules on social distancing have in many places been lackadaisical at best, with loosening of restrictions long before adequate disease control had been achieved,” the NEJM editors explained. “And in much of the country, people simply don’t wear masks, largely because our leaders have stated outright that masks are political tools rather than effective infection control measures.”

“Our current leaders have undercut trust in science and in government, causing damage that will certainly outlast them.”

What’s more, the editors blamed this administration for politicizing vaccines and ignoring public

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on October 9, 2020October 9, 2020health

Trump says not to fear the virus. But fear saves lives when leaders fail us.

Face to face with his own mortality, Trump rejects the whole notion, and many of his allies have followed his lead. Jason Miller, a senior campaign adviser, told reporters that “we’re not going to hide in fear” and will continue to hold rallies after Trump’s diagnosis. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of the president’s biggest fanboys, tweeted in a tone that was surely meant to signal strength rather than desperation: “President Trump won’t have to recover from COVID. COVID will have to recover from President Trump. #MAGA.” In a similar vein, Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren ridiculed Joe Biden for advocating for coronavirus precautions: “Might as well carry a purse with that mask, Joe.”

But what’s so bad about fear? Fear is a rational, necessary response to a disease that has already killed more than 212,000 Americans and forced cities to use refrigerated trucks as makeshift morgues. Fear is what drives us to wear masks and get tested. Fear for the well-being of others — something one might call care — is what keeps us away from our loved ones for their own safety, even as the world crumbles around us. Of course we should be afraid of the coronavirus. Fear keeps us alive.

Being afraid is an adaptive feeling meant to protect us both physically and psychologically, allowing us to identify and avoid danger. Suppressing a response that evolved to safeguard us is foolish on its face. But fear itself is neither good nor bad; it can lead to selfish survivalism or a sense of collective responsibility. During the pandemic, we’ve seen some people hoard toilet paper, while others have formed mutual aid networks. We’ve seen bosses cut employees without offering any severance, while those same workers organize to help one another navigate the unemployment system. As a leader, Trump stokes the former impulse, even though combating a pandemic calls for the latter.

The president’s tactic of treating the pandemic as a test of personal strength rather than a policy issue isn’t anything new. Politicians tend to lean on stirring emotional rhetoric when sidestepping their responsibility as policymakers. The effect is individualizing: People are made out to be either courageous or scared; strong or weak; masculine or not. The implication is that if we all, on our own, choose to be brave, then we can overcome the coronavirus.

This type of framing isn’t unique to Republicans; it’s nearly impossible to walk around New York right now without seeing signs blaring “NY TOUGH.” The slogan is the center of a coronavirus propaganda campaign by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), in which the governor also unveiled a foam coronavirus mountain at a news briefing and a “New York Tough” poster with images of things New Yorkers have supposedly overcome, like the “Boyfriend Cliff” and the “Winds of Fear.” As Cuomo put it at the time, “I love poster art.”

This kind of rhetoric serves to shift blame for the pandemic’s fallout toward individual citizens and away from any sense of collective responsibility

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on October 9, 2020October 9, 2020health

New York City Should Have Done More Outreach in Covid-19 Hot Spots Before Surges, Community Leaders Say

This summer New York City’s public-hospital system identified the areas most at risk of a resurgence of Covid-19 and enlisted community-based organizations to help educate residents and test and trace for the virus.

Now, with the new coronavirus resurgent across pockets of the city, some say this summer’s effort was insufficient and focused on the wrong neighborhoods.

Earlier this week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered new restrictions on communities around the state where the virus has rebounded. The affected areas have higher positivity rates of Covid-19 than the rest of the state and include communities in nine ZIP Codes in Brooklyn and Queens that the city has been tracking for weeks as hot spots. Large Orthodox Jewish communities reside in most of the hot spots.

Of the nine ZIP Codes targeted by the city, only one was listed as a high priority this summer by the Health + Hospitals system in a request for grant applications from community-based organizations to help test and trace the virus. Five of the nine ZIP Codes were listed as a low priority and three weren’t listed at all.

Health officials said the neighborhoods under scrutiny now weren’t as high a priority in the summer when other areas were experiencing worsening numbers or were improving at a slower rate than the citywide average.

None of the community-based organizations awarded grants under the program were from the Orthodox community. But officials said that many organizations had now been enlisted to help with the response to the surge in Orthodox neighborhoods.

Officials said that one aim of the city’s outreach to community-based organizations was to address structural conditions of racism that exacerbated the effects of the pandemic. City data show that the pandemic disproportionately affected low-income neighborhoods and people of color compared with whites and higher-income neighborhoods.

Christopher Miller, a spokesman for the city’s hospital system, Health + Hospitals, said: “We continue to identify new organizations to partner with as positivity increases in certain neighborhoods.”

A worker from the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs handing out masks and printed information... — A worker from the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs handing out masks and printed information about Covid-19 testing in July in New York.

Photo:

Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

The city’s health department, which also does education on the virus, said since February it has done extensive outreach in the communities that are now under lockdowns. The outreach includes advertisements in local newspapers in multiple languages, community round tables and talks with leaders, including rabbis. In late August, officials also began distributing masks at synagogues and conducting testing, according to the health department.

City officials said they have also recently increased testing in these communities.

Carlina Rivera, the Democratic chairwoman of New York City Council’s committee on hospitals, said the hospital system hasn’t been forthcoming about the methods it used to prioritize certain areas or about how many contact tracers speak languages such as Yiddish.

“We think Health and Hospitals is doing their best, but that just might not be enough for an organization that is used to emergency treatment inside a hospital,”

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on October 8, 2020October 8, 2020medicine

Rebuking Trump, The New England Journal of Medicine calls for ousting the nation’s ‘dangerously incompetent’ leaders.

Throughout its 208-year history, The New England Journal of Medicine has remained staunchly nonpartisan. The world’s most prestigious medical journal has never supported or condemned a political candidate.

Until now.

In an editorial published on Wednesday, the journal said the Trump administration had responded so poorly to the coronavirus pandemic that it had “taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.”

The journal did not explicitly endorse former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee, but that was the only possible inference, other scientists noted.

The N.E.J.M.’s editors join those of another influential journal, Scientific American, who last month endorsed Mr. Biden.

The political leadership has failed Americans in many ways that contrast vividly with responses from leaders in other countries, the editorial said.

In the United States, it said, there was too little testing for the virus, especially early on. There was too little protective equipment, and a lack of national leadership on important measures like mask wearing, social distancing, quarantine and isolation.

There were attempts to politicize and undermine the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the journal noted.

As a result, the United States has had tens of thousands of “excess” deaths — those caused both directly and indirectly by the pandemic — as well as immense economic pain and an increase in social inequality as the virus hit disadvantaged communities hardest.

The editorial castigated the Trump administration’s rejection of science. “Instead of relying on expertise, the administration has turned to uninformed ‘opinion leaders’ and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies.”

The uncharacteristically pungent editorial called for change: “When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.”

Scientific American, too, had never before endorsed a political candidate. “The pandemic would strain any nation and system, but Trump’s rejection of evidence and public health measures have been catastrophic,” the journal’s editors said.

Source Article …

on October 7, 2020October 7, 2020medicine

New England Journal of Medicine blasts Trump officials’ response to virus, calls for new leaders

The New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, in an unprecedented editorial, denounced the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and called for voting out “current political leaders” who are “dangerously incompetent.”

The harshly worded editorial is the first time the prestigious medical journal, which usually stays out of politics, has weighed in on an election.

The editorial does not mention President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump and Biden’s plans would both add to the debt, analysis finds Trump says he will back specific relief measures hours after halting talks Trump lashes out at FDA over vaccine guidelines MORE by name, but it refers to “the administration” and calls for voting out “our current political leaders.”

“When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent,” the editorial states. “We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.”

The journal takes the Trump administration to task on a wide range of issues that it argues the U.S. has failed on, from inadequate testing to shortages of protective equipment for health workers.

“We have failed at almost every step,” the editorial states. “We had ample warning, but when the disease first arrived, we were incapable of testing effectively and couldn’t provide even the most basic personal protective equipment to health care workers and the general public. And we continue to be way behind the curve in testing.”

The editorial also criticizes states for reopening businesses before the virus had been controlled and for a lack of mask-wearing, which it blames on leaders not modeling the behavior. Trump has rarely worn a mask during appearances for months and has mocked their use.

“Our rules on social distancing have in many places been lackadaisical at best, with loosening of restrictions long before adequate disease control had been achieved,” it states. “And in much of the country, people simply don’t wear masks, largely because our leaders have stated outright that masks are political tools rather than effective infection control measures.”

The U.S. leads the world in cases and deaths from the virus, it notes.

“The magnitude of this failure is astonishing,” the editors write. “According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering, the United States leads the world in Covid-19 cases and in deaths due to the disease, far exceeding the numbers in much larger countries, such as China.”

It adds that countries like South Korea and Singapore were able to suppress the virus through robust testing and contact tracing, in contrast to the U.S.

The journal also points to political pressure Trump has placed on health agencies ranging from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the Food and Drug Administration, warning of the undermining of scientific expertise.

“Our current leaders have undercut trust in science and in government, causing damage that will certainly outlast them,” it states.

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on October 7, 2020October 7, 2020health

Aboriginal leaders criticise $39m budget funding to non-Indigenous program for boys

Video: Budget a comprehensive range of programs not to be taken in isolation: Treasurer (Sky News Australia)

Budget a comprehensive range of programs not to be taken in isolation: Treasurer

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Indigenous groups and Labor have criticised the Coalition for allocating more than $39m of extra funding to a non-Indigenous sport-based initiative for boys, but failing to adequately fund Aboriginal community-controlled organisations to meet the new Closing the Gap targets in its budget.

The government has set aside only $46.5m over four years to support capacity-building in Aboriginal community-controlled organisations to meet targets set out in the new Closing the Gap agreement.

But a decision to allocate $39.8m of extra funding to a non-Indigenous sports-based initiative for boys has drawn the ire of Labor.

The Clontarf Foundation has been awarded the sum over four years from 2020 to expand and extend its program, “which supports the education, discipline, life skills, self-esteem and employment prospects of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men”, according to last night’s budget papers.

a close up of a flag: Labor’s Tanya Plibersek has criticised the Morrison government for not providing funding for Indigenous girls after the Clontarf Foundation received $39.8m for boys.

© Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
Labor’s Tanya Plibersek has criticised the Morrison government for not providing funding for Indigenous girls after the Clontarf Foundation received $39.8m for boys.

Related: High-income earners to reap 88% of Coalition’s tax cuts by 2021-22

Labor’s education spokesperson, Tanya Plibersek, criticised the Coalition for not including funding for Indigenous girls.

“Why do Indigenous girls miss out? There are many groups doing terrific work with Indigenous girls that would love extra funding so they can help extra people. I’ve seen this work firsthand and it’s changing lives – more girls finishing year 12, and more going on to Tafe and university,” Plibersek said.

“Given the trillion dollars of debt, I think Australians would have expected the Liberals to do much more to support Indigenous kids – both boys and girls.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Education pointed to lower retention rates for Indigenous boys in years 10 to 12 than Indigenous girls, saying that “additional support from the Australian government for the Clontarf Foundation will help to enhance the school education experience for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander boys and young men, which will contribute positively to engagement and retention to the end of year 12.”

The Clontarf Foundation, launched in 2000, operates 119 academies nationally, using a mix of state and federal government funds, philanthropic donations and powerful corporate partnerships – including Fortescue Metals Group, Wesfarmers, Glencore, AMP, and the Ramsay Foundation.

Clontarf plans camps, excursions and other activities with a focus on wellbeing, life skills and sport. In order to remain in the program, students must stay at school and “embrace the objectives of the foundation”, according to its website.

But questions have arisen over the years about its effectiveness.

A 2016 New South Wales Department of Education evaluation of Clontarf’s performance in the state found the program was having a “modest” impact.

The study found that it had a “positive attendance effect for

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on October 3, 2020October 3, 2020health

UK leader’s COVID-19 fight may be blueprint for Trump’s

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump tested positive for COVID-19. Here’s a look at where he traveled the week before his diagnosis.

USA TODAY

“It could have gone either way,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a video message posted on April 12 as he reflected on his personal battle with COVID-19.

It was 16 days after Johnson tested positive for COVID-19 and three days after he spent 72 hours in an intensive-care unit in central London, which he credited with saving his life.

Over the last few years, there have been many comparisons – some apt, others a stretch – made between Britain’s leader and President Donald Trump: the political polarization, the scare-mongering over immigration, their distinctive hairstyles. Now, there’s a new one: Johnson may be one of the few world leaders who understands what Trump may be facing in the days and weeks ahead following his positive coronavirus diagnosis.

Trump and COVID-19: President in hospital; many infected at White House gathering

Trump tests positive for COVID-19: Here’s what we know.

Trump is currently receiving treatment at the Walter Reed National Military Hospital just outside Washington, D.C., where the White House said he will spend the next few days. His doctors say he is running a mild temperature and feeling fatigue but is otherwise doing OK.

First Lady Melania Trump and at least 9 other people who were in close proximity with the Trumps have also tested positive for the new coronavirus.

Boris Johnson’s COVID-19 blueprint

When Johnson tested positive for coronavirus in late March, he became the first world leader to publicly acknowledge his illness. His descent into the clutches of a disease, which he later said he believed he had only a “50-50” chance of surviving, started slowly.

Initially, Johnson vowed it would be “business as usual” because he, like Trump, had only “mild symptoms” – a slight fever. He said he would continue to work in isolation from his official office and residence at No. 10 Downing Street in London and keep in constant touch with his Cabinet and lawmakers. He would do this through, he said, the “wizardry of modern technology,” referring to applications such as Zoom and WhatsApp.

‘Likely outcome’:Trump’s COVID diagnosis followed waning precautions White House

It got off to a rocky start.

Within a few hours of his diagnosis, Johnson’s health secretary contracted the virus.

Still, Johnson remained upbeat.

“Although I am sequestered … I am absolutely confident we will beat it together,” he said in a video message published on his social media accounts on April 1.

At that point, he had been COVID-positive for four days.

A few days later, things still seemed to be going to plan.

Johnson appeared on the doorstep of Downing Street to “Clap for Carers” – applaud hospital staff and other emergency workers battling the epidemic on the frontlines.

But he looked unwell, even though aides insisted he would soon be on the mend, and it wouldn’t be long before

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Healthcare professionals ‘deeply afraid’

Joy Buolamwini

Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett

A worker from the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs handing out masks and printed information about Covid-19 testing in July in New York.

Boris Johnson’s COVID-19 blueprint