Meet the other power couple behind the worlds most promising coronavirus vaccine.
A pair of German twins has reportedly become about $8 billion richer this year thanks to their bet on BioNTech, the upstart firm that has helped Pfizer create its breakthrough COVID-19 shot.
Andreas and Thomas Struengmann helped give BioNTech 150 million euros in seed money in 2008, about three years after they sold their generic drug business for roughly $6.7 billion, Bloomberg News reported.
The 70-year-old brothers have seen their combined fortune balloon to $22 billion this year amid an explosion in BioNTechs stock price, according to Bloomberg, helped by this weeks announcement that the coronavirus vaccine its developed with Pfizer is more than 90 percent effective.
The Struengmanns own about half of the Mainz, Germany-based company, a stake thats worth $12.2 billion in all, according to Bloombergs Billionaires Index. They also hold significant stakes in 4SC and Immatics, two other publicly traded biotech firms, Bloombergs data show.
The brothers werent always so bullish on biotech. In an interview last year with Germanys Handelsblatt newspaper, Thomas Struengmann said they initially planned to invest no more than 1 billion euros in industry firms because they take a long time to make progress and sometimes fail.
But they eventually decided to break that limit and went on to invest 1.2 to 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion to $1.5 billion) in various biotech outfits, he said.
There are also initial successes, and then you want to see your little plants continue to grow, he told Handelsblatt.
BioNTechs US-listed stock price has roughly tripled this year to close at $101.63 on Thursday. Thats also been a boon to company founders Dr. Ozlem Tureci and Dr. Ugur Sahin, a husband-and-wife team who are now reportedly among the richest couples in Germany.
The Streungmanns apparently have a lot of trust in the pair they previously backed Ganymed Pharmaceuticals, a cancer-treatment venture that Tureci and Sahin founded in 2001, according to Bloomberg. The brothers see BioNTech as a long-term investment, Thomas Struengmann told Handelsblatt.
BioNTech is the company that comes closest to our vision of an innovative pharmaceutical company, he told the paper.
Russia was the first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine - and it also claims its vaccine is the best.
Last week, two days after US drugs giant Pfizer announced that the vaccine it has developed alongside Germany's BioNTech was 90% effective in protecting people against the virus, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) which champions Russia's Sputnik V vaccine, issued a statement suggesting that its vaccine had a 92% efficacy rate.
This first Russian vaccine produced by Moscow's Gamalaya Institute is named after Sputnik, the first satellite into space, launched by the Soviets in 1957.
The website says the name is a nod to the reinvigoration of space research after that first "Sputnik moment", but Sputnik's launch also marked the start of the Cold War space race.
The Soviet spirit then was archly competitive rather than collaborative and that does not appear to have changed.
Of course it's a "rat race", says Svetlana Zavidova, executive director at Russia's association of clinical trials organisations.
She said: "When our president announced the registration on 1 August, his first words were about trying this vaccine on his daughter. Before he never mentioned his daughters."
The Russian president rarely speaks publicly about his family.
The Gamalaya Institute says it drew its analysis on the basis of 20 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among trial participants, divided between those given one or both shots of the vaccine and those given a placebo.
In phase 3 trials of 40,000 participants, 16,000 had received both shots.
The Pfizer interim analysis was based on 94 confirmed cases among its participants. The company said it had decided together with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to drop a first planned analysis based on just 32 cases.
"It's really strange to do the analysis on just 20 cases," Ms Zavidova said.
"How can we draw conclusions about 92% of efficacy, based on that? Maybe they looked at Pfizer's results and just added 2%."
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Her scepticism is reflected in the Russian public more broadly.
Recent surveys from the independent Levada poll suggest a growing hesitancy around the Russian vaccines, with distrust and doubt being the predominant reaction to reports about the appearance of the Russian-made vaccine in a late August survey.
Russia has also vaccinated 10,000 medics and other high-risk groups with Sputnik V.
On the day RDIF published its interim analysis, three medics who had received the first dose of the vaccine were reported as having contracted the virus in Siberia.
The Sputnik V vaccine has two components. Patients are given two injections, the second 21 days after the first. They are considered vaccinated three weeks after the second injection, the Russian Ministry of Health has said.
If Sputnik V's high efficacy is borne out through the rest of the phase 3 trial period, then it has considerable advantages over the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in terms of logistics.
The Pfizer vaccine requires storage at minus 70 degrees, whereas Sputnik V can be maintained at minus 18 degrees, making it easier to store and distribute.
Even the president though has admitted that scaling up production for millions of doses of vaccine remains a problem in Russia due to equipment shortages.
As a result, Russia has had to delay the roll-out of mass vaccination.
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RDIF recently announced a deal with South Korea to manufacture 150 million doses of the vaccine for global distribution.
Russia has so far registered two vaccines with a third due soon.
"The president has assessed very positively both the Sputnik and Vector product," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday.
"He also has big expectations for the third vaccine. He will make an announcement when he gets vaccinated himself."
Heres what you need to know:A nurse in Bismarck, N.D.Credit...Bing Guan/Reuters
Health care workers in some hard-hit states have taken to social media to issue urgent pleas for new restrictions to slow the spread of the virus and for the public to take precautions more seriously.
In Nebraska, Dr. Dan Johnson, a critical care anesthesiologist with Nebraska Medicine, a major health network in the region, posted on Facebook about the crisis last week, saying that current measures were not enough to stop the high rate of transmission.
The state has seen new virus cases reach an average of 2,033 cases per day, an increase of 99 percent from two weeks earlier. In the state, masks are required at indoor businesses where close contact is maintained, and indoor gathering limits are set at 25 percent of capacity. Retail stores, restaurants and bars are still open, as are houses of worship.
This means that individual citizens and families must take matters into our own hands. Strict adherence to social distancing is essential, Dr. Johnson wrote. If things get completely out of control, every family in Nebraska will be affected either by a death or by serious illness.
On Twitter, Dr. Angela Hewlett, an epidemiologist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, specifically called on the governor to increase directed health measures, noting that the number of hospitalizations in the state was skyrocketing.
Our community and our hospitals are suffering, she said. We are not an unlimited resource.
In another appeal on Facebook, Dr. John McCarley, a doctor in Chattanooga, Tenn., noted that local hospitals were filling up. He posted: Im not saying we need a lockdown but I am asking everyone to get back to a May 2020 mind-set and routinely wear the mask when indoors around others besides your household.
On the ABC program This Week, Adm. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary of health and human services, called masks critically important. Theyre highly protective against you spreading it to someone else and we also know that it provides you protection from getting it from someone else, he said.
Chief executives of six hospital systems in northeastern Ohio jointly ran a full-page advertisement in The Cleveland Plain Dealer on Sunday, pleading with the public to remain on guard with virus precautions during the holiday season. We must make sacrifices today by limiting indoor gatherings in the hope of better tomorrows, the hospital executives wrote.
In Amarillo, Texas, an internal medicine doctor said that hospitals in the city were trying to find ways to add additional I.C.U. space, and pleaded with the public to wear a mask and socially distance. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, Dr. Whit Walker wrote on Facebook. I see some people inside in a public store without a mask. If you give this virus to me I might give the virus to 5 or 20 other people. One or five of those might die from the virus. Even though you feel well, you can carry this virus. Even if you had the infection in the past, you might get this same virus again. This is real. This is deadly.
In North Dakota, a state with critically understaffed hospitals and the nations highest rates of new cases and deaths per person, doctors have for weeks been asking the government to implement stricter restrictions in particular a mask mandate.
On Friday, Gov. Doug Burgum finally obliged by announcing several measures, including a mask mandate, a limit on indoor dining of 50 percent capacity, or 150 people, and a suspension of high school winter sports and extracurricular activities. The state reported 2,270 new infections on Saturday, 19 deaths and 425 hospitalizations.
And in Missouri which announced 7,164 new cases on Saturday, the states third single-day record in a row, along with 11 deaths and more than 2,400 hospitalizations health care workers asked government officials to enact more restrictions in response to their dire words of caution with a statement released Thursday by the Missouri Hospital Association.
We urge Gov. Mike Parson to continue to promote the message that Missourians help and compliance is necessary to help prevent catastrophic increases in hospital admissions, the statement said.
Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio
Governors and public health officials across the United States are pleading with Americans to change their behavior and prepare for a long winter as the country shatters record after record for coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.
Both records were broken yet again Friday, as more than 181,100 new cases were reported nationwide, and on Saturday more than 159,000 new cases were recorded, the third-highest total of the pandemic. The seven-day average of new daily cases is more than 145,000, with upward trends in 48 states. Twenty-nine states added more cases in the last week than in any other seven-day period.
With more than 1,017,000 cases added since Nov. 7 the first time that more than a million cases were reported in a seven-day period that means that roughly one in every 323 people in the United States were reported to have tested positive in the last week.
The virus has also killed more than 1,000 Americans a day in the past week, a toll that would shock the nation were it not for the fact that twice as many people were dying daily during a stretch in April, when doctors knew less about how to treat Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.
More than 1,210 new deaths were reported on Saturday, pushing the seven-day average to more than 1,120 a day, a 38 percent increase from the average two weeks ago. Four states set death records on Saturday: Wyoming (17), Oklahoma (23), Montana (36) and South Dakota (53).
On Saturday, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Indiana, Utah, Montana and Alaska all set single-day records for new cases.
North Dakota also hit a single-day record on Saturday, announcing 2,270 new cases. In a reversal, the states governor, Doug Burgum, announced several measures late Friday, including a mask mandate; a limit on indoor dining of 50 percent capacity, or 150 people; and a suspension of high school winter sports and extracurricular activities until Dec. 14. The state has critically understaffed hospitals and the highest rates of new cases and deaths per person in the nation.
In the spring, North Dakota was one of a handful of states that never entered a lockdown, and Mr. Burgum had for weeks resisted any new orders, emphasizing personal responsibility instead of requirements such as a mask mandate.
But the states situation has rapidly deteriorated: Over the past week, it has averaged 1,381 cases per day, an increase of 37 percent from the average two weeks earlier, and deaths are climbing fast. Hospitals are so overwhelmed that on Monday, Mr. Burgum angered the state nurses union by announcing that medical workers who test positive could stay on the job to treat Covid-19 patients as long as the workers show no symptoms.
In New Mexico on Friday, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced the nations most sweeping statewide measure of the fall season, issuing a two-week stay at home order to begin Monday. She asked people to shelter in place except for essential trips and said nonessential businesses and nonprofits must cease in-person activities.
Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon issued orders Friday to place the state in a partial lockdown for two weeks, shuttering gyms, halting restaurant dining and mandating that social gatherings have no more than six people. Ms. Brown, along with the governors of California and Washington, also urged residents to avoid all nonessential interstate travel in the days ahead.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nations top infectious disease expert, appeared on CBS This Morning on Friday to repeat his pleas to Americans to take the virus seriously.
If we do the things that are simple public health measures, that soaring will level and start to come down, he said. You add that to the help of a vaccine, we can turn this around. It is not futile.
A Texas appeals court ruled late Friday that El Paso County did not have the authority to impose a sweeping stay-at-home order, dealing a blow to local officials who had restricted business activity in an effort to stop the out-of-control spread of the coronavirus.
The ruling means that restaurants in the border city of 680,000, which now has more people hospitalized with Covid-19 than most states 1,091 as of Saturday may serve food indoors and outdoors, and gyms, barbershops and nail salons, which have been closed, may reopen.
The decision was the latest to bring efforts to tamp down the resurging virus into the legal sphere. As governors, mayors and other local officials have begun instituting new restrictions, a new wave of legal fights is also anticipated.
In El Paso, it was the owners of local restaurants, joined by Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general and a Republican, who sued after the top county executive, Ricardo A. Samaniego, a Democrat, imposed the restrictions in late October.
Hospitals were already filling at the time, and Mr. Samaniego said that the order needed to be extended past Thanksgiving to prevent the viruss further spread in the hard-hit community.
A lower court upheld the limits, but the Eighth District Court of Appeals ruled that Mr. Samaniego had overstepped his bounds. The appeals court found that the lockdown conflicted with less restrictive statewide orders by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican.
Just as a servant cannot have two masters, the public cannot have two sets of rules to live by, particularly in a pandemic, wrote Chief Justice Jeff Alley.
The county is not pursuing an appeal, a lawyer involved in the case said.
The mayor of El Paso, Dee Margo, a Republican who had questioned the order from the start, said in a statement that the city and its police force would immediately stop enforcement, and called on El Paso residents to do their own part to limit the spread of the virus. We must balance the lives and the livelihoods of our community, and this requires all of us to change our social behavior, he said in a statement.
A state-owned long-term nursing care facility for veterans near Lexington, Ky., is in the grip of a lethal outbreak of the coronavirus.
Eighty-six veterans have tested positive for the virus at the Thomson-Hood Veterans Center since October, and 24 have died, according to Gov. Andy Beshear. Forty-eight of the veterans have recovered, five are in the hospital, and nine are being treated at the center.
Among the staff, 63 have tested positive. Fifty-two of them have recovered, and 11 cases are still active, Mr. Beshear said in a news conference on Friday. He said that the outbreak, the centers first, was the result of community spread and that it began when three veterans and seven staff members tested positive last month. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs provided medical staff to assist at the center.
The governor pleaded with Kentuckians to do what they could to limit the viruss spread. This is the toughest spot weve been in thus far, Mr. Beshear said. You must do your part and folks, this is now to the point where you need to be wearing your mask simply to protect yourself. It will also help others around you, but if you are not wearing a mask, you are putting yourself at personal risk of this virus.
Over the past week, the state has logged an average of 2,405 cases per day, an increase of 43 percent from the average two weeks earlier. Since the start of the pandemic, Kentucky has had 138,854 coronavirus cases and 1,739 deaths, according to a New York Times database.
The spread of the virus within Thomson-Hood, in Wilmore, Ky., is the latest example of the vulnerabilities at veterans homes around the country. Eighty-one have died of the virus at a veterans center in Paramus, N.J., and two former leaders at the Holyoke Soldiers Home in Holyoke, Mass., were indicted on charges of criminal neglect in connection to a coronavirus outbreak that contributed to the deaths of at least 76 residents.
We are still battling, a post from Monday on Thomson-Hoods Facebook page said. Keep praying for our incredible, warrior staff and our precious veterans.
More than 1,000 Americans are dying of the coronavirus every day on average, a 50 percent increase in the last month. Iowa, Minnesota, New Mexico, Tennessee and Wisconsin have recorded more deaths over the last seven days than in any other week of the pandemic. Twice this past week, the country has suffered more than 1,400 deaths reported in a single day.
Its getting bad and its potentially going to get a lot worse, said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. The months ahead are looking quite horrifying.
More than 244,000 people have died from the coronavirus in the United States, more than any other country, and experts say the pace of new deaths is likely to accelerate in the coming weeks.
In towns and cities in Wisconsin and New Mexico, medical examiners are stocking extra body bags, parking mobile morgue units the size of trucks outside their doors and ensuring that refrigerated morgue trucks are cooled and ready to be used if needed. And hospitals are filling with patients, threatening the limits of medical systems in some regions.
Deaths lag several weeks behind infections, so the toll being recorded now reflects transmission that happened several weeks ago, before the country began logging more than 140,000 new cases per day and hospitalizations reached their highest levels of the pandemic. On Friday, public health officials reported more than 181,000 new cases across the country, more than ever before.
The rising case numbers and the threat of mounting deaths have led some experts to call for a coordinated national shutdown for four to six weeks, but with no announcements from the White House for new measures to respond to the soaring outbreak, most of the country is open for business, even as a few governors began calling for new restrictions on Friday.
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[chanting] U-S-A! [cheering] [chanting] We love Trump! [chanting] Four more years! [drumming] [chanting] Stop the steal!
President Trump and his motorcade drove by hundreds of supporters who showed up in Washington on Saturday for demonstrations protesting the outcome of the 2020 election, which Mr. Trump has refused to concede.
The president was on his way to his private golf club in Sterling, Va., and was greeted, according to a pool report, by applause and cheers from a crowd in which many were unmasked. People who watched him go by carried signs reading Best prez ever and Stop the steal. Some people climbed building structures by Freedom Plaza as the motorcade passed to get a better view.
Election results in the last two states were announced on Friday, with President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. winning Georgia to finish with a total of 306 electoral votes the same number that Mr. Trump won in 2016 and called a landslide and Mr. Trump winning North Carolina, for a total of 232 electoral votes.
Demonstrations of the Trump faithful planned for Saturday in Washington include a Million MAGA March, a Stop the Steal rally and a Women for Trump event, and at least several thousand people turned out.
A 53-year-old truck driver who declined to give his name because he feared losing his job for attending drove from Pennsylvania for the occasion.
Though many in the crowd were not wearing masks, he put one on as the crowd sang The Star-Spangled Banner, acknowledging concerns that he might expose himself to the coronavirus and infect his 81-year-old mother.
Im hoping maybe I dont catch it, but you cant stop everything, he said.
At a White House briefing on Friday in his first public remarks since the election was called the president came close to acknowledging Mr. Bidens win before catching himself.
This administration will not be going to a lockdown, Mr. Trump said in the Rose Garden, adding that hopefully the whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration it will be. I guess time will tell. But I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown. There wont be a necessity.
On Friday, Mr. Biden urged the distracted president to turn his attention to the rapidly worsening pandemic and take stronger action. In a blistering statement, Mr. Biden said that the recent surge, which is killing more than 1,000 Americans every day and is currently hospitalizing about 70,000, required a robust and immediate federal response.
I am the president-elect, but I will not be president until next year, Mr. Biden said. The crisis does not respect dates on the calendar, it is accelerating right now.
New Yorks mayor, Bill de Blasio, announced on Saturday morning that the citys seven-day positivity rate for coronavirus tests remained below 3 percent, the threshold that would trigger the closure of all in-person classes as the city confronts a surge in coronavirus cases. About 300,000 children of the 1.1 million in New York Citys public school system have returned to classrooms so far.
The positivity rate remained at 2.47 percent Saturday, lower than days earlier, Mr. de Blasio said on Twitter, but he warned that the decision to shut down the school system, the nations largest, was not off the table yet. That could change, he tweeted. We MUST fight back a second wave to keep our schools open. It is still possible that the city could reach the 3 percent threshold within the next few days.
Officials had warned that the positivity rate could surpass 3 percent this week, and many had anticipated that school closures could happen as soon as Monday.
Signs that the pandemic is making a feared resurgence in what was once the epicenter of a global pandemic have become evident. New Yorkers have been standing in long lines for hours for tests, some seeking to determine if they could return to work, and some fearing they may have gotten infected during the election or during the street celebrations after Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the winner of the presidential race. Others were hoping for a negative test so they could visit out-of-state relatives over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Mr. de Blasio reported 926 new cases for the preceding 24 hours and added that 97 people had been admitted to area hospitals.
New York City may choose to close its classrooms, where transmission of the virus has been strikingly low, before the halt of indoor dining, which falls under Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, not the mayor.
During a conference call with reporters on Saturday, Mr. Cuomo said that Mr. de Blasio should focus on the positivity rate of individual schools instead of making that determination based on citywide rates. He suggested that an individual school should close its doors only after 3 percent of its staff and student body had tested positive for the virus to avoid a citywide disruption of in-person classes. He added that thousands of students rely on schools for free breakfast and lunch, and that the economy depends on keeping them open.
If you close the schools, you make it more difficult for parents to go to work, because now they have to worry about whos going to take care of their children, Mr. Cuomo said.
Global Roundup
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of Austria said on Saturday that the country would go into a full lockdown after an existing partial shutdown failed to stem rising infections.
If we do not react massively, there is a great risk that the numbers will continue to rise or remain at a high level and overstretch the health system, Mr. Kurz said during a news conference announcing the measures.
Starting on Tuesday and going until at least Dec. 6, schools and most stores will close and people will be required to work from home unless their physical presence at a job site is critical. People will be able to leave their homes only for essential reasons, such as grocery shopping.
My urgent request: Do not meet anybody, Mr. Kurz said. Every social contact is one too many.
The new measures represent the kind of emergency lockdown Mr. Kurz had hoped to avoid. Similar restrictions in the spring led to a drop in new infections, but they also significantly damaged the national economy.
The recent, lighter shutdown, which went into effect on Nov. 3, allowed stores, schools and other services to stay open, but closed cultural sites, bars and restaurants.
On Friday, Austria recorded 9,586 cases in a single day, a record, and about nine times more than during the countrys peak in March, according to health ministry figures.
In other news from around the world:
The authorities in Greece announced on Saturday the closure of all schools as the country faces a spike in coronavirus infections and deaths. Health officials announced 3,038 new infections on Friday. A nationwide public curfew is now also in effect from 9 p.m. until 5 a.m., with exceptions made for people who need to go out for work, to visit a doctor or to walk a pet. Greeces total caseload since the start of the pandemic is 69,675.
The five-day average of coronavirus cases in Ireland rose nearly 10 percent this week, despite strict lockdown measures that had led to a sharp decrease in cases since mid-October, the health department said on Saturday. We have seen higher numbers in recent days than we expected based on the encouraging trends of the last three weeks, Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan said in a statement. Ireland has had 67,526 cases and 1,978 deaths in total.
Tuscany and Campania are the latest Italian regions to lock down. Starting on Sunday, residents will be allowed to leave their homes only for essentials and travel outside their own municipalities only for work and health reasons. On Saturday, Italy registered 37,255 new cases and 544 deaths.
Driving will be banned on Sundays throughout Lebanon after the country went into a two-week lockdown that forced nonessential business to close. Vehicles can be driven for three days each week based on even- and odd-numbered license plates, and a sunset to sunrise curfew was extended.
A party in the suburbs of Paris with 300 attendees was dispersed, the police said on Saturday. The gathering was in violation of virus restrictions, and the police said bottles were thrown at them.
The police in Germany used a water cannon on Saturday to break up a group of about 600 protesters that had gathered in Frankfurt to criticize lockdown measures. In Lisbon, hundreds of bar and restaurant workers protested a partial weekend and nighttime lockdown across most of Portugal.
At least 10 people died in Piatra Neamt, a town in northeastern Romania, on Saturday after a fire broke out in an intensive care unit being used for 16 Covid-19 patients, all of them on ventilators, according to The Associated Press. The fire spread rapidly, most likely fed by the oxygen being used to treat the intubated patients, local media reports said. The national health minister, Nelu Tataru, told the local news media that the fire had probably been caused by an electrical short circuit. Ten other people were injured in the incident, seven of them critically, including the doctor on duty, who had rushed to help the patients.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.s first economic test is coming months before Inauguration Day, as a slowing recovery and accelerating coronavirus infections give new urgency to talks on government aid to struggling households and businesses.
With a short window for action in the lame-duck congressional session, Mr. Biden must decide whether to push Democratic leaders to cut a quick deal on a package much smaller than they say is needed or to hold out hope for a larger one after he takes office.
A continued standoff over aid could set the stage for sluggish growth that persists long into Mr. Bidens presidency. Republican and Democratic leaders remain far apart on the size and contents of a rescue package, though both sides say lawmakers should act quickly.
The shifting dynamics of both the pandemic and the recovery are complicating the debate. Even as it has slowed, the economy has proved more resilient than many experts had expected, leading Republicans, in particular, to resist a big new dose of federal aid. But the recent surge in hospitalizations and deaths has increased the risk that the economy could slow further.
Last spring, economists were nearly unanimous in urging Congress to provide as much money as possible, as quickly as it could. Now, many conservative economists say a much smaller follow-up package would suffice. Even as progressives argue for trillions of dollars in aid, a growing number of liberal economists are urging Democrats to compromise and accept a smaller package to get money flowing quickly.
But others with ties to Mr. Bidens team see the economic and political trade-offs differently. William E. Spriggs, a Labor Department official under former President Barack Obama, agreed that it was vital for Congress to act quickly. But he urged Democrats not to accept too small a deal.
You will get people saying it didnt work, so we dont need to do it again, said Mr. Spriggs, whom prominent Democrats have pushed for a role in the Biden administration. You make it harder to go to the well again.
Just two small hospitals serve mostly rural Elkhart County in northern Indiana, and earlier this week one of them instructed the local ambulance services not to bring any more patients.
With coronavirus cases hitting daily records, Elkhart General Hospital had run out of room.
The hospitals capacity is 144 beds and more than 200 patients had been admitted, said Dr. Michelle Bache, the hospitals vice president for medical affairs. On Tuesday, more than 90 were Covid-19 patients, and there were over 20 people with various medical issues in the emergency room needing beds.
The patients were building up in the waiting room and causing an unsafe situation, said Dr. Bache, adding that it was only the second time in her 22 years at the hospital that ambulances had been diverted.
Scientists from around the world are studying COVID-19, fueled by a torrent of research funding as governments make solving the virus a top priority. For doctors, the rapid pace of research generates a staggering volume of new information that must be absorbed and analyzed.
Dr. John Alexander, chief medical officer at Central Maine Healthcare in Lewiston, said the hospital has a clinical team that keeps up on the latest research for multiple diseases. Lately, they have been dealing with a flood of novel coronavirus research. The team often meets daily, sometimes more than once a day.
The research is evolving quickly, but they live, breathe and sleep clinical research, Alexander said. This is a disease we only began learning about 9-10 months ago.
As an example of the rapid pace, so much money is flowing into vaccine research that vaccine development, which normally takes three to five years or longer, is taking place much more quickly without any scientific shortcuts. A vaccine could be approved as soon as later this month, with the first shots given by the end of the year. That would be less than a year after the pandemic started in the United States, a previously unheard-of timeline.
On the treatment side, in addition to scholarly medical journals, social media groups discuss the latest research, and the internet offers many corners where scientists summarize and delve into the latest research.
At Brief19, a Twitter account on COVID-19 research run by a group of doctors and scientists, daily updates plumb the intricacies of research papers. In the latest posting, scientists looked at research in the Journal of the American Medical Association discussing Fluvoxamine vs Placebo and Clinical Deterioration in Outpatients With Symptomatic COVID-19. The upshot is that in this small pilot study, SARS-CoV-2 outpatients with mild illness who took fluvoxamine a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor approved for obsessive compulsive disorder and also used as an anti-depressant had a lower likelihood of clinical deterioration 15 days later.
In other words, some light bedtime reading.
Scientific knowledge advances so quickly that one of the podcasts published by Brief19 this spring carried a warning that said, If you are listening to these more than a few days in the future, please beware that information may have changed and check subsequent episodes.
Dr. David Seder, chief of critical care at Maine Medical Center, said a team of hospital doctors are frequently reading the latest information and sharing the studies with one another.
Youre constantly reading to make sure youre up to date, because research is constantly evolving, Seder said. COVID-19 is an extreme example of this.
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The coronavirus is growing out of control. Deaths will likely increase to 2,000 people a day before the end of the year, and the virus will be with us for much of 2021 and possibly longer. Of the many failures of the outgoing administrations handling of COVID-19, the most destructive has been its failure to communicate honestly and directly from the start. We cant get our economy back on track and help millions of Americans emerge from extended crisis until we control the virus.
A safe, effective, and widely available vaccine would be a game changer, but were likely many months away from this becoming a reality. The announcement from Pfizer about its vaccine trial is very encouraging, but the vaccines safety and efficacy among groups such as the elderly are still unclear. Even with a vaccine thats fully vetted and ready to go, it will take many months for enough people to receive it to provide population-wide protection. Until then, we need a one-two punch to knock the virus down and then keep it down.
The first action, closing parts of society, needs to be strategic. Timing matters. The initial widespread closure in the spring poisoned the well. Many parts of the country shut down too soon and for too long. By the time COVID-19 came to areas that hadnt yet needed to close, people were tired of waiting and resisted continued restrictions. An effective closure needs to be nuanced, specific, and tightened and loosened based on real-time data about where the virus is spreading.
[Read: A dreadful new peak for the American pandemic]
Public-health experts learned a lot over the spring and summer.Lockdownandstay at homeare not just inaccurate terms; they are unnecessary measures.Outdoor activitiesare great andlargely safe. Schools and child care can,with precautions, stay open unless community spread is extensive. Spread inschoolsanduniversitieshas generally occurred wheresafety measures such as mask wearing have not been implemented, or in social settings, not academic ones. To keep our kids physically in school, we need to skip after-school pizza parties and other nonessential activities.
Business meetings and work that can be remote should stay so. With modifications and masks, some work sites can open. Delivery, curbside pickup, and safer shopping can keep our economy recovering through the holiday season. Weve learned what people care about, and getting haircuts and holiday shopping are high on the list, so lets try to keep salons and retail stores open but make them safer by requiring masks, eliminating crowds, increasing ventilation, and encouraging workers and customers to stay home if they have symptoms. Physical activity is important to health, including mental health, so lets modify facilities and participation to minimize risk while helping people stay active. Outdoor-recreation classes and individual activities such as walking, running, hiking, and cycling are safe. Well-ventilated gymswith universal masking (yes, masks with face shields can be worn even while engaging in vigorous physical activity), strict cleaning protocols, and physical distancingmay be able to stay open.
Indoor restaurants, bars, and social gatherings are, sadly, unsafe right now. Low occupancy, increased ventilation, and masking when possible can reduce, but not eliminate, the risk of COVID-19 in these places, especially when the virus is spreading widely. Curfews for restaurants and bars, which officials are implementing in different areas, will help some, but they dont fully address the fact that any indoor place where people eat, drink, and socialize without masks for extended periods of time is problematic.
Governments should mandatemask wearing in all indoor public placesand require business restrictions such as capacity controls and, where necessary, reduced hours or temporary closures. Comprehensive action is particularly important for places where COVID-19 spreads explosively, including meatpacking, agricultural, and other workplaces where distancing is difficult, as well as forcongregate housing,includingnursing homes, homeless shelters, and correctional facilities. In addition to universal mask wearing, these regulations should include installing physical barriers such as plexiglass shields, upgrading ventilation systems, and increasing space between people.
[Read: The simple rule that could keep COVID-19 deaths down]
The responsibility of containing the virus doesnt just fall on the government. Individuals must also play a role. Thanksgiving could be the perfect storm to accelerate the spread of COVID-19. It would be a good year to skip travel and large Thanksgiving gatherings. If you do get together with others, each pod should limit outside contact for the 14 days before the holiday and minimize risk of exposure during travel. People should reduce the size of gatherings, spend less time indoors together, wear masks when not eating, increase ventilation, and make sure that no one who is feeling sick participates.
Although spring closures were poorly timed and targeted in many parts of the country, our first punch landed in the Northeast, driving down cases to low levels, and reduced viral spread in much of the rest of the country. But our second punchkeeping the virus downhas, so far, missed badly.
Despite lots of effort, current programs to test, trace, and isolate cases have failed to stop the large majority of spread. Tests must come back in hours, not days, and are particularly important among social networks in order to trace webs of transmission and isolate and quarantine people quickly. Outbreakscan be stopped, but only by quick, expert workand cooperation with public-health measures, which is difficult to secure in an environment of misinformation and mistrust.
Around the world, the best-performing countries provide stipends, social support, and temporary housing to help people who are quarantined.South KoreaandSingaporeused large isolation facilities for moderately ill patients.TaiwanandAustraliaoffered subsidized hotel accommodations and financial support ($500 and $1100 per person in each country, respectively) to those ill or exposed. Supporting people with safe and appealing isolation for short periods of time would be a win-win, improving both COVID-19 control and economic stability.
[Read: The difference between feeling safe and being safe]
Many clusters of cases come from people who go to work, school, or social get-togethers while ill. No testing, government, or health-care program can control COVID-19 if people continue this behavior. Government and businesses can help. No one should have to choose between feeding their family and keeping their co-workers safe. Paid sick leave reduces the spread of viral disease in workplaces. Instituting it will require collaboration by companies and strategic legal action by the incoming administration and, if possible, Congress. From a public-health standpoint,ensuring paid sick leave is a no-brainer. The devil is in the details of how this is done. In the CARES Act, provisions were limited and complex so didnt help stop the spread of COVID-19 as much as a more effective law could have.
Above all, Americans need to rebuild social cohesion and trust in one another and in our government. What affects one of us can affect all of us. The fundamental scientific error of thepush for so-called herd immunityis a failure to recognize this truth. Every infection is a step in the wrong direction, and every infection prevented is a step toward health and economic recovery. Trust will be particularly crucial if and when a safe and effective vaccine is available. But even with a vaccine, the year ahead will be long and difficult.
Because of White House incompetence, 2020 was a wasted year for control of the coronavirus in the United States. Our first punch, strategic closures, was poorly timed and created a lot of unnecessary collateral damage in most of the country. And our second, testing and isolation, flailed badly. Its up to all of usnot just the incoming administrationto make sure that we get and keep the upper hand in 2021.
This article was originally published in TheAtlantic.Sign up for their newsletter.
This week, COVID-19 headlines were split between cautious optimism and abject despair.
On the positive side, Monday morning brought us a scrap of hope claims from Pfizer and BioNTech that their vaccine candidate was highly effective. Their tests so far showed that it has an efficacy of about 90 percent, though that number could change with time. And before we break out the bubbly, there are still plenty of caveats to the news.
Among the downer highlights: the full data hasnt been released yet, and this happened in a clinical trial where conditions were more controlled than they will be in the real world. It has to be delivered in two doses, weeks apart, and its more fragile than frost on a sunny morning it has to be stored at temperatures of -75 degrees Celsius (-103 degrees Fahrenheit), creating a logistical nightmare for facilities ill-equipped to stock something that frigid.
Put all those asides aside, and the vaccine news is still a spark of joy in a dark time. By next week, the companies claim that they should have enough data to start building their case for emergency authorization from the FDA. Thats a pretty exciting mile marker to look forward to, even if theres still a long way to go before we get to a vaccine.
Meanwhile, the bad news was building. Here in the US, cases hit record highs, with an average of 134,078 cases per day over the past week, according to The New York Times. The surge in cases is overwhelming emergency rooms and ICUs across the country. Deaths are on the rise. Again. States are ordering lockdowns. Again.
Healthcare workers, already exhausted, dread what comes next. The wave hasnt even crashed down on us yet, Eli Perencevich, an infectious-disease doctor at the University of Iowa, told The Atlantics Ed Yong. It keeps rising and rising, and were all running on fear. The health-care system in Iowa is going to collapse, no question.
Skyrocketing caseloads and healthcare systems teetering on the brink of collapse mean that the US has a lot of work to do to get through the next stage of this pandemic. Its no longer just about flattening the curve. Weve got a cliff to conquer.
We also know that the work will be worth it if we can save lives. As The Verges Nicole Wetsman wrote this week, The light is still months away, but its there. We only have to make sure as many people as possible can get to it.
Heres what else we were watching this week.
New Type of Test May Better Discern Immunity to the Coronavirus
Antibodies arent the only kind of immune cell in the body. T cells can also fight viruses. A company has come up with a blood test to detect these cells, which would be exciting. Caveat: the data of the test has not been reviewed by other researchers. (Apoorva Mandivalli/NYT)
New Science Suggests How to Shorten Quarantine
An early study found that taking two COVID tests could let people stick to an eight-day quarantine instead of a 14-day quarantine. Its an intriguing idea, but for it to really work, testing would have to be widely available. Another caveat here: This study has not been reviewed by other researchers. (Roxanne Khamsi/Elemental)
We helped a New York sewage plant check poop for the coronavirus
This is a fun one. We sent a video team to a sewage plant to get a closer look at how wastewater facilities are helping communities track the spread of coronavirus. (Nicole Wetsman/The Verge)
Pfizers announcement shows the promise of gene-based vaccines
The vaccine results this week were a big boost for mRNA-based vaccines in general. If this one succeeds, we could see more like it in the future. (Nicole Wetsman/The Verge)
Pfizers ultra-cold vaccine, a very complex distribution plan, and an exploding head emoji
CNN has a really interesting look into some of the planning going on at a state level to handle a potential vaccine that needs to be kept much colder than ice cold. (Elizabeth Cohen, John Bonifield and Sierra Jenkins/CNN)
Were being left behind: Rural hospitals cant afford ultra-cold freezers to store the leading Covid-19 vaccine
The CDC is not recommending that hospitals stock up on ultra-cold freezers, but some wealthy hospitals are doing it anyway. Rural hospitals with fewer resources would like to do the same, but cant afford the equipment, even as supplies dwindle. (Olivia Goldhill/STAT)
Russias claim of a successful COVID-19 vaccine doesnt pass the smell test, critics say
After Pfizer and BioNTech made their announcement, Russia also announced that it had results on its Sputnik V vaccine. Experts are skeptical of both the timing and the fact that the results only looked at 20 COVID-19 cases, compared to Pfizer and BioNTechs 94. (Jon Cohen/Science)
Pfizer says placebo patients will eventually get its Covid-19 vaccine. The question of when is complicated
During clinical trials some people get the treatment being tested, and others get a placebo. The question now is what happens to the people who got a placebo once a vaccine is authorized and when can they get a working vaccine? (Matthew Herper/STAT)
They dont want to be watched over or babysat or told what to do, and I can understand that, but Id like to believe were still capable of making a communal sacrifice. Stay home. Be reasonable. Wear a mask.
Tom Dean, a doctor in South Dakota on the dire situation in his home. As told to Eli Saslow, The Washington Post
My grandfathers death, six months into the pandemic, is more than a tragedy. His fate is as political as it is biological. And I am furious.
From COVID took my grandfather. But it wasnt what killed him by Sarah Jones in The Cut
To the more than 53,492,701 people worldwide who have tested positive, may your road to recovery be smooth.
To the families and friends of the 1,304,864 people who have died worldwide 244,364 of those in the US your loved ones are not forgotten.
Stay safe, everyone.
A medical staff member performs a COVID-19 test outside the Family Healthcare building in downtown Fargo, North Dakota, on Oct. 15. North Dakota is experiencing an influx in COVID-19 cases and on Nov. 6, the state reported a record high of 1,765 daily new cases. Dan Koeck/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption
A medical staff member performs a COVID-19 test outside the Family Healthcare building in downtown Fargo, North Dakota, on Oct. 15. North Dakota is experiencing an influx in COVID-19 cases and on Nov. 6, the state reported a record high of 1,765 daily new cases.
Hospitals are nearing capacity in North and South Dakota, two states where coronavirus has hit disproportionately hard for their small population size and where cases continue to rise daily.
The Dakotas have the most new daily cases per capita of any other state this week a record they've held or been close to for many weeks. They're also among the worst in the country for two other grim metrics: per capita deaths and per capita hospitalizations.
North Dakota has seen hospitalizations spike in recent days, Dr. Doug Griffin, chief medical officer at Sanford Medical Center in Fargo, N.D., told NPR's Morning Edition
"We had fully expected it would get worse," Griffin said. "I think what has surprised me is that really just in a matter of days, it's like we opened up a spigot and a huge number of patients influx to us."
The largely rural state had seen only mild outbreaks in the spring and summer when other parts of the country were hard hit. As of Thursday the state was seeing an average of 1,334 new cases per day, after seeing no more than 400 a day in the summer.
"I think a lot of times people in rural areas feel like, 'Hey, we're immune to the things that happen in the big cities,'" Griffin said. "That's clearly not the case with regards to this."
The situation is so dire that North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum announced this week that health care workers who are positive for COVID-19 but are not showing symptoms can keep working in COVID-19 units.
Griffin said that move is a recognition of how serious things are in the state but they aren't planning to implement that option at the moment.
"I think if we had no other way that we felt that we could safely staff our patients, I think that would be it," Griffin told NPR's David Greene. "But we have many options and many levers that we are pulling now ... with our current staff."
In South Dakota, it's "a possibility" the state might follow North Dakota's lead in letting COVID-19 positive health care workers work if cases continue to surge, Dr. Shankar Kurra, vice president of medical affairs at Monument Health Rapid City Hospital in South Dakota, told NPR's All Things Considered
"South Dakota has seen a rise in cases over the last four to five weeks, and we are on that exponential curve," he said. "And what it has done is put a lot of strain on our capacity in the hospital."
He went on to say that the "mathematics of infection are very clear... We are one of the rampant spread states. And when you have that kind of a community-wide spread with positivity rates in the high 20s and 30s, the likelihood of any of your workers falling ill and therefore unable to take care of folks is distinctly possible."
He said they planned for this influx when they saw cases rise on the east coast in March, preparing an entire hospital floor for COVID-19 treatment. Now, they're having to get creative with staffing.
"If we ever have a surge like, say, North Dakota, we can shut down our ambulatory services and then repurpose those staff and even our more non-critical areas such as ORs that are not trauma and not essential emergency procedures," Kurra told NPR's Ailsa Chang.
Kurra went on to say that he's very worried about what's coming this winter. "Coming into November, December and January, this is sad to say, but we will see an increase in cases and increase in hospitalizations," he said. "Our biggest worry is to maintain capacity, be able to take care of critically ill folks that need ICU level of care and will quickly run out of that if these numbers continue."
The Dakotas aren't the only ones facing overloaded hospitals. Vineet Arora, a hospitalist at the University of Chicago, told NPR's All Things Considered that hospitals in Illinois are "dangerously close" to exceeding capacity and running out of ventilators and other critical equipment, as well as trained clinicians. They are worried about having to go into "crisis staffing planning" mode or, "what's happening in North Dakota."
While North Dakota and South Dakota are two of the most at-risk states in the country, cases and hospitalizations across the entire nation are increasing. To date in the U.S., there have been more than 10 million confirmed cases of the virus and more than 240,000 have died. More than 68,000 are currently hospitalized. Thursday alone, there were 153,496 new confirmed cases and 919deaths, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported.
BROWNSVILLE Want to help find new treatments for COVID-19?
Sign up for one of the new clinical trials being conducted by a research facility that just opened a new office.
PanAmerican Clinical Research has launched 10 clinical trials right here in the Valley to test new therapeutics developed by major companies.
PanAmerican Clinical Research has been partnering with major pharmaceutical research entities to bring some of these therapies to the Rio Grande Valley so that we can offer the cutting-edge trials in treating COVID -19 to our patients right here, said Dr. Christopher Romero, medical director.
Romero was the internal medicine specialist at Valley Baptist Medical Center before taking up his position at the new station opened by CEO Kathy Lenhard at 1416 Palm Blvd. PanAmerican has clinical sites throughout Latin America, but Lenhard decided to open a facility here to begin testing therapeutics.
They all have to go through three phases of development, Lenhard said. Many of our trials are just in phase two. But this is all FDA regulation. We have to try and test these drugs in patients who are positive for COVID. Those are the patients we are enrolling, to see if these potential products will work to fight against the virus.
The Brownsville office is the new PanAmerican facility for all of the United States for both vaccine and therapeutic testing.
Everybodys got a therapeutic or everybodys got a vaccine, and we are just a testing center and thats why I opened this center, Lenhard said. I opened this center just this year since the pandemic.
This answers to the concerns Romero has expressed about Hispanics being underrepresented in COVID-19 studies.
Thats one of the big goals of PanAmerican, to bring better representation of the Hispanic population into the clinical trials, Romero said.
A recent report, he said, showed that 80 percent of participants in COVID-19 vaccine and therapeutic trials have been Caucasian.
Historically, minority populations have been underrepresented, he said. That means that we dont know for sure if theyre going to have the same benefit from these therapies being developed and approved. So this is something thats important for the people of the Rio Grande Valley, that we can be a part and represented in these large clinical trials.
Previous therapeutics for COVID-19 patients have involved the use of steroids to control inflammation. The therapeutics now being tested go even further.
Its looking at different ways to fight the infection, Romero said. Theyve been targeting the virus itself and helping the body clear the infection.
Romero and Lenhard were heading down to Queretaro, Mexico, which is another testing site.
What were doing is gathering data so that the pharmaceutical company can write the report, send it to FDA, they can review it and see if theyre going to be allowed to go to Phase 3, Lenhard said. Its all about safety. Its about a risk-benefit ratio. The benefit has to outweigh the risk. Thats all PanAmerican does is enroll patients in clinical trials that are sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA.
Lenhard said the facility needs to find patients the day they test positive for COVID because the pharmaceutical companies have given her staff a very tight window to randomize them into the trials.
Those wishing to participate in a trial can call the Brownsville clinic at 956-443-0016 or 956-443-0016.
For more information, look up the PanAmerican website at www.panamclinicalresearch.com/covid-19/
A Federal Bureau of Prisons truck drives past barbed wire fences at the Federal Medical Center prison in Fort Worth, Texas in May 2020. LM Otero/AP hide caption
A Federal Bureau of Prisons truck drives past barbed wire fences at the Federal Medical Center prison in Fort Worth, Texas in May 2020.
At least 231 people in Texas prisons and jails have died from COVID-19, including 27 staff members, 14 people in jail and 190 people in prison, according to a new report from researchers at the University of Texas at Austin.
The report's lead researcher, Professor Michele Deitch, told NPR's Weekend Edition that the main takeaway from the report is the overall "devastating toll of COVID on the Texas prison system."
Nine of the inmates who died were already approved for parole and awaiting release, while another 21 had served at least 90% of their sentence. Nearly three-quarters of those who died in prison did not have a life sentence and 58% of them were eligible for parole.
In county jails, 80% of the people who died hadn't even been convicted of a crime. In one prison, the Duncan Unit, almost 6% of the entire incarcerated population has died; that facility has "primarily geriatric prisoners," Deitch said.
NPR reached out to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for their response to the study, but has not heard back. The department has moved to dramatically expand testing, which Deitch called "terrific," but says "you can't ignore the fact that there are 190 dead people in our prisons. Those are numbers that testing does not explain."
This is a problem that persists in jails and prisons in other states, too, but some have taken aggressive steps to reduce the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths among people who are incarcerated. For instance, in New Jersey, thousands of inmates were released to slow the spread. Deitch says other states have "taken more aggressive measures to protect people inside through offering hand sanitizer and hygiene supplies, cleaning supplies, soap and masks, of course."
Deitch spoke with NPR about the scope of the problem for inmates and staff, and what can be done next.
On how the virus has affected staffing
The situation for staff is incredibly challenging. Texas is a place that has a very bad understaffing problem and many staff have been required to work overtime and to be doing their extra shifts in other facilities, which creates not only a risk of exposure for those staff members, but also a risk of transfer of the virus from facility to facility.
What the findings mean for the risk of community spread
One of the lessons of the pandemic is that there's no bright line between what's happening inside our prisons and jails and what's happening in the community. We have staff that go back and forth on a daily basis and they are taking what they are exposed to in the community, bringing it into the facilities and vice versa.
On what kind of solutions she suggests
I think that our numbers point to some obvious groups that need to be targeted. Again, the experts have all recommended reducing the populations. You need to get the most vulnerable people out of harm's way. Prisons are some of the most densely populated facilities that we have, and we need to be able to give people more space. So our report looks at people who are parole eligible 58% of the people who died in prison were parole eligible. Nine people died after they were approved for parole, but while they were still waiting to be released. We could be looking at speeding up those releases.
We also found that 80% of the people who died were over age 55. That's an age passed most people's crime-prone years. So that seems like a very low risk to public safety to be targeting those individuals for release.
Isabella Gomez and Martha Ann Overland produced and edited the audio version of this story. Christianna Silva produced for the Web.
CHICAGO (CBS) The Illinois Department of Public Health on Saturday reported 11,028 new COVID-19 cases in 24 hours, along with 166 deaths over the last two days.
Those numbers come on the heels of a stay-at-home advisory from Mayor Lori Lightfoot, which is set to start on Monday.
As CBS 2s Jeremy Ross reported, the advisory is likely to have an impact on some of Chicagos biggest attractions.
Overall, businesses that are handling the pandemic with great caution will not see much change. The advisory is more like an official suggestion rather than strict laws.
But starting up a new museum in all of this is certainly complicated.
Lots of people are looking to get out and enjoy themselves, said Stacy Stec of Chicagos Museum of Illusions. Fusing fun and entertainment together you can create a memorable and meaningful experience.
Ross on Sunday had a look at the optical enigmas, holograms, and science perspectives of the new Museum of Illusions, located in the downtown commercial building at 25 E. Washington St.
We had intentions of opening earlier in 2020, Stec said.
But COVID-19 shifted that reality. Stec said the museums summer start was pushed back to this weekend.
We wanted to be proactive and plan with the pandemic in mind, she said.
The delay allowed the museum to better perfect temperature checks and a one-way traffic flow for social distancing, and to install a special air purification system. The museum is looking to reassure families and also to allow better for hands-on interactivity.
Guests are coming in in their own small family groups, Stec said.
Ross asked about the idea of encouraging people to touch and play with things in the era of COVID-19.
You know, I understand thats a concern for many. Im a parent as well, Stec said. We have staff members wiping things down constantly. As soon as somebody touches a surface. we have a staff member there to wipe it down.
Shannon Wagner and daughter Harper visited the Shedd Aquarium on Saturday. Wagner described it as taking similar sanitation and social distancing measures.
The kids are getting very restless at home, Wagner said. Were trying to be safe, but yeah, weve got to get out. Otherwise, theyre going to go crazy.
This all comes as Chicago prepares for Mondays stay-at-home advisory. But the advisory does not mean everything is closing.
A stones thrown from the Shedd, the Field Museum of Natural History said since it is such a large, well-ventilated space, the Mayors office has encouraged it and other museums to remain open as places to visit safely during the COVID-19 surge.
But the same office has also argued this week that people should only be leaving their homes for essential things.
This is not an essential place in terms of the mayor, Stec said. We do encourage people to make the best decisions for themselves, and we understand people are cautious and if youre cautious and you dont feel comfortable. Thats OK.
The Museum of Illusions plans to be a fixture long after COVID-19. The hope is there will not be more significant restrictions in the days ahead.
But that is all up to the COVID-19 trends, and those trends are going the wrong way.
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