In our globalized world, it's puzzling that so few lessons were learned in the early weeks of each country's outbreak, when the chances of containing and stopping the virus were highest. Now the focus is on flattening the curve, or slowing the virus' spread, to keep death tolls from climbing further.
As much of the world mulls gradually lifting lockdowns, there are still lessons to be learned from these four places that got it right. Here are 12 of those lessons.
In terms of its death toll, at least, Taiwan doesn't even have much of a curve to flatten, more of a line with a couple of rigid steps.
Compare that to the United States -- now the world's hardest-hit nation, at least in raw numbers -- which has reported at least 26,000 deaths. Even when you take population size into account, a level of success like Taiwan's could have meant just 83 deaths in the US.
Lesson #1: Be prepared
Taiwan's preparedness came largely from some hard-learned lessons from the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003, which killed 181 people on the island.
As a result, the island established a specialized Central Epidemic Command Center, which could be activated to coordinate a response in the event of an outbreak. In a sign of how Taiwan wanted to get ahead of the coronavirus, the center was activated on January 20, a day before the island even confirmed its first infection.
Lesson #2: Be quick
Taiwan's action came well before its first Covid-19 infection was confirmed on January 21. Three weeks before, within days of China's first reported case to the World Health Organization (WHO), Taiwanese officials began boarding and inspecting passengers for fever and pneumonia symptoms on flights from Wuhan, the original epicenter of the virus in China. The island issued a travel alert for Wuhan on January 20, and two days later, still with just a single case, officials began updating the public in daily briefings.
A week after its first case, Taiwan began electronic monitoring of quarantined individuals via government-issued cell phones, and announced travel and entry restrictions, mostly targeting China's Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital. Just about every day after until the end of February, the government implemented new measures to keep the virus at bay.
Lesson #3: Test, trace and quarantine
Authorities carried out widespread testing and tracing the contacts of infected people, putting them all under quarantine. It proactively tested anyone who got off cruise ships and even retested people diagnosed with influenza or pneumonia, to make sure they hadn't been misdiagnosed and were infected with coronavirus.
Lesson #4: Use data and tech
"A coordinated government response with full collaboration of its citizenry [was] combined with the use of big data and technology," associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford Medicine, Jason Wang, told CNN. Wang has also studied public health policy and co-authored the JAMA report on Taiwan's response.
Taiwan merged national health insurance data with customs and immigration databases to create real-time alerts to help identify vulnerable populations.
"Having a good health data system helps with monitoring the spread of the disease and allows for its early detection. When someone sees a physician for respiratory symptoms, the national health insurance database will have a record of it. It is easier to track clusters of outbreaks," Wang said.
Getting a coronavirus test in many countries can be near impossible, unless you're already very ill. Not so in Iceland, where anyone who wants a test gets one. Widespread testing has been crucialto the country's low number of infections and deaths, authorities there say. Only around1,700 peoplehave been infected in Iceland, andonly eight have died.
Lesson #5: Be aggressive
Iceland's response to the coronavirus hasn't been particularly innovative. It's just been meticulous and quick. Like Taiwan, its speed has meant it hasn't had to be too restrictive -- people can still meet in groups of up to 20, if they stay two meters away from each other. While universities are closed, schools and nurseries are still open, allowing more parents to work.
"From the beginning, since we diagnosed our first case, we worked according to our plan. Our plan was to be aggressive in detecting and diagnosing individuals, putting them into isolation, and to be very aggressive in our contact tracing. We used the police force and the healthcare system to sit down and contact trace every newly diagnosed case," Iceland's chief epidemiologist Thorolfur Gudnason told CNN.
"We are finding that above 60% of new cases are in people already quarantined. So that showed that contact tracing and quarantining contacts was a good move for us," Gudnason said.
Lesson #6: Get the private sector involved
Recent revelations that 50% of the people who tested positive in a lab in Iceland showed no symptoms at all, for example, has prompted other countries to take firmer action through social distancing, as they begin to realize preventing the virus' spread will be more challenging than initially thought.
Kri Stefnsson, CEO and director of deCODE Geneticsm, told CNN that as of Monday, it had found 528 mutations of the coronavirus in mass testing in the community. These mutations could give insight to how lethal the virus becomes and offers important data to the world to better understand how it operates.
Lesson #7: Act preventatively
The country closed universities and junior colleges on March 13 and banned gatherings of more than 100 people on March 16, when it had just 61 confirmed cases and not a single death.
Three days later, all Icelandic residents that entered the country were required to go into 14 days of quarantine, regardless of where they were traveling from.
It wasn't until after all this action that, on March 24, Iceland's first death was reported. That same day, authorities banned gatherings of above 20 people and shut down public amenities, such as bars, swimming pools, museums and gyms.
Lesson #8: Use tech, but respect privacy
Like in Taiwan, Icelandic officials also made an app available for people to download to help chart the virus' spread. It creates a log of where the user has been. Users don't have to share that data with authorities -- but many do as it helps contact-tracing teams work out who may have been put at risk.
In comparison, the UK's response has been slow. A government-supported app is only now in the works and is weeks away from launching. As it lags behind in testing, it is only just now looking into public-private partnerships.
The way each country tests varies, but their death rates among the population contrast just as dramatically. Fewer than one in every 100,000 people in South Korea's population have died from the virus, while in the UK it's around 18. It's almost eight in every 100,000 in the US, JHU data shows.
Lesson #9: You can drive-through test
South Korea's success has been largely down to its testing, according to Dr. Eom Joong Sik from the Gil Medical Center near Seoul. Eom is treating coronavirus patients in hospital and sits on a committee that advises the government in its response.
"Early diagnosis, early quarantine and early treatment are key," he told CNN.
"Since the first patient was confirmed, by installing more than 500 screening clinics all over the country, we sorted suspected cases and conducted tests, and we have worked hard to develop and maintain a system to conduct many tests with a small workforce over a short period of time," he said.
South Korea was also quick to move, implementing quarantining and screening measures for people arriving from Wuhan on January 3, more than two weeks before the country's first infection was even confirmed. Authorities rolled out a series of travel restrictions over the weeks after.
"By carrying out tests on all members of the congregation and diagnosing even infected people without symptoms, the government carried out quarantine and treatment side by side," Eom said.
Once Daegu was established as the epicenter, authorities were ready with the ability and political will to test broadly, to trace contacts of people infected, and to quarantine them to try and contain the virus before it became a case of mitigating widescale death, as is now the case in much of Europe and the US.
Lesson #10: Learn from the past
So the political will needed to enforce measures during the coronavirus outbreak wasn't a problem and there was good coordination between the central government and the provinces.
It also helped that South Korea is one of the most technologically innovative countries in the world. Much of life there is already conducted online, so developing and enforcing the use of an app to monitor people in quarantine wasn't too difficult, though activists there too have warned of invasion of privacy.
Germany's case is a little different. The country hasn't really been able to keep infection numbers at bay much better than some of the hardest-hit nations. It currently has more than 132,000 confirmed infections, the fifth-highest in the world, JHU reports.
But Germany has been able to keep the death rate in its population relatively low. More than 3,400 people have died from the virus in Germany, around four people in every 100,000 across the country. That's well below Italy's 35 and the UK's 18.
Lesson #11: Test more as restrictions ease
Germany's success has also been its mass testing, but its well-resourced universal healthcare system has played a major role too, according to Martin Strmer, a virologist who heads IMD Labor in Frankfurt, one of the labs conducting tests. Germany has also drawn in the private sector to make sure enough tests are carried out.
"From the beginning, Germany didn't stick to one or two or three central labs doing all the tests. Many private companies were involved, so we've been able to do 100,000 tests a day," Strmer told CNN.
"There are some countries that have done it even better than Germany, in controlling infections, but what's quite important is broad testing, where we were able to see what was happening in our population. Only with mass testing can you identify people who might be infected."
Like Taiwan, South Korea and Iceland, Germany devised a test for the coronavirus and prepared a large number of kits early, well before the country even reported its first death.
As German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced Wednesday that the country would begin gradually scaling back its lockdown, the country is planning on carrying out even more tests, in case the increased contact leads to a second wave of infections. Like many countries, it will also test for antibodies to try and determine who among the community may be immune to the virus.
Germany's death toll has remained relatively low in part because the coronavirus trickled into the country mostly in young people. Many had been visiting Italy or Austria on ski trips.
But as communal infections in the country grow, Strmer fears that more elderly people could die in coming weeks and that the country's death rate will go up.
Germany recorded 315 deaths from complications related to Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, the country's center for disease control, the Robert Koch Institute, wrote on its website on Thursday. This is the first time more than 300 deaths have been reported in a 24-hour span.
Lesson #12: Build capacity at hospitals
In fact, Germany's health system has such a large capacity, its hospitals are now treating people for coronavirus from Italy, Spain and France.
Authorities have been able to get people with even moderate symptoms to hospital well before their conditions deteriorate, leading some experts to consider whether treating people early, getting them on ventilators before their condition worsens, for example, improves their chances for survival.
"Germany is not in a situation where the healthcare system is overloaded, like you see in Italy, where they need to decide whether to treat a patient or not. We don't have that," Strmer said.
All data on case numbers and death tolls were taken from Johns Hopkins University on April 15 at 2a.m. ET.
CNN's James Griffiths, Sharif Paget, Maija-Liisa Ehlinger, Sophie Jeong, Stephanie Halasz and Gabrielle Smith contributed to this report.
interposing voices
Good morning, everyone. Hi.
So every morning in the Intensive Care Unit at the Brooklyn Hospital Center, the doctors gather for something called morning report.
So now, I want you all to present in a straight, true way
The people who were on overnight, they stand around and the head doctor is there, and they kind of give a report of what happened. And then, the new doctors who are coming on, they get that information.
Yeah. When she was at rest this morning, she was breathing 23. Shes very comfortable, thumbs up.
They talk about, you know, who was admitted, who got critically ill.
The overnight patient is not doing well. He had to be re-intubated almost immediately.
And one recent morning report was particularly intense.
OK. All right. OK. Next patient.
There were patients in their 80s and patients in their 30s.
31-year-old female, 30 weeks pregnant, asthma, obesity, admitted to the I.C.U. She was intubated yesterday evening.
Jesus.
All right. Good. Next.
There were patients from nursing homes and patients who were homeless.
She was intubated overnight. Shes on azithromycin, klonopin, ceftriaxone.
OK. Next.
Patients with asthma and diabetes, and patients with no underlying conditions at all.
male. We just past medical history here for acute hypoxic respiratory failure.
But as the doctors race to get through the cases
Next patient.
they all shared a nearly identical description.
He was upgraded from acute hypoxic respiratory failure.
OK, next.
Male, acute hypoxic respiratory failure secondary to confirmed Covid.
All right. Next.
Admitted for acute hypoxic respiratory failure with confirmed Covid-19.
Next.
Male, it looks like acute hypoxic respiratory failure.
Acute hypoxic respiratory failure secondary to Covid-19.
All right. Next.
From The New York Times, Im Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.
Today: Its been more than a month since the coronavirus descended on New York Citys hospitals and on Brooklyn Medical Center, where the vast majority of patients in critical care have the virus. My colleague, Sheri Fink, followed one doctor through a single day there.
Its Wednesday, April 15.
Morning, everybody. [AMBIENT CHATTER]
Josh, do you want to spend the do you mind? This is Sheri.
Sure.
Shes with The New York Times, and shes gonna spend some time here a little bit.
Pleasure.
Its up to you.
Im fine with
Im a physician.
A physician and a writer.
So for the past few weeks, Ive been embedded in the Brooklyn Hospital Center.
Im going to finish rounding here, and then Im going to go downstairs and cover SI.
OK.
And what Ive been able to see there is incredibly unique whats happening? What is it like inside a hospital during a pandemic?
then well figure out the rest.
OK. All right.
Do you want to give him your mic, or are you willing to wear a mic?
And there was one doctor I met who really embodied that transparency.
Does it beep every time I say a four-letter word like South Park?
Dr. Josh Rosenberg.
I am mildly inappropriate. Im just warning you.
An attending physician in the Intensive Care Unit.
How are you, Peter?
Hi, how are you
I didnt see you hiding over there, my friend.
There are people from all over the hospital recruited to work in the I.C.U., so its not just, like, I.C.U. doctors and nurses who are used to intensive care treatment, but in fact
And shes one of the podiatry residents, so all people who are good with knives and big needles.
When I was there that day, there was a podiatry doctor and two of her residents. Those are doctors who work on the feet.
No, no, no. What I would like to do is that, as much as possible, were going to try to get all of the Covids on one side, and then the whole area is a dirty area.
And the I.C.U. had actually effectively doubled in size, so it was completely full. And they had to turn to other areas of the hospital to turn them into Intensive Care Units. In fact, a big part of the I.C.U. is now in a place that just a few weeks ago was where patients would come for outpatient chemotherapy treatments. Thats now in I.C.U..
Frankie, watch out. Dont trip Dont trip Dont trip. Dont trip. Dont trip.
It was also a bit of an obstacle course.
Dont trip.
There were cords everywhere.
Please be careful, Do you have gloves?
They had pulled apart the ventilators. They had the control parts of the ventilators that were helping people breathe, those were in the hallways so that nurses and respiratory therapists didnt have to go in and out as much and expose themselves to risk.
What?
This is a disaster waiting to happen.
Yes and no, though.
And the nurses were doing the same thing with IVs, with the tubing that the medicine flows through. So they had pulled the IV pumps out of the room so that they can not have to go in and out and use up the personal protective equipment.
Its great. And yeah, I mean, you can trip over it.
You all have to be very careful.
You just have to be careful.
Yeah.
Right. Its making the best of what you can do.
Yeah.
OK, guys, can we start with number two? I appreciate everybody being here and everybodys support massively.
So now, Dr. Rosenberg is taking over for the doctors who were working the night before, and hes beginning to make his rounds.
Lets start with number two, and then just go around the unit please. All right, so lucky number two.
So nearly all the patients in the I.C.U. are on ventilators.
So do we have any history of smoking, shisha use, anything like that?
Some have asthma. Some have diabetes.
All right. What did he do for a living? Occupational exposure?
But a lot of these patients dont have any underlying conditions at all.
Ill just write because I mean, listen, on some of these you have a real reason why. You know, they may have bad lungs, and that makes it worse. Sometimes its just the disease, but if theres something we can do to
So Josh and the other doctors are kind of confounded by some of the patients. They dont understand why, if they dont have a lot of underlying health issues, why their lungs look so bad.
Crap. Reported any asthma?
And they also just dont have that much to offer.
OK. So what are we going to do with him?
Right now, we are well, at this point, Im not too sure what we can do with him. We have we tried to [VOICE FADES].
So what is he on drug-wise?
So, I mean, for most patients, theyre trying this thing called the Covid cocktail, which is that hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. Thats that combination the President talks about a lot.
I dont think its doing much.
But theres really very little evidence, and Dr. Rosenberg in particular is very unsure that those drugs really help.
Well see about remdesivir, and well see if we get some Covid results and see what we can do.
So they start talking about other possibilities. Theres this experimental drug called remdesivir that you have to apply to the manufacturer for each patient, and they have to meet certain criteria. You have to have a test result. They cant have certain complications.
How do you guys feel about Kaletra or our other PIs?
This briefing is no longer updating. Read the latest developments in the coronavirus outbreak here.
The stark numbers reflect Chinas dramatic efforts to stamp out the coronavirus, which included shutting down most factories and offices in January and February as the outbreak sickened tens of thousands of people.
They also illustrate how monumental the challenge of getting the global economy back on its feet will be.
China is trying to restart its vast, $14 trillion economy, an effort that could give the rest of the world a much-needed shot in the arm. But the spread of the virus to Europe and the United States has sharply cut the worlds appetite for Chinas goods. That could lead to factory shutdowns and worker furloughs even as the country tries to get back to business.
Chinas National Bureau of Statistics confirmed last month that domestic industrial production, retail sales and investment all suffered record, double-digit drops in the first two months of this year compared with the same period of 2019. That prompted most, though not all, economists to guess that overall economic performance for the first quarter of this year would show a decrease from a year earlier.
Small-business owners are in despair as fund for government aid runs out.
The Small Business Administration has run out of money for its Paycheck Protection Program, officials said on Thursday, leaving millions of businesses unable to apply for emergency loans while Congress struggles to reach a deal to replenish the funds.
Congress initially allocated $349 billion for the program, which was intended to provide loans to businesses with 500 or fewer employees. The money has gone quickly, with more than 1.4 million loans already approved as of Wednesday evening, as small businesses struggle with virus-induced quarantines and closings.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is expected to resume negotiations with lawmakers about adding another $250 billion to the fund on Thursday.
Dr. Nancy Kim, 42, who owns Spectrum Dermatology in Scottsdale, Ariz., tried to get a loan through the program, but her bank, Wells Fargo, never accepted their application and eight other lenders turned her away.
Within the next one or two months, we might run out of money and have to shut down completely, Dr. Kim said on Thursday. Our patients are going to suffer.
A Wells Fargo spokeswoman said the bank continued to prepare applications for the funds and would submit them when the funds were available again.
Doug Martin, 63, a sports marketer in Long Beach, Calif., says the events company he spent the month of February negotiating with went silent when conditions on the West Coast began to deteriorate in early March.
Theres a whole domino effect to this thing, and Im one of the dominoes, he said. This morning, I read that the moneys gone and Im like, Heck, I didnt even get a shot at this.
Boeing plans to bring about 27,000 employees back to work in Washington State to resume aircraft production, the company said on Thursday. Most will come back to work by the end of next week.
The announcement is the first attempt at large-scale resumption of business activity by a U.S. corporation since the coronavirus outbreak forced companies and government officials to shut down most nonessential work. President Trump is encouraging businesses and states to reopen the economy by May 1 or earlier.
Following thorough reviews of local conditions, weve started restoring operations at some sites where work has been suspended, Boeings chief executive, Dave Calhoun, said in a letter to employees ahead of the announcement. This week, the company brought about 2,500 employees in the state back to work, most of them focused on defense production operations.
Of Boeings approximately 160,000 employees worldwide, there are at least 66 current confirmed coronavirus cases. At least 124 others have recovered after being infected
Boeing employees who return to work in the coming week will find new health and safety precautions in place, such as staggered start times and spread-out work areas, the company said. But a company spokesman, Charles Bickers, said Boeing would not test employees for the virus.
USAA, which serves military members and their families, will temporarily change its policies on overdrawn accounts to let customers collect stimulus money after The New York Times reported that it was not allowing those customers to access the funds.
The Times had reported that USAA and some other lenders were applying stimulus funds to overdraft fees and negative balances and only giving overdrawn customers the balance that remained after the accounts were zeroed out. USAA said on Thursday that it would pause overdraft collections for the next 90 days.
This will allow members access to their full stimulus payment to help cover the costs of rent, food and other important necessities, Matthew Hartwig, a bank spokesman, said in an email. Beginning as early as today, we will apply this policy retroactively to any member accounts with a negative balance at the time the first stimulus checks were deposited, so that members will have access to their stimulus funds.
The Treasury Department has begun electronically depositing funds meant to help with basic expenses into peoples bank accounts. But when funds come into accounts with negative balances, banks are legally allowed to take what is needed to bring the balance to zero.
The government checks are meant to cushion the financial blow to Americans hit hardest by the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo are pausing their collections on negative account balances to give customers access to the governments stimulus.
Stocks on Wall Street inch higher after day of wobbly trading.
After a day of unsteady trading, stocks on Wall Street held on to a small gain even as investors were presented with new data showing the economic damage from the coronavirus outbreak.
Thursdays rally was driven in part by gains in technology stocks that are seen as benefiting from coronavirus pandemic related stay-at-home orders. Amazon rose sharply, as did Netflix. Shares of both companies are at record highs.
But banks continued to slide, as Morgan Stanley added to a string of earnings reports from the sector that show profits tumbling and lenders preparing for damage to come.
Energy stocks were also sharply lower, as were shares of major airlines after leaders of United Airlines issued a dire note to the carriers 100,000 employees on Wednesday, warning that staffing cuts may be coming and demand for air travel is likely to remain subdued into next year. United fell more than 11 percent.
Investors also faced another spate of bad economic news on Thursday, with weekly unemployment claims data showing another mass shedding of jobs.
The S&P 500 drifted between gains and losses for much of the day before climbing late in the session to end less than 1 percent higher.
Though still far from the record reached on Feb. 19, stocks in the United States had been steadily climbing in recent weeks as investors began to focus on the prospect of an eventual rebound from the economic collapse set off by the pandemic.
Throughout the country, hotel groups and hosts on platforms like Airbnb and VRBO continue to make direct appeals to guests seeking refuge from the pandemic. And they are finding takers.
Airbnb hosts are not allowed to use the words Covid-19, coronavirus or quarantine in listing titles, or to claim that their lodgings are free of the virus. But it is still easy to promote the idea of a salubrious refuge.
In Raleigh, N.C., Shari Outlaw offers a Sparkling Clean Social Distancing Space through Airbnb, in the little house behind her home where her great-grandparents once lived.
I just decided to change the heading, Ms. Outlaw said, describing the detached, self-contained unit as a quiet spot in the middle of city that is attractive for people who just need a break, something different from looking at the same four walls.
A local couple called; they were in the process of separating and wanted a place where one spouse could stay while the other remained at home with their children, alternating every week. The unit is booked through April at $40 a night, less than half of the usual weekday rate.
Extended stays bring committed revenue, allow hosts to develop relationships of trust with their guests and, in some places, sidestep regulations banning short-term rentals. In areas like the Jersey Shore and Newport Beach, Calif., and in states like Pennsylvania and Vermont, officials have severely restricted short-term rentals to discourage residents of urban hot zones from spreading the coronavirus to lower-density locations.
Robinhood, a stock trading app popular with young people, is in talks to raise a new round of funding led by Sequoia Capital that would value it around $8 billion, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Robinhood, which was last valued at $7.6 billion and has 10 million users, experienced multiple outages during the market turmoil of March, in which users were unable to buy or sell stocks. Still, stock trading tends to increase during times of volatility, leading to higher demand for Robinhood.
Bloomberg earlier reported the news. Robinhood declined to comment.
The funding comes as many start-ups across Silicon Valley slash costs and lay off workers in response to the pandemic. But some start-ups are thriving and investors continue to pour money in. Stripe, a payments company, recently announced an additional $600 million in funding as an extension of a funding round from September.
The biotechnology company Moderna said Thursday that it had been awarded up to $483 million from the federal government to develop its coronavirus vaccine and to scale up manufacturing.
Moderna was the first company in the United States to begin a human clinical trial, although several other companies are also moving forward with potential vaccines against the coronavirus.
Moderna, which is developing its vaccine with the National Institutes of Health, said the agreement with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a unit of the Department of Health and human Services, would allow it to accelerate development of the vaccine.
Johnson & Johnson, which is also developing a vaccine, announced a similar award last month.
Infectious disease experts have said it could take a year to 18 months to develop a vaccine that would be ready for the public.
The coronavirus pandemics devastation became more evident Thursday with more than 5.2 million workers added to the tally of the unemployed.
The latest figure from the Labor Department, reflecting last weeks initial unemployment claims, brings the four-week total to about 22 million, roughly the net number of jobs created in a nine-and-a-half-year stretch that began after the last recession and ended with the pandemics arrival.
It underscores how the downdraft has spread to every corner of the economy: hotels and restaurants, mass retailers, manufacturers and white-collar strongholds like law firms.
Theres nowhere to hide, said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton in Chicago. This is the deepest, fastest, most broad-based recession weve ever seen.
Some of the new jobless claims represent freshly laid-off workers; others are from people who had been trying for a week or more to file. Were still playing catch-up on multiple fronts, Ms. Swonk said.
The movie theater chain AMC Entertainment said in a statement that it intended to raise $500 million in a private offering squelching speculation, for now, that it will need to file for bankruptcy sooner than later as its venues remain closed, and it burns through cash reserves. AMC said that it had $299.8 million in cash as of March 31, enough to make it until a partial reopening in July. With the new debt, AMC said it would have enough liquidity to withstand global closure until November.
Uber said on Thursday that the coronavirus pandemic had made it impossible to forecast how much money it would make this year. It also warned investors that its stakes in several international ride-hailing businesses would lose value. Uber will report its first quarter financial results on May 7.
An updated tally from a trade group for big apartment owners and developers shows that 16 percent of tenants failed to make a full or partial monthly rent payment by April 12, compared with 9 percent in a similar period a month earlier. The report, from the National Multifamily Housing Council, surveyed 11.5 million units. In data through April 5, the nonpayment rate had been 31 percent.
Google said it would grant its employees up to 14 weeks of paid leave to care for family members during the coronavirus shutdown, an increase from the six weeks of paid leave it made available in March. Under the new policy, the leave can be taken in half-day increments, allowing workers to stretch it across more than six months if necessary.
The Transportation Department largely denied requests from JetBlue and Spirit Airlines to stop flying to several destinations, service that is required under the terms of the federal stimulus. The decision suggests that the department may be unlikely to grant the majority of such exemption requests, many of which have been made by smaller carriers.
Amazons founder, Jeff Bezos, said the company was developing its own coronavirus testing capabilities, including building a lab, and is preparing to start testing a small number of workers soon. In an annual letter to shareholders, Mr. Bezos also advocated regular testing on a global scale, across all industries, as a way to reopen the economy.
Reporting was contributed by Brooks Barnes, KatieThomas, Kate Conger, Julie Lasky, Vindu Goel, Kevin McKenna, Michael M. Grynbaum, Alexandra Stevenson, Davey Alba, Neil Irwin, Nelson D. Schwartz, Liz Alderman, Alan Rappeport, Kate Kelly, Keith Bradsher, Niraj Chokshi, David McCabe, Caitlin Dickerson, Vanessa Friedman, Miriam Jordan, Jason DeParle, Jim Tankersley, Stacey Cowley, Emily Cochrane, Emily Flitter, Reed Abelson, Sapna Maheshwari, Ben Casselman, Noam Scheiber, Geneva Abdul, Mohammed Hadi, Carlos Tejada and Mike Ives.
Religious practice has had to get very creative. The pandemic has pushed services and sacraments to the brink. Everything from regular services to big life events, like weddings and funerals, has gone online or been put on hold. Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
Religious practice has had to get very creative. The pandemic has pushed services and sacraments to the brink. Everything from regular services to big life events, like weddings and funerals, has gone online or been put on hold.
On this broadcast of The National Conversation, an employment lawyer answers your questions about essential workers. We'll also take a look at the latest unemployment numbers and how the pandemic has affected religious practices, and consider when "normal" might return.
The worlds biggest trial of drugs to treat Covid-19 patients has been set up in the UK at unprecedented speed, and hopes to have some answers within weeks.
The Recovery trial has recruited over 5,000 patients in 165 NHS hospitals around the UK in a month, ahead of similar trials in the US and Europe, which have a few hundred.
This is by far the largest trial in the world, said Peter Horby, professor of emerging infectious diseases and global health at Oxford University, who is leading it. He has previously led Ebola drug trials in west Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The Recovery team expects to be the first to have definitive data. Were guessing some time in June we may get the results, said Prof Horby. If it is really clear that there are benefits, an answer will be available quicker. But he warned that in the case of Covid-19, there would be no magic bullet.
Symptoms are defined by the NHS as either:
NHS advice is that anyone with symptoms shouldstay at home for at least 7 days.
If you live with other people,they should stay at home for at least 14 days, to avoid spreading the infection outside the home.
After 14 days, anyone you live with who does not have symptoms can return to their normal routine. But, if anyone in your home gets symptoms, they should stay at home for 7 days from the day their symptoms start.Even if it means they're at home for longer than 14 days.
If you live with someone who is 70 or over, has a long-term condition, is pregnant or has a weakened immune system, try to find somewhere else for them to stay for 14 days.
If you have to stay at home together, try to keep away from each other as much as possible.
After 7 days, if you no longer have a high temperature you can return to your normal routine.
If you still have a high temperature, stay at home until your temperature returns to normal.
If you still have a cough after 7 days, but your temperature is normal, you do not need to continue staying at home. A cough can last for several weeks after the infection has gone.
Staying at home means you should:
You can use your garden, if you have one. You can also leave the house to exercise but stay at least 2 metres away from other people.
If you have symptoms of coronavirus, use theNHS 111 coronavirus serviceto find out what to do.
Source:NHS Englandon 23 March 2020
The team is working against a backdrop of doctors globally using drugs that they believe could be a cure citing compassionate use, without yet having good scientific evidence. Politicians are also wading in. Donald Trump has backed hydroxychloroquine, a less toxic form of the old anti-malaria drug chloroquine.
Used together with azithromycin, an antibiotic, it could be one of the biggest game-changers in the history of medicine, Trump tweeted. The French doctor Didier Raoult has claimed the combination is a cure, leading to public clamour for the drugs in France. President Macron visited Raoults hospital in Marseille last week, giving him tentative support but suggesting that trials were needed.
Both hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin are being tested separately as part of the Recovery trial, and if there is any effect in patients given those drugs alone, compared with those given no drugs, they can be combined later.
For now, said Horby, the data flying around in emails from enthusiasts and posted on social media about patients who have recovered after taking hydroxychloroquine proves nothing. He says there is no real evidence to support its use yet.
I would say no, said Horby. There is in-vitro evidence that it is inhibitory against the virus [in the lab]. But I havent seen any sound clinical data.
Were seeing a large number of publications. Its hard to keep up with them. Most of them are very disappointing. There was a paper that said it was a breakthrough chloroquine works. But there was zero data in it. It seems to follow in that vein. They show a certain percentage of patients recovering, which would happen anyway.
The hype and pressure cause problems for serious researchers. There is pushback from clinicians saying we should just use this because it clearly works and shouldnt use that because it clearly doesnt work. They are both wrong because neither of them know.
The number of patients being enrolled on the Recovery trial across the UK tells a story of doctors who have faith in scientific evidence over hope alone. Ten per cent of Covid-19 patients in the UK are now taking part in the trial, and the researchers say the more people join, the sooner they will have answers.
Also in the trial now are a combination of two antiretroviral drugs used in HIV treatment, lopinavir-ritonavir, known by the brand name Kaletra, and low-dose dexamethasone, a type of steroid used in a range of conditions, typically to reduce inflammation.
The next one to be included, said Horby, is an interleukin 6 antagonist, one of the immunomodulator drugs used in rheumatoid arthritis and to treat cytokine storm something that happens when the immune system goes into overdrive, as can happen in Covid-19. They are looking at tocilizumab.
They are also in discussions about introducing convalescent plasma blood from people who have recovered that contains antibodies against the virus. They want to trial remdesivir, but have not been able to obtain the stocks they need, because it is being tested in China and the US and because doctors are already prescribing it on compassionate use grounds.
Repurposed drugs are first because they already have a proven safety record. But as experimental drugs come along, Recovery will include those. Patients are randomly allocated one of the drugs (or a placebo). There are already 500 to 900 patients on each of the drugs being tested and 2,000 in the control groups.
The UK trial was set up with unprecedented speed. The team went to see the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, to gain his support and enrolled the first patient nine days later. The NHS and National Institute for Health Research are on board. They recruited 1,000 patients within the first two weeks.
Martin Landray, professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Nuffield Department of Population Health, who co-leads the trial with Horby, says its extraordinary and may change the landscape once the pandemic is over.
One of the things it tells you is what can happen when everybody is incentivised to make stuff happen as opposed to dither, delay or feelings that they will get into trouble if they say no, said Prof Landray, who has worked for 20 years on cardiovascular drug trials coordinated from Oxford. After this, he thinks, it will be hard to return to the snails pace that has been the norm for setting up clinical trials in the UK, which can sometimes take years.
The second extraordinary thing is that the clinical care of the patients and the scientific rigour involved in trialling the drugs are hand in hand in a way that doesnt normally happen, where the research might be going on in one corner of the hospital. Frontline clinicians dont know which treatments are best for patients apart from supportive care or ventilation, he said. That gives them massive motivation to get involved in the trial, which is central to the care of the patient.
Horby says its unlikely they will come up with a quick cure. We havent got anything like a magic bullet, he said. I think we have to temper peoples expectations about these drugs. Its possible some might have an effect, but its likely to be modest. I think what well be looking at in terms of making a significant impact will be moving on to combinations once we know of things that work. If we combine antiviral and anti-inflammatory drugs, they might have a bigger impact.
He holds out more hope for monoclonal antibodies, which worked in Ebola. If you are saying this is an acute, serious viral infection, thats really difficult to treat, you can counter that with well, look at Ebola. Thats much nastier, he said. Very surprisingly, the monoclonal antibodies that were trialled in eastern DRC did work. Those are the ones we will be waiting for with a bit of bated breath to put into the trial when they become available.
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There is no more scrolling enviously through peoples vacation pictures on Instagram. Instead I ogle snapshots of amazing shelter-in-place baking projects.
I cant feel lame anymore about not going to dance parties, and yet I feel bad for skipping virtual ones. There are no sweaty selfies from 5 a.m. gym sessions, but The New York Times started a home workout challenge for employees. We can win points. I have no clue what the points are for.
FOMO, the fear of missing out, has survived the coronavirus. No one is going anywhere cool, and I still feel bad.
How did pandemic FOMO become a thing? We have taken troubling aspects of our pre-coronavirus world the need to crush it at work and life and show only idyllic versions of ourselves online and grafted them onto our new reality.
My colleague Miya Lee said the performative pandemic life may be annoying but also reveals a need to find meaning or something redemptive in this.
I get it. We want to make the best of a horrible situation. But we cant. There is nothing redeeming about this moment. And I will be just as anxious if I finally clean behind the refrigerator.
Some social pressure online can be a good thing. When I saw friends tweeting about making donations to food banks, I was motivated to give, too. But it doesnt help to be reminded that Shakespeare might have written King Lear while he was quarantined during a bubonic plague outbreak.
To all this, I say no. I refuse to be perfect at the Apocalypse. No to FOMO.
No, CDC, I will not tackle home improvement chores. I am not collecting the mysterious points. I will not emerge from hermit life fluent in Italian. I will not read the Time Out guide for time in.
I opt out of becoming a better person. Just let me sit here in my sweatpants, watch every episode of Cheers and eat potato chips. (Oops, I ran out of potato chips.)
It wouldnt be terrible if we used this crisis to understand our tendencies to compare ourselves online to everyone else and to judge others. We are afraid, perhaps, of being lonely and left behind.
Ugh. I already violated what I said about not searching for redeeming value in a pandemic.
Fine. Dont learn anything. There is no hashtag BEST LIFE right now. Muddle through. Thats it.
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I wrote earlier this week about tips for being a more thoughtful online shopper. It feels more important now than ever, but it can be exhausting.
People want to do good with their dollars, but because its complicated they default to the easiest option. Ellis Jones, the author of The Better World Shopping Guide and a sociology professor at the College of the Holy Cross, suggested we make ethical shopping as simple as flipping open an Amazon or Walmart app.
He suggested something like online versions of a food co-op, which vets products and the manufacturers behind them. That way, shoppers have some assurance that theyre supporting small businesses, minimizing environmental impact or doing good in other ways.
These kinds of hubs do exist in spots.
Etsy lets us buy peoples handcrafted goods. Theres Bookshop, for shopping online from independent bookstores, and Intentionalist, which directs people to small or minority-owned businesses in their area.
The idea, Dr. Jones said, is to allow us to more consciously get to the things that we need, and maybe also connect to what kind of impact its going to have on the world.
Let us know: Are there websites youve used that make it easier to shop thoughtfully? What makes them helpful? Please send us your suggestions at ontech@nytimes.com.
Getting the economy back on track wont be easy. Google said it would slow hiring this year, Bloomberg News reported. This is a sign that even a company likely to hold up well in the economic freeze isnt expecting a quick recovery for business and consumer spending.
If YouTube subscribers were votes, then Joe Biden would lose. Combative, argumentative messages get the most attention on hangouts like Facebook and YouTube, and that isnt the presidential candidates style, my colleague Kevin Roose writes. That can leave the former vice president invisible on platforms where conflict equals clicks, Kevin said.
Fuggedaboutit! (Im so sorry.) The Timess pop music critic Jon Caramanica reviews an Instagram challenge to find the best New York accent. DEFINITELY watch the video, including the adorable girl who said: I dont know what a dog is. I know what a dawg is.
We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else youd like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com.
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Donald Trumps former lawyer and longtime fixer Michael Cohen will reportedly be released from federal prison to serve the remainder of his sentence in home confinement because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Cohen is currently locked up at FCI Otisville in New York after pleading guilty to numerous charges, including campaign finance fraud and lying to Congress. Cohen began serving his sentence last May and was scheduled to be released from prison in November 2021.
He will remain under quarantine for 14 days before he is released. Federal statistics show 14 inmates and seven staff members at the prison have tested positive for the coronavirus.
After he is released, Cohen will serve the remainder of his sentence at home, according to multiple US media reports citing Cohens lawyer, Roger Adler.
Cohens release comes as prison advocates and congressional leaders have been pressing the justice department for weeks to release at-risk inmates ahead of a potential outbreak, arguing that the public health guidance to stay 6ft (1.8 meters) away from other people is nearly impossible behind bars.
The attorney general, William Barr, ordered the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) earlier this month to increase the use of home confinement and expedite the release of eligible high-risk inmates, beginning at three prisons identified as coronavirus hotspots. Otisville is not one of those facilities.
As of Thursday, 473 federal inmates and 279 Bureau of Prisons staff members had tested positive for the coronavirus at facilities across the US. Eighteen inmates have died since late March.
Many federal inmates have been seeking home confinement as the number of coronavirus cases grows in the federal prison system, but advocates have accused the Bureau of Prisons of moving too slowly to release inmates. The Bureau of Prisons said it had moved more than 1,000 inmates to home confinement since 26 March, when Barr first issued a directive to increase its use in late March. The agency said it was a tremendous logistical lift that was accomplished through the marshaling of all of BOPs resources.
A federal judge had denied Cohens attempt for an early release to home confinement after serving 10 months in prison and said in a ruling earlier this month that it appears to be just another effort to inject himself into the news cycle. But the Bureau of Prisons can take action to move him to home confinement without a judicial order.
Other high-profile inmates have also been released as the number of coronavirus cases soars. Last week, a judge ordered Michael Avenatti the attorney who rose to fame representing porn star Stormy Daniels in lawsuits against Trump to be temporarily freed from a federal jail in New York City and stay at a friends house in Los Angeles.
Avenatti had said he was at high risk of getting the coronavirus because he had recently had pneumonia and his cellmate at the Metropolitan correctional center in Manhattan was removed due to flu-like symptoms.
The former New York state senate leader Dean Skelos, 72, who was also serving a sentence at Otisville, is also expected to be released soon from prison to home confinement after testing positive for the coronavirus, prosecutors told a judge on Wednesday.
CNN first reported Cohen was being released to home confinement.
A spokesman for the US attorneys office in Manhattan declined to comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
The rumours began a week after Boris Johnson began self-isolating in the flat above No 11 Downing Street. The story, spread by the prime minister and his aides, had thus far been reassuring.
Yes, he had Covid-19. But the symptoms were nothing to worry about. Mild even. And at a time when deaths from the pandemic were continuing to climb, Johnson had a firm grip on the crisis and the machinery of power.
All of this changed on Thursday 2 April. At the lunchtime briefing for lobby correspondents, Downing Street stuck to this soothing script. The prime minister continued to have a temperature.
But, subject to medical review, there was every prospect he would be able to emerge from isolation the next day, the press was assured. Seemingly, Johnson had shaken off the virus with the same alacrity as the health secretary, Matt Hancock, back after a short interlude.
But that did not happen. Over the next five days the public were taken on an emotional rollercoaster; a prime minister who was apparently in good spirits and working hard, was then in an intensive care unit (ICU) and in real danger of taking one for the team, as his father, Stanley, would put it. A Guardian analysis of what was said in public suggests the relentlessly upbeat pronouncements from Downing Street were at odds with what was known in private.
A lack of candour at a time of national crisis? It wouldnt be the first time ...
Behind the scenes, colleagues were painting a more alarming picture of Johnsons health at the end of his first week of sickness. He did indeed have a fever. Left unmentioned, however, was his persistent cough: an unmistakeable splutter. During cabinet video conferences the prime ministers symptoms were painfully evident. They confirmed the growing seriousness of his condition. One source suggested the prime minister was coughing up blood. Not true, Downing Street said.
Covid-19 can take different forms. Many people who catch it scarcely notice. Others grow critically ill. Those with even moderate symptoms can experience chest pains, headaches, cold spasms and extreme fatigue. The disease is novel. Clinical experts agree that the most dangerous phase is week two. Then patients generally start to recover. But some precipitously crash, as the virus attacks the lungs.
Symptoms are defined by the NHS as either:
NHS advice is that anyone with symptoms shouldstay at home for at least 7 days.
If you live with other people,they should stay at home for at least 14 days, to avoid spreading the infection outside the home.
After 14 days, anyone you live with who does not have symptoms can return to their normal routine. But, if anyone in your home gets symptoms, they should stay at home for 7 days from the day their symptoms start.Even if it means they're at home for longer than 14 days.
If you live with someone who is 70 or over, has a long-term condition, is pregnant or has a weakened immune system, try to find somewhere else for them to stay for 14 days.
If you have to stay at home together, try to keep away from each other as much as possible.
After 7 days, if you no longer have a high temperature you can return to your normal routine.
If you still have a high temperature, stay at home until your temperature returns to normal.
If you still have a cough after 7 days, but your temperature is normal, you do not need to continue staying at home. A cough can last for several weeks after the infection has gone.
Staying at home means you should:
You can use your garden, if you have one. You can also leave the house to exercise but stay at least 2 metres away from other people.
If you have symptoms of coronavirus, use theNHS 111 coronavirus serviceto find out what to do.
Source:NHS Englandon 23 March 2020
By 2 April, doctors were worried that in Johnsons case, the infection was taking this second, ominous path. St Thomas hospital just across the Thames from Downing Street began making preparations to admit the prime minister.
According to one source, staff were told his condition was significantly worse than had been publicly admitted really bad, in fact. And that he was likely to need oxygen support.
Inside Downing Street, Johnson was in contact with his principal private secretary, Martin Reynolds, and his GP. Many of his usual advisers were themselves off sick, with Dominic Cummings at home self-isolating and the director of communications, Lee Cain, away. As Johnsons condition steadily worsened, phone calls were cut down, government papers trimmed. His approach to his illness was characteristically upbeat: he would vanquish it.
Stories of Johnsons decline were now circulating among Tory backbenchers and journalists. Downing Street insisted these whispers were wrong. In hindsight, this guidance seems misleading.
The rumours were loosely right: the prime minister was seriously unwell, more than admitted. Perhaps Johnson was minimising how bad he was feeling, even to those in his inner circle?
At 8pm that evening the prime minister emerged on the steps of No 11, to clap for NHS workers. He looked terrible.
The next day, Friday 3 April, Johnson recorded a video in which he urged the public to stay at home during the forthcoming sunny weekend. He said he still had a temperature and was staying in isolation. It was day eight.
In fact, Johnson was sinking in classic Covid-19 fashion.
By the weekend it was becoming clear to the few in contact with him that the prime minister was struggling to do his job. On Saturday 4 April, Johnsons fiancee, Carrie Symonds pregnant and self-isolating with coronavirus symptoms grew agitated, friends said, crying down the phone. Hancock claimed all was well, telling Sky News on Sunday morning the prime minister was working away and had his hand on the tiller.
In reality, Johnsons breathing had deteriorated. On Sunday afternoon the plan to admit Johnson to St Thomas was rebooted. That evening he was driven across the Thames and taken to a private room on the 12th floor. Downing Street did not deny reports he was immediately given oxygen. Once again, his spokesman sought to downplay events, saying this was a precautionary step. The consultant in charge of the prime ministers care was Dr Richard Leach, the clinical director of the hospitals pulmonary team and a leading lung expert.
The following day, Monday 6 April, things took an almost Soviet turn. While the prime minister was gasping for breath, aides insisted at a lunchtime press briefing that he was busy working his way through red boxes.
At 5pm the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, even claimed Johnson was in charge and leading. Asked when he had last spoken to him, however, Raab replied it had been Saturday.
It appeared the government was covering up, or incompetent, or both. (No 10 says when Raab spoke he was unaware of his bosss sudden decline.)
On Monday afternoon the prime ministers condition got significantly worse. A decision was made to transfer him to one of St Thomas two intensive care units. Johnson was put in a side room, on the east wings first floor. The development stunned Downing Street.
At 8.10pm it announced the prime minister was in critical care, saying he had asked Raab to deputise for him. The fiction of Johnson being in command had ended. World leaders and politicians sent him good wishes. His aides were knocked over, distraught.
Typically, Covid-19 patients in ICU are put on ventilators. This is an invasive and traumatic process. Some hospitals prefer to treat severe cases with a continuous positive airway pressure ventilator (Cpap). St Thomas, however, favours full ventilation, believing this is how you save people, specialists say.
One source inside the hospital said Johnson was very sick when taken into ICU. It was touch and go whether he would be put on a ventilator, the source said.
The same source, however, wonders whether the prime minister really should have been in intensive care.
About 130 other patients were in critical care at the time, the vast majority hooked up to ventilators. At no point was Johnson on a ventilator. Nor did he receive Cpap, a less invasive form of treatment.
The source said: Before the coronavirus crisis you could be in ICU without being on a ventilator but pretty much every bed is now taken by a coronavirus patient with a ventilator. I know people who work in ICU and I know the technicians who prepare all the equipment and they all say he was not put on a ventilator. He was taking up an ICU bed when he didnt need it. The idea that you would put a patient who didnt need a ventilator on an ICU bed is nonsense.
Weighed against this was the fact that Johnson who is 55 fitted the pattern of other serious male cases. As a second source put it bluntly: They have a very low threshold for people of his profile (over 50, fat). If they dont get a tube in early it makes it much harder to do later on, if he deteriorates further.
Back in Whitehall, a new protocol for briefing on the prime ministers health was set up. Only limited updates from St Thomas would be passed on. Johnson was stable and being monitored, No 10 said.
On Wednesday 8 April there was tentative good news. Johnson was still not on a ventilator. If they dont go on one in the first 48 hours of being in ICU its usually a good sign, the second source said. At the daily briefing the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, revealed the prime minister was sitting up and engaging positively. According to hospital insiders, he was reverting to his old self. Hes charming all the nurses, insisting they call him Boris, one reported.
After three days in intensive care he was moved on to a general ward. Downing Street said he was in extremely good spirits and enormously grateful for the care hed received.
Symonds tweeted a painting of a rainbow with 26 clapping emojis. There were grim questions still, such as how long would his recuperation last and had the virus caused long-term damage to his health and lung capacity?
By Easter weekend Johnson was keen to go home. His medical team counselled caution. According to one source they advised him to stay in a little longer, until 14 April. Johnson prevailed.
At midday on Sunday, he was discharged, following seven nights in hospital, three of them in intensive care.
Hours later, Johnson appeared in a video message sent from Chequers, his prime ministerial retreat in Buckinghamshire. It was vintage Johnson. Dressed in a suit and tie, he declared the NHS had saved his life no question.
He paid tribute to two nurses who had watched over him for 48 hours in intensive care when things could have gone either way Jenny from New Zealand and Luis from Portugal. He said their care was the reason in the end my body did start to get enough oxygen.
Johnson had experienced a scare, no doubt about that.
One specialist said he thought the prime minister had gilded the lily a bit I suspect theres been an element of poetic licence there but at the same time stressed that he did need oxygen, albeit through a face mask rather than Cpap or full mechanical ventilation.
The specialist did not begrudge Johnson being put into ICU, reasoning hes the prime minister, and without that oxygen he would not have got better.
The saga had a curious footnote.
Photographs taken from a public footpath showed Johnson and Symonds walking with their dog in the grounds of Chequers, the prime minister bundled up in a duffle coat and gloves. He looked pale but well enough to go for a stroll. Most ICU patients leave hospital in a wheelchair. They suffer from exhaustion, muscle wastage and other chronic problems. The prime minister appears to be in much better shape.
Johnson won the 2016 EU referendum by combining support for the NHS the UKs unofficial religion with soft nationalism and Brexit.
Whatever mistakes have been made over the pandemic, Johnson now has another winning political formula to silence his critics: without the NHS I wouldnt be here.
Security experts are poring over thousands of new Coronavirus-themed domain names registered each day, but this often manual effort struggles to keep pace with the flood of domains invoking the virus to promote malware and phishing sites, as well as non-existent healthcare products and charities. As a result, domain name registrars are under increasing pressure to do more to combat scams and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
By most measures, the volume of new domain registrations that include the words Coronavirus or Covid has closely tracked the spread of the deadly virus. The Cyber Threat Coalition (CTC), a group of several thousand security experts volunteering their time to fight COVID-related criminal activity online, recently published data showing the rapid rise in new domains began in the last week of February, around the same time the Centers for Disease Control began publicly warning that a severe global pandemic was probably inevitable.
The total number of domains registered per day that contain a COVID-19 related term, according to DomainTools. The red line indicates the count of domains that DomainTools determined are likely malicious. The blue line refers to domains that are likely benign.
Since March 20th, the number of risky domains registered per day has been decreasing, with a notable spike around March 30th, wrote John Conwell, principal data scientist at DomainTools [an advertiser on this site]. Interestingly, legitimate organizations creating domains in response to the COVID-19 crisis were several weeks behind the curve from threat actors trying to take advantage of this situation. This is a pattern DomainTools hasnt seen before in other crises.
Security vendor Sophos looked at telemetry from customer endpoints to illustrate the number of new COVID-related domains that actually received traffic of late. As the company noted, one challenge in identifying potentially malicious domains is that many of them can sit dormant for days or weeks before being used for anything.
Data from security vendor Sophos, published by the Cyber Threat Coalition, shows the number of Coronavirus or COVID-19 themed domains registered per week that received traffic.
We can see a rapid and dramatic increase of visits to potentially malicious domains exploiting the Coronavirus pandemic week over week, beginning in late February, wrote Sophos Rich Harang. Even though still a minority of cyber threats use the pandemic as a lure, some of these new domains will eventually be used for malicious purposes.
CTC spokesman Nick Espinosa said the first spike in visits was on February 25, when group members saw about 4,000 visits to the sites they were tracking.
The following two weeks starting on March 9 saw rapid growth, and from March 23 onwards were seeing between 75,000 to 130,000 visits per weekday, and about 40,000 on the weekends, Espinosa said. Looking at the data collected, the pattern of visits are highest on Monday and Friday, and the lowest visit count is on the weekend. Our data shows that there were virtually no customer hits on COVID-related domains prior to February 23.
Milwaukee-based Hold Security has been publishing daily and weekly lists of all COVID-19 related domain registrations (without any scoring assigned). Heres a graph KrebsOnSecurity put together based on that data set, which also shows a massive spike in new domain registrations in the third week of March, trailing off considerably over the past couple of weeks.
Data: Hold Security.
Not everyone is convinced were measuring the right things, or that the current measurements are accurate. Neil Schwartzman, executive director of the anti-spam group CAUCE, said he believes DomainTools estimates on the percentage of new COVID/Coronavirus-themed domains that are malicious are too high, and that many are likely benign and registered by well-meaning people seeking to share news or their own thoughts about the outbreak.
But theres the rub, he said. Bad guys get to hide amidst the good really effectively, so each one needs to be reviewed on its own. And thats a substantial amount of work.
At the same time, Schwartzman said, focusing purely on domains may obscure the true size and scope of the overall threat. Thats because scammers very often will establish multiple subdomains for each domain, meaning that a single COVID-related new domain registration could eventually be tied to a number of different scammy or malicious sites.
Subdomains can not only make phishing domains appear more legitimate, but they also tend to lengthen the domain so that key parts of it get pushed off the URL bar in mobile browsers.
To that end, he said, it makes perhaps the most sense to focus on new domain registrations that have encryption certificates tied to them, since the issuance of an SSL certificate for a domain is usually a sign that it is about to be put to use. As noted in previous stories here, roughly 75 percent of all phishing sites now have the padlock (start with https://), mainly because the major Web browsers display security alerts on sites that dont.
Schwartzman said more domain registrars should follow the example of Los Angeles-based Namecheap Inc., which last month pledged to stop accepting the automated registration of website names that include words or phrases tied to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, a handful of other registrars have said they plan to manually review all such registrations going forward.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization that oversees the registrar industry, recently sent a letter urging registrars to be more proactive, but stopped short of mandating any specific actions.
Schwartzman called ICANNs response weak tea.
Its absolutely ludicrous that ICANN hasnt stepped up, and they will bear significant responsibility for any deaths that may happen as a result of all this, Schwartzman said. This is a CYA response at best, and dictates to no one that they should do anything.
Michael Daniel, president of the Cyber Threat Alliance a cybersecurity industry group thats also been working to fight COVID-19 related fraud agreed, saying more pressure needs to be applied to the registrar community.
Its really hard to do anything about this unless the registrars step up and do something on their own, Daniel said. Its either that or the government gets involved. That doesnt mean some [registrars] arent doing what they can, but in general what the industry is doing is nowhere near as fast as the bad guys are generating these domains.
The U.S. government may well soon get more involved. Earlier this week, Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Mazie K. Hirono (D-Hawaii) sent letters to eight domain name company leaders, demanding to know what they were doing to combat the threat of malicious domains, and urging them to do more.
As cybercriminals and other malevolent actors seek to take advantage of the Coronavirus pandemic, it is critical that domain name registrars like yours (1) exercise diligence and ensure that only legitimate organizations can register Coronavirus-related domain names and domain names referencing online communications platforms; (2) act quickly to suspend, cancel, or terminate registrations for domains that are involved in unlawful or harmful activity; and (3) cooperate with law enforcement to help bring to justice cybercriminals profiting from the Coronavirus pandemic, the senators wrote.
Tags: CAUCE, Centers for Disease Control, COVID-19, Cyber Threat Alliance, Cyber Threat Coalition, domaintools, Hold Security, John Conwell, Michael Daniel, Neil Schwartzman, PhishLabs, Rich Harang, Sen. Cory Booker, Sen. Maggie Hassan, Sen. Mazie K. Hirono, sophos
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