From outdoor children’s movies for cooped-up apartment dwellers in Rio de Janeiro to online shopping and worship around the globe, COVID-19 has communities adapting to new realities of living with a pandemic while battling to save their economies.
Japan prepared to end its state of emergency for most regions on Thursday, while New Zealand further relaxed its restrictions after deciding that its outbreak is under control.
A strong typhoon was roaring toward the eastern Philippines as authorities struggled to evacuate tens of thousands of people during a virus lockdown. Governors said social distancing would be nearly impossible for those in emergency shelters, some of which had been turned into quarantine facilities.
Illustration: June Hsu
It could be weeks before it is clear whether reopenings will cause a spike in COVID-19 cases. The trajectory of outbreaks vary wildly, with steep increases in cases in some places, decreases in others and infection rates that can shift dramatically from one neighborhood to the other.
In many parts of the world, communities and individuals are finding inventive ways to cope with what many view as a new normal.
Apartment dwellers in Rio de Janeiro were getting some much needed entertainment from children’s movies projected onto screens set up outside their buildings, similar to a drive-in cinema.
Cesar Miranda Ribeiro, president of RioFilme, a city-owned event management company, said her effort is aimed at “trying to take care of the mental health of the people.”
Others are seeking spiritual support and human connections by worshiping remotely via online religious services from the Vatican, or from other sources depending on their faith.
“People in general, I think, are looking for more meaning and spirituality in the midst of all this. I think, there’s just a general increase in religiosity and consumption of religious content,” said Omar Suleiman, an Islamic leader in Irving, Texas, whose Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research has been uploading YouTube videos.
On the other side of the world, Chinese customers looking for some stay-at-home retail therapy have tuned into livestream shopping.
However, for world leaders, the focus was far more serious as their countries tried to figure out how to revive their economies reeling from record numbers of job losses and chilling uncertainty.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held a news conference to explain plans to lift the country’s state of emergency in most places ahead of schedule as the number of new cases falls, with the exception of Tokyo and several other high-risk areas.
So far, Japan, with a population of 126 million, has reported about 16,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and about 720 deaths.
The US has the largest outbreak of the virus in the world by far. According to a tally by Johns Hopkins University, there are 1.39 million infections and over 84,000 deaths in the country. Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 4.3 million and killed approximately 300,000 people.
However, the actual numbers are likely to be higher.
Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority testified before a US House of Representatives committee on Thursday that, despite White House claims, the US still lacked a comprehensive battle plan against COVID-19 in critical areas including masks, testing, treatments and vaccines.
If the virus rebounds, the nation could face “the darkest winter in modern history. Our window of opportunity is closing,” Bright said.
The testimony followed this week’s warning by Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, that rushing to lift business lockdowns and stay-at-home restrictions could “turn back the clock,” seeding more suffering and death and complicating efforts to get the economy rolling again.
However, the pressure is on to staunch job losses after the unemployment rate in the US soared to 14.7 percent in April, the highest since the Great Depression.
With roughly 30 million US citizens out of work, US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell urged Congress and the White House to act further to prevent long-lasting harm. More government spending and tax breaks will be “worth it if it helps avoid long-term economic damage and leaves us with a stronger recovery,” Powell said.
He spoke a day after US Democrats proposed a US$3 trillion aid package for state and local governments, households and health care workers. That would follow nearly US$3 trillion in earlier financial assistance. The Federal Reserve, for its part, has cut interest rates to near zero and created numerous emergency lending programs.
Some US states started easing their lockdowns about two weeks ago, allowing reopenings by establishments ranging from shopping malls in Texas to beach hotels in South Carolina, to gyms, bars and restaurants in sparsely populated Wyoming, which has had relatively few cases.
In the last week, there have been increases in daily new cases in counties in Minnesota and Virginia. In many other parts of the US, the numbers of infections have been steadily declining.
It can take three to five days for someone newly infected, and possibly infectious, with COVID-19 to feel sick. Some infected people will not have symptoms throughout their illness.
With testing often limited to those with symptoms, it might take five to six weeks before the effects of relaxing shutdowns are known, Crystal Watson of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security said.
“As we saw early in the year, epidemics of COVID-19 start slow and take some time to build and become evident,” Watson said in an e-mail.
The push for more testing is almost universal.
After discovering a handful of new infections, local authorities in Wuhan, where the pandemic first began late last year, are pressing ahead to test all 11 million residents for the virus within 10 days.
South Korea was testing hundreds of people as it battles a spike in infections linked to nightlife spots in Seoul that threaten the country’s hard-won progress in the fight against the pandemic. It confirmed 29 more COVID-19 cases within 24 hours last week.
Italy partially lifted lockdown restrictions last week only to see a big jump in confirmed cases in its already hardest-hit regions.
Lebanese authorities reinstated a nationwide lockdown for four days beginning Wednesday night after a surge in reported infections and complaints that social distancing rules were being ignored.
Meanwhile, the WHO warned that it is possible that COVID-19 might be here to stay, since it could take years for the global population to build up sufficient levels of immunity before a vaccine is widely available.
“This virus may never go away,” WHO Health Emergencies Program executive director Michael Ryan said.
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