Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
January Already The Deadliest Month Of Pandemic As Global Cases Top 100M
CNN: US Coronavirus: January Has Been The Deadliest Month For Covid-19 With Nearly 80,000 Lives Lost So Far In The US
January has already become the worst month for US Covid-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic. As of Tuesday, there have been more than 79,000 coronavirus fatalities, topping the previous record set in December by more than a thousand, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. (Holcombe, 1/27)
CNN: 100 Million Coronavirus Cases Now Confirmed Worldwide
The world has now surpassed 100 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus. It's a figure that seemed almost unimaginable 12 months ago, when the first case had only just been confirmed on US soil. A year later, the pandemic shows little sign of loosening its stranglehold on billions of people's everyday lives. Cases continue to rise sharply in some parts of the world, and every day the losses mount, as more people lose loved ones to Covid-19, lose a business or lose their livelihood. On January 15, the official global death toll from the coronavirus pandemic surpassed 2 million, according to Johns Hopkins University. (Smith-Spark, 1/26)
NBC News: Global Covid Cases Top 100 Million As New Strains Emerge
Global Covid-19 cases topped 100 million Tuesday as virus mutations continue to create new concerns, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University. The milestone comes less than three months after the world hit 50 million cases, and just over a year after the first case was diagnosed in the U.S. (Kesslen, 1/26)
In case you missed it —
The Washington Post: Denmark Is Sequencing All Coronavirus Samples And Has An Alarming View Of The U.K. Variant
The British variant is spreading so quickly that Danish authorities project it will be the dominant strain of the virus in their country as early as mid-February. That would put Denmark ahead of the United States, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Friday that the U.K. variant, known as B.1.1.7, could be prevalent by March. Danish officials say that as a result, daily coronavirus cases there could quadruple by the beginning of April. Charts from the public health institute project that in the worst-case contagion scenarios, even with a strict lockdown in effect, cases would skyrocket. Under better-case scenarios — if the variant turns out to be less contagious than thought, or if the country can get caseloads down even further right now — the outbreak would stay more under control while they administer vaccinations. (Birnbaum and Selsoe Sorensen, 1/22)
