Now, we're learning who some of them were, what they did and what they were passionate about.
Those lost to the coronavirus include a former New York fire marshal who sprang into action on 9/11, a mother to six who was battling breast cancer, and four members of a New Jersey family.
Here are some of their stories.
A retired New York fire marshal
And yet, after a career of service, Knox had more to give. He had been retired for two years on September 11, 2001, but he sprang into action that day to help his country and his community.
"He took his vehicle and all the gear that he still had remaining from his time with the FDNY and drove down to The Battery and made the trek from there all the way to Ground Zero," his son, Zachary Knox, told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "And he was there for several weeks afterward."
Knox was still going to the gym as of a few weeks ago. "He was a very vibrant 84-year-old," his son said. "I think people decades younger than him had trouble keeping up."
Zachary wants his father to be remembered as someone who was "always very committed to being ... just a man full of integrity."
"He lived and died by his word," Zachary said. "That's the way he always was, and people loved him for it."
Knox is survived by his wife, four children and six grandchildren.
Four members of one family
"It's absolutely surreal," Elizabeth Fusco told CNN's Chris Cuomo. "They were the roots of our lives ... It's like the second we start to grieve about one, the phone rings and there's another person gone, taken from us forever."
Days later, on Wednesday, Elizabeth's brother Carmine Fusco died, just hours before their mother and the family matriarch, 73-year-old Grace Fusco, died, too.
And another brother, Vincent Fusco Jr., passed away on Thursday.
Elizabeth was on the phone Wednesday for her mother's final moments. While on a call with the hospital, she heard her mother coding in the background, she said, and doctors' frantic attempts to save her.
"I listened to those doctors and those machines code my mother on the phone when she passed," Elizabeth said. "I'll never get over that."
Grace Fusco had 11 children and 27 grandchildren.
Three other relatives are hospitalized in New Jersey, and 19 other family members have been tested and are waiting on the results, according to Roseann Paradiso Fodera, Grace's cousin and an attorney representing the family. Children, parents and grandchildren have been quarantined.
"This is an unbearable tragedy for the family," Paradiso Fodera said.
A single mother and breast cancer survivor
Sundee Rutter, a 42-year-old mother of six, died on March 16 in Everett, Washington, after contracting the coronavirus, her older sister Shawnna Olsen told CNN.
"My sister was amazing," Olsen said. "She was the first to lend a helping hand to anyone."
Rutter had been battling breast cancer and was in remission when she fell ill, Olsen said. She was taken to Providence Hospital in Everett, where she died.
Olsen called her baby sister a "hero" who always put her children -- ages 13 to 24 -- first. Rutter had been a single mother since the death of her husband in 2012, Olsen said.
Per his "mother's wishes," Rutter's oldest son will become the legal guardian of his younger siblings, Olsen told CNN.
"They are well loved by family, community and complete strangers," Olsen said of the children.
An NBC News staffer
Edgeworth recently worked in the equipment room, Lack said, but before that, he spent most of his 25 years at NBC News as an audio technician.
"Many of you were fortunate enough to work with Larry over the years," Lack said, "so you know that he was the guy you wanted by your side no matter where you were."
That sentiment was echoed by Roxanne Garcia, CNN's senior director of newsgathering, who worked with Edgeworth for 17 years at NBC.
"He was a really big man with a really big heart," Garcia said, adding, "He had a great laugh and a great smile."
Edgeworth spent countless months covering stories far from home, in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, Garcia said.
"He always made you feel like there was someone there who cared about you," she said, "and there was someone who cared about the story we were telling."
Edgeworth leaves behind a wife and two sons, Lack's memo said.
A retired magician
Richard Curren, a father of two, fell ill last week and died just a few days later.
He had been living at an assisted living facility in Florida with his wife of more than five decades.
Their son, Eric Curren, told CNN that the couple met in Chicago. They raised their family there before retiring to Florida about a decade ago.
Curren had worked in sales until he decided he wanted to be a professional magician, his son said. Sheila was his assistant.
He was also passionate about water sports and competitive swimming.
His family said he was hospitalized with respiratory issues considered routine, but he died this week. Doctors told the family his death was due to complications from coronavirus.
"I think the family is in shock because he always pulled through," the Curren's daughter, Tracie Curren, told WPLG.
As a magician, Curren loved sharing magic tricks with children.
"No matter how many joint replacement surgeries he endured, he still couldn't resist a chance to get down on the carpet to play with a toddler," his son wrote on Facebook.
A recovered coronavirus patient takes a selfie before being discharged from a hospital in Sri Lanka. Researchers are trying to determine whether having a case of COVID-19 will give you immunity. Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images hide caption
A recovered coronavirus patient takes a selfie before being discharged from a hospital in Sri Lanka. Researchers are trying to determine whether having a case of COVID-19 will give you immunity.
It's unclear whether people who recover from COVID-19 will be immune to reinfection from the coronavirus and, if so, how long that immunity will last.
"We don't know very much," says Matt Frieman, a coronavirus researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. "I think there's a very likely scenario where the virus comes through this year, and everyone gets some level of immunity to it, and if it comes back again, we will be protected from it either completely or if you do get reinfected later, a year from now, then you have much less disease."
"That is the hope," he adds. "But there is no way to know that."
Researchers do know that reinfection is an issue with the four seasonal coronaviruses that cause about 10 to 30% of common colds. These coronaviruses seem to be able to sicken people again and again, even though people have been exposed to them since childhood.
"Almost everybody walking around, if you were to test their blood right now, they would have some levels of antibody to the four different coronaviruses that are known," says Ann Falsey of the University of Rochester Medical Center.
After infection with one of these viruses, she says, antibodies are produced but then the levels slowly decline and people become susceptible again.
"Most respiratory viruses only give you a period of relative protection. I'm talking about a year or two. That's what we know about the seasonal coronaviruses," says Falsey.
In studies, human volunteers who agreed to be experimentally inoculated with a seasonal coronavirus showed that even people with preexisting antibodies could still get infected and have symptoms.
That happens even though these viruses aren't as changeable as influenza, which mutates so quickly that a new vaccine has to be developed every year.
"We work with some common cold coronaviruses. We have samples from 30 years ago, strains that were saved from 30 years ago, and they're not appreciably different than the ones that are circulating now," says virologist Vineet Menachery of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
Still, seasonal coronaviruses probably do mutate a bit over time to evade the body's defenses, says Frieman. But there's little known about what those changes might look like, since researchers don't do annual surveillance of coronaviruses as they do for influenza.
It's also possible that, for some reason, the body's immune response to seasonal coronaviruses is just not that robust or that something about the infection itself may inhibit the body's ability to develop long-term immunity.
"Maybe the antibodies are not protective, and that is why, even though they are present, they don't work very well," says Frieman.
The other known human coronaviruses, severe acute respiratory syndrome and Middle East respiratory syndrome, can cause more severe disease, and basically nothing is known about the possibility of reinfection with those viruses.
Some people sickened by SARS, the dangerous coronavirus that emerged in China in 2002, did develop a measurable immune response that lasted a long time.
"We've gone back and gotten samples from patients who had SARS in 2003 and 2004, and as of this year, we can detect antibodies," says Stanley Perlman of the University of Iowa. "We think antibodies may be longer lasting than we first thought, but not in everybody."
Still, it's hard to predict how those survivors' bodies would react if they were exposed to the SARS virus again. "There were 8,000 cases, the epidemic was basically brought to an end within six months or eight months of the first case, so we don't have anyone who was reinfected that we know of," says Perlman.
The other severe coronavirus, MERS, emerged in the Middle East in 2012. "We have almost no information about reinfection because there has only been a total of 2,500 cases over eight years," says Perlman, who notes that the odds of anyone getting reinfected with that virus are not great, especially considering that 35 percent of people who had it died. Survivors of MERS did generate an immune response to the virus that can be detected up to two years later, he says. And the more ill the patient was, the more robust and long-lasting the immune response.
Until the recent emergence of SARS-Cov2, the official name of the current coronavirus, and this pandemic, scientists say, there just hasn't been much of a research push to fully understand how and why reinfection with coronaviruses can occur.
"You get colds over and over again, and I don't think we think that we're really so well protected against any of them, second time around," says Perlman. "You don't care, either, because it's just a cold virus. I mean, you'd like to not get a cold again, but it's not really a big deal."
This pandemic, he notes, "is a big deal."
He would bet that the virus that causes COVID-19 won't reinfect people. But he wouldn't guess how long their immunity might last.
What's more, some people might have stronger protection from reinfection than others.
"Based on other infections where you get a deep lung infection, you are usually protected against the second infection. If you just have a mild COVID-19 infection that involves your upper airway, maybe it will behave like a common cold coronavirus and maybe you can be reinfected again," says Perlman. "We just really don't know. It's even hard to speculate."
Understanding the natural immune response to this virus is important for vaccine development, he notes.
"If the natural infection doesn't do very well in giving you immunity, what is going to happen with the vaccine?" says Perlman. "How are we going to make sure that that vaccine not only induces a response that works for the next six months, but two to three years?"
The sensitivity can be less than 100 percent and still be very useful, Ko says, in many cases. But as that number falls, so does the usefulness of any given result. In China, the sensitivity of tests has been reported to be as low as 30 to 60 percentmeaning roughly half of the people who actually had the virus had negative test results. Using repeated testing was found to increase the sensitivity to 71 percent. But that means a negative test still couldnt fully reassure someone like the teacher that he definitely doesnt have the virus. At that level of sensitivity, Ko says, if youre especially risk-averse, do you just say: If you have a cold, stay home?
An inaccurate testone prone to false positive or false negative results, can be worse than no test at all, Ian Lipkin, an epidemiology professor at Columbia University, told me in an email. The CDC has not shared the exact sensitivity of the testing process it has been using. When Fauci was asked about it on Monday, he once again hedged. If its positive, you absolutely can make a decision, he said. If its not, thats a judgment call. Usually a second test is recommended, and it depends on the patients symptoms, exposures, and how sick they appear to be.
The tests involve other variables, too. Samples must be taken using a long cotton swab that goes into the back of the patients nose (or mouth, though this seems to be a less sensitive method). In either case, sometimes you just dont get enough mucus on the swab. It can be hard to know if that was the cause of a negative test result when results come in from the lab a day later.
Read: The official coronavirus numbers are wrong, and everyone knows it
In attempt to increase sensitivity of the testing process, China not only swabbed people multiple times, but also added CT scans for an additional clue. The scans can sometimes help identify the unique patterns of lung damage caused by the virus, says Howard Forman, who practices radiology in the emergency department at YaleNew Haven Hospital. But scanning is a slow process to do at large scales, and its costly and involves exposure to radiation. You would need dedicated scanners as well, so as not to contaminate other patients, he told me. So it becomes very difficult to use CT for high-level screening.
Given the number of variables, widespread screening tests for the virus are not looming on the horizon as a way to obviate the urgent need for social distancing.
Some hope is being placed in biotech companies that are working to develop quick, mobile tests that could give results anywherebe it at a doctors office or in a modified parking lot. The goal would be to allow people to know if they have a cold or if they have the virus and need to self-quarantine, right there in the doctors office, says William Brody, a radiologist and former president of Johns Hopkins University. He is currently working on one such project with Hong Cai, a molecular biologist, at a small company called Mesa. The duo told me this is, at best, months away from being tested widely. Even then, its sensitivity will remain to be seen, and will likely be less than that of the current, slower tests. But Hong says her team is working as expeditiously as possible to solve the problem.
As cases of coronavirus infection proliferate around the world and governments take extraordinary measures to limit the spread, there is still a lot of confusion about what exactly the virus does to peoples bodies.
The symptoms fever, cough, shortness of breath can signal any number of illnesses, from flu to strep to the common cold. Here is what medical experts and researchers have learned so far about the progression of the infection caused by this new coronavirus and what they still dont know.
The virus is spread through droplets transmitted into the air from coughing or sneezing, which people nearby can take in through their nose, mouth or eyes. The viral particles in these droplets travel quickly to the back of your nasal passages and to the mucous membranes in the back of your throat, attaching to a particular receptor in cells, beginning there.
Coronavirus particles have spiked proteins sticking out from their surfaces, and these spikes hook onto cell membranes, allowing the viruss genetic material to enter the human cell.
That genetic material proceeds to hijack the metabolism of the cell and say, in effect, Dont do your usual job. Your job now is to help me multiply and make the virus, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.
As copies of the virus multiply, they burst out and infect neighboring cells. The symptoms often start in the back of the throat with a sore throat and a dry cough.
The virus then crawls progressively down the bronchial tubes, Dr. Schaffner said. When the virus reaches the lungs, their mucous membranes become inflamed. That can damage the alveoli or lung sacs and they have to work harder to carry out their function of supplying oxygen to the blood that circulates throughout our body and removing carbon dioxide from the blood so that it can be exhaled.
If you get swelling there, it makes it that much more difficult for oxygen to swim across the mucous membrane, said Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips, the chief clinical officer for the Providence Health System, which included the hospital in Everett, Wash., that had the first reported case of coronavirus in the United States, in January.
The swelling and the impaired flow of oxygen can cause those areas in the lungs to fill with fluid, pus and dead cells. Pneumonia, an infection in the lung, can occur.
Some people have so much trouble breathing they need to be put on a ventilator. In the worst cases, known as Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, the lungs fill with so much fluid that no amount of breathing support can help, and the patient dies.
Dr. Shu-Yuan Xiao, a professor of pathology at the University of Chicago School of Medicine has examined pathology reports on coronavirus patients in China. He said the virus appears to start in peripheral areas on both sides of the lung and can take a while to reach the upper respiratory tract, the trachea and other central airways.
Dr. Xiao, who also serves as the director of the Center For Pathology and Molecular Diagnostics at Wuhan University, said that pattern helps explain why in Wuhan, where the outbreak began, many of the earliest cases were not identified immediately.
The initial testing regimen in many Chinese hospitals did not always detect infection in the peripheral lungs, so some people with symptoms were sent home without treatment.
Theyd either go to other hospitals to seek treatment or stay home and infect their family, he said. Thats one of the reasons there was such a wide spread.
A recent study from a team led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai found that more than half of 121 patients in China had normal CT scans early in their disease. That study and work by Dr. Xiao show that as the disease progresses, CT scans show ground glass opacities, a kind of hazy veil in parts of the lung that are evident in many types of viral respiratory infections. Those opaque areas can scatter and thicken in places as the illness worsens, creating what radiologists call a crazy paving pattern on the scan.
Not necessarily. Dr. Compton-Phillips said the infection can spread through the mucous membranes, from the nose down to the rectum.
So while the virus appears to zero in on the lungs, it may also be able to infect cells in the gastrointestinal system, experts say. This may be why some patients have symptoms like diarrhea or indigestion. The virus can also get into the bloodstream, Dr. Schaffner said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that RNA from the new coronavirus has been detected in blood and stool specimens, but that its unclear whether infectious virus can persist in blood or stool.
Bone marrow and organs like the liver can become inflamed too, said Dr. George Diaz, section leader for infectious diseases at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Wash., whose team treated the first U.S. coronavirus patient. There may also be some inflammation in small blood vessels, as happened with SARS, the viral outbreak in 2002 and 2003.
The virus will actually land on organs like the heart, the kidney, the liver, and may cause some direct damage to those organs, Dr. Schaffner said. As the bodys immune system shifts into high gear to battle the infection, the resulting inflammation may cause those organs to malfunction, he said.
As a result, some patients may endure damage that is inflicted not just by the virus, but by their own immune system as it rages to combat the infection.
Experts have not yet documented whether the virus can affect the brain. But scientists who studied SARS have reported some evidence that the SARS virus could infiltrate the brain in some patients. Given the similarity between SARS and Covid-19, the infection caused by the new coronavirus, a paper published last month in the Journal of Medical Virology argued that the possibility that the new coronavirus might be able to infect some nerve cells should not be ruled out.
About 80 percent of people infected with the new coronavirus have relatively mild symptoms. But about 20 percent of people become more seriously ill and in about 2 percent of patients in China, which has had the most cases, the disease has been fatal.
Experts say the effects appear to depend on how robust or weakened a persons immune system is. Older people or those with underlying health issues, like diabetes or another chronic illness, are more likely to develop severe symptoms.
Dr. Xiao conducted pathological examinations of two people in China who went into a hospital in Wuhan in January for a different reason they needed surgery for early stage lung cancer but whose records later showed that they had also had coronavirus infection, which the hospital did not recognize at the time. Neither patients lung cancer was advanced enough to kill them, he said.
One of those patients, an 84-year-old woman with diabetes, died from pneumonia caused by coronavirus, Dr. Xiao said the records showed.
The other patient, a 73-year-old man, was somewhat healthier, with a history of hypertension that he had managed well for 20 years. Dr. Xiao said the man had successful surgery to remove a lung tumor, was discharged, and nine days later returned to the hospital because he had a fever and cough that was determined to be coronavirus.
Dr. Xiao said that the man had almost certainly been infected during his first stay in the hospital, since other patients in his post-surgical recovery room were later found to have coronavirus. Like many other cases, it took the man days to show respiratory symptoms.
The man recovered after 20 days in the hospitals infectious disease unit. Experts say that when patients like that recover, it is often because the supportive care fluids, breathing support, and other treatment allows them to outlast the worst effects of the inflammation caused by the virus.
A lot. Although the illness resembles SARS in many respects and has elements in common with influenza and pneumonia, the course a patients coronavirus will take is not yet fully understood.
Some patients can remain stable for over a week and then suddenly develop pneumonia, Dr. Diaz said. Some patients seem to recover but then develop symptoms again.
Dr. Xiao said that some patients in China recovered but got sick again, apparently because they had damaged and vulnerable lung tissue that was subsequently attacked by bacteria in their body. Some of those patients ended up dying from a bacterial infection, not the virus. But that didnt appear to cause the majority of deaths, he said.
Other cases have been tragic mysteries. Dr. Xiao said he personally knew a man and woman who got infected, but seemed to be improving. Then the man deteriorated and was hospitalized.
He was in I.C.U., getting oxygen, and he texted his wife that he was getting better, he had good appetite and so on, Dr. Xiao said. But then in the late afternoon, she stopped receiving texts from him. She didnt know what was going on. And by 10 p.m., she got a notice from the hospital that he had passed.
The coronavirus that started in Wuhan, China, late last year has spread to at least 154 countries and killed thousands.
Some countries and regions have been hit harder than others. In many areas, daily life has come to a halt, local economies have unraveled, and medical facilities are coping with a shortage of crucial supplies.
Many charities and organizations are helping those affected by the pandemic. Here is what you can do to support them.
Charity Navigator, which evaluates charities using a numbers-based system, has a running list of nonprofits working in communities affected by the outbreak. There are organizations that focus on medical services, relief supplies and more.
GlobalGiving is a large global crowdfunding community that connects nonprofits, donors and companies. It has set a goal of reaching $5 million in donations. Money received will go toward sending emergency medical workers to communities in need, providing medical supplies to hospitals and helping deliver essentials to families.
Relief International, which operates in 16 countries throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia, has focused some of its efforts on helping Iran, where more than 20,000 infections and at least 1,500 deaths have been reported.
The group has so far provided more than 50,000 pieces of medical protective gear, including 24,000 masks and 5,000 pairs of goggles, as well as 40,000 kits to test for the coronavirus; 85 percent of all donated funds go directly to its programs.
Heart to Heart International is distributing urgently needed equipment and medication to its partners around the world. Medical supplies are also being delivered to providers on the front lines.
Those seeking to give something other than money can look to the American Red Cross. There is a severe blood shortage because of a high number of blood drive cancellations during the outbreak, it said. Healthy donors are urged to give blood, platelets or AB plasma.
World Central Kitchen has stepped in to distribute meals to children and others in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Little Rock, Ark., after many schools closed. Beginning Monday, it will give food to families in Los Angeles, where schools are also closed.
Feeding America is the nations largest domestic hunger-relief organization, with a network of 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries across the country. Its COVID-19 Response fund will help food banks across the country.
UNICEF is providing hygiene and medical kits to schools and health clinics.
Save the Children has partnered with No Kid Hungry to make sure schools and community programs have the support they need to keep children fed during the pandemic.
First Book has the goal of delivering seven million books to children in the United States who do not have internet access or home libraries so they can continue learning while schools are closed.
Just a few weeks ago, China was overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic that began in Wuhan. Since then, it has drastically reduced the number of new cases, what is known as flattening the curve.
South Korea appears to be headed on a similar path.
These charts track the number of new confirmed cases each day. Each red line is the seven-day moving average, which smooths out day-to-day anomalies in how the data are reported by authorities. The number of cases in China had a big jump in mid-February because officials changed the way cases were counted.
Despite their close proximity to China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan have managed to keep the number of cases down with some success, through vigilant monitoring and early intervention.
But recent spikes in those places suggest that they are still at risk. For example, 21 of the 23 new cases in Taiwan and at least 13 of the new cases in Hong Kong on Wednesday were people who had recently traveled overseas.
More countries are now implementing travel bans or mandatory quarantine for returning travelers, as the pandemic continues to ravage the world, sickening more than 210,000 people as of Wednesday evening.
In the United States and five other countries, the number of known coronavirus cases is still growing rapidly. They have all reported more than 4,000 new cases in the past week.
These six countries have had less severe outbreaks so far but still reported more than 1,000 new cases each in the past week.
Heres a look at the trajectories of coronavirus cases in all of the countries that have had more than 50 confirmed cases so far. Scales are adjusted in each country to make the curve more readable. The countries are sorted by the number of new cases in the past week.
Until several days ago, some bars and restaurants were still packed with St. Patricks Day crowds. Beaches were full. And it seemed as though many young adults were slow to take steps to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
I kept hearing, Eighty percent of cases are mild, said Christian Heuer, 32, of Los Angeles, who tested positive for the virus last week and has been running a low-grade fever for six days. But this is not just a sniffly runny nose. Its the real deal. Youre really sick.
His girlfriend, Natasha Wynnyk, 28, felt fine for several days after Mr. Heuer got sick, and she thought she might be impervious to infection. Then her fever spiked on Monday evening, and she started experiencing severe and sharp aches in her back, joints and fingers, which she compared to a feeling of being stabbed.
The couple are part of a worrying trend suggesting that young people may have contributed to the pandemics spread in the United States and other countries by going about business as usual for too long, perhaps believing that being young and healthy protected them from infection. But preliminary figures released on Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that adults ages 20 to 44 represent nearly one-third of U.S. coronavirus patients whose ages are known.
Younger adults are generally more resilient than older people, but an increase in chronic health conditions among millennials, in their 20s and 30s now, has made them less hardy than they might think. They have seen rising levels of obesity and illnesses such as Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, as well as an increase in heart disease and some cancers. These are strongly associated with poor outcomes from coronavirus infection.
In addition, some 17 percent of men and 12 percent of women ages 18 to 44 smoke cigarettes, and 4 percent to 7 percent use e-cigarettes, according to national figures. Both increase the risk of respiratory illness.
How members of this generation will adapt to life during the pandemic might also dovetail with other problems. Compared with members of Generation X, in their 40s and 50s now, millennials have higher rates of behavioral health problems like depression which affects one in 20 adults who are in their mid-30s, according to one report and a significant number have alcohol and substance abuse problems, which are easily aggravated by social and economic turmoil and dislocation, experts say.
Millennials make up the largest share of the labor force and are a vital part of the economy, but they also face unique financial struggles. Many millennials juggle several jobs in the gig economy, and they are more likely than any other age group to be uninsured. Many are also burdened by student debt and contend with increasingly unaffordable housing. As a generation, they have borne the brunt of drug overdose deaths. Many have postponed marriage and starting a family for financial reasons.
While they have heard that by engaging in social distancing they can play an important role in reducing the spread of the coronavirus to others more vulnerable than they are, they are not immune.
Although the risk of hospitalization or dying from Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, increases with each decade of life, according to the C.D.C.s recent analysis of cases, the agency found that young adults can develop severe disease: Of 508 patients admitted to hospitals, 20 percent were 20 to 44 years old. Some younger people do die of the disease, at a rate of about one or two per 1,000 cases.
The reports authors cautioned that their analysis was limited because much of their data was incomplete, and that information about chronic health conditions that affect the severity of disease was missing.
A report on millennials health by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, released last year, said chronic physical health conditions that are more common among millennials compared with Generation X members include high blood pressure, which affects more than one in eight adults in their mid-30s, and Type 2 diabetes, which affects one in 25. The report analyzed claims from the large insurers database.
Obesity, which has increased in prevalence for all Americans, is also considered a risk factor for the coronavirus, experts say.
But many news reports have consistently emphasized that the elderly and those in poor health are the most vulnerable and most likely to die.
The message has been that if youre younger and generally healthy, youre going to be fine, and I think thats the wrong message, said Mila Clarke Buckley, 30, who writes about living with Type 2 diabetes on her blog, Hangry Woman, and creates sponsored content for FreeStyle Libre, a continuous glucose monitoring system. It makes young people feel that invincibility they already feel about their health.
Living with diabetes puts Ms. Buckley at heightened risk for severe illness if she were to become infected, she said, so she has stopped traveling out of town. She is also staying home more and practicing social distancing even with her husband, who is still going out to work.
He has a cold right now, so we are sleeping in separate bedrooms, Ms. Buckley said from her home in Houston. We know that if I get sick its a big deal it may impact me a lot harder.
Ms. Buckley said she had turned down a tempting invitation from her sister-in-law, who had invited the entire extended family over for dinner, now that restaurants were offering limited service. But the family is large, Ms. Buckley said, and she declined.
We told her we dont think its a good idea to gather, and perhaps she should rethink it, she said.
To catch up with her friends, Ms. Buckley said, she made a date for a FaceTime Happy Hour for this week.
Well each pick out our own favorite wine and jump on FaceTime at 7 oclock, she said.
But staying home and practicing social distancing may take a greater toll on young adults as they face additional mental health challenges, especially if they live alone or struggle with anxiety or depression, said Benjamin F. Miller, a psychologist who is the chief strategy officer for Well Being Trust, a national foundation focusing on mental and spiritual health.
Young adults are less likely than older adults to be married, and a 2018 Cigna survey of 20,000 Americans found that many reported feeling lonely and left out. Those who are 18 to 37 were more likely than older adults to report they had no meaningful relationships, did not share ideas and interests with anyone, felt isolated and did not feel close to anyone.
Many of our millennials already feel socially disconnected, and this exacerbates those ongoing feelings these folks already had, Dr. Miller said.
The Blue Cross report said that six of the top 10 conditions taking the heaviest toll on young adults were behavioral health conditions like substance abuse and mental health problems.
Like many millennials, Will Lanier, a 34-year-old from Austin, Tex., works at home, running the Out Foundation, a wellness and fitness organization for LGBTQ people that he founded. (A survivor of ulcerative colitis and colon cancer, he serves as a patient advocate on a Pfizer advisory board, for which he receives some financial compensation.) He lives alone and worries about the desolation he might feel if classes at his CrossFit gym are shut down.
FaceTime can only do so much, and human interaction is so important, Mr. Lanier said.
While people often make a point of reaching out to older relatives or neighbors who live alone and may be lonely, he said, people dont check on young people.
Its just me and my dog Ill go days without talking with someone, he said. If I slipped in the shower, itd be days before anyone found me.
Jessica Mendoza (center), a Virginia Hospital Center outpatient lab specialist, and James Meenan (right), the director of the Virginia Hospital Center outpatient lab, make final preparations before opening a drive-through coronavirus testing site on Wednesday in Arlington, Va. President Trump signed a bill Wednesday that includes funding for testing. Drew Angerer/Getty Images hide caption
Jessica Mendoza (center), a Virginia Hospital Center outpatient lab specialist, and James Meenan (right), the director of the Virginia Hospital Center outpatient lab, make final preparations before opening a drive-through coronavirus testing site on Wednesday in Arlington, Va. President Trump signed a bill Wednesday that includes funding for testing.
President Trump signed a second coronavirus emergency aid package into law Wednesday evening, after it passed with overwhelming support from the Senate.
The legislation follows a first emergency funding bill, which allocated roughly $8 billion for coronavirus prevention, preparation and response efforts.
The latest package, named the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, responds to the growing health and economic crises with provisions for paid sick leave, free testing and expanded unemployment benefits.
Each of the agencies getting funding must give a report on how the money has been used within the next month.
Here's a breakdown of what the act includes.
The legislation seeks to make testing for the coronavirus free to the public (without having to use deductibles or copayments). It includes a variety of waivers in order for testing costs to be covered by either insurance or government programs.
Additionally, it includes a temporary 6.2% increase in federal payments to Medicaid for states.
The Children's Health Insurance Program, for low-income children, will include temporary coverage of diagnostic products.
An additional $60 million will go to the Department of Veterans Affairs for testing veterans, $64 million to the Indian Health Service for testing members of Native American tribes and $1 billion to the National Disaster Medical System for reimbursing testing costs for those without health insurance.
The bill establishes a federal emergency paid-leave benefits program to provide payments to some employees.
It requires employers with fewer than 500 employees to provide two weeks' worth of paid sick leave if employees are unable to work because they're subject to quarantine or isolation, are experiencing symptoms of COVID19, are caring for someone who is in quarantine or isolation and/or have children in schools that have closed.
Employers themselves will receive tax credits to offset the costs of providing this paid leave.
Under the legislation, an employer cannot require employees to find a replacement worker for themselves or require them to use other paid time off.
For those who are self-employed, there will be a tax credit equivalent to the sick leave amount.
The legislation also gives up to three months of paid family and medical leave, equivalent to no less than two-thirds of the person's pay.
The legislation boosts unemployment benefits, with nearly $1 billion in state grants to cover processing and paying unemployment insurance.
It also raises the amount of assistance to states with high unemployment for those who have exhausted benefits already.
Nearly a billion dollars is being given to provide access to meals for those without food security. Half that amount will go toward funding for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, also known as WIC.
Another $400 million is allocated for an emergency food assistance program that will be available through Sept. 30, 2021.
Certain households will be eligible for help if a child's school has been closed for at least five consecutive days because of the health crisis.
The legislation allows certain waivers in order to expand who qualifies for benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and suspends the program's work requirements.
An additional $100 million will be set aside for nutrition assistance grants for U.S. territories (Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and American Samoa).
He's a man that hears what he wants to hears and he puts it through the lens of a marketer. He is a marketer, said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. His image is, Im on top of this, Im tough, and anything he hears that supports that theory of the case, he grabs and utilizes.
Those around Trump disagree. They say his numbers-focused mindset is a crisis asset. Trumps specific obsession with the number of coronavirus cases is the right approach, argued former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who made headlines when he insisted wrongly that Trump had drawn the largest ever inaugural crowd.
Having a metric-based business mentality is what you need during periods of crisis, said Spicer, who visited the White House at least twice this week. Either people are getting better and its being contained or its not. Its the only judge of success.
More broadly, Trumps team thinks the numbers are in his favor, arguing the administration started taking action the first week of January. Since then, Trump has up a task force, declared a public health emergency, requested billions from Congress and announced early restrictions on travel from China. Trump aides also note the administration has facilitated the shipments of test kits to U.S. and foreign labs.
For years, Trump has been obsessed with records, ratings and statistics, mentioning them constantly and often inflating the figures, failing to acknowledge the human aspect or overhyping his own role. Theres interest rates and unemployment rates, crowd sizes and polls, stock markets gains and immigrant apprehension numbers.
Before running for office in 2016, Trump had spent his five decades in the real estate, marketing and reality TV businesses. He sold himself to voters on that background, touting his ability to strike deals with countries and companies alike.
Once in office, he talked about policy moves like one-off deals, often becoming preoccupied with certain figures.
For example, he has constantly complained about trade deficits when the value of what the country imports exceeds its exports spouting off the amount with each country. $500 billion a year with China, $100 billion with Japan, $17 billion with Canada.
When Trump has struck new deals with China, Mexico and Canada and others, hes always noted how much the agreement will reduce each trade deficit.
When youre in the real investment business, the performance is only based on numbers and thats all that matters, said a Republican who speaks to Trump. He spent a lifetime on it. Hes not going to think differently now. Thats how you judge real estate. Thats all they have. Its all about the money.
But Trump has been accused of forgetting the people behind the numbers.
In August, Trump touted the crowd size of a rally held at the same time as an event of then Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke - while visiting medical staff who had treated victims of a mass shooting.
That criticism has resurfaced during the coronavirus pandemic.
Not all of President Trump's announcements at his daily press conference have been exactly on the mark. Evan Vucci/AP hide caption
Not all of President Trump's announcements at his daily press conference have been exactly on the mark.
President Trump has made a lot of promises about actions that his administration is taking to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
Not all of them have been exactly on the mark and some have yet to pay off as advertised.
Naval hospital ships
The president announced on Wednesday that the Navy would dispatch its two hospital ships, the USNS Comfort and the USNS Mercy, to help treat patients and free up land-based hospitals for coronavirus patients.
"So those two ships are being prepared to go, and they can be launched over the next week or so," Trump said, calling the ships in "tip-top shape."
Well, not so much.
The Navy said that the Comfort was actually undergoing repairs in Norfolk, Va., and it would be weeks before it would be ready to sail to New York. And the Mercy, based in San Diego, would take several days before it was staffed with doctors and nurses and be ready for deployment somewhere on the West Coast.
Although the deployments may still go ahead, the ships likely won't sail right away.
FDA drug approval
On Thursday, Trump touted that the Food and Drug Administration had "approved" use of an anti-malaria drug called chloroquine to treat patients afflicted with the coronavirus.
The president sounded excited.
"We're going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately," Trump said, calling it "a tremendous breakthrough" and a potential "game-changer."
But FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn tried to tamp down Trump's enthusiasm, saying that "a large, pragmatic clinical trial" would be needed first to determine the drug's usefulness before making it available to coronavirus patients.
Hahn said he couldn't "speculate about a timeline" for the drug's availability.
Trump's enthusiasm for hydroxychloroquine spilled into another press conference on Friday, when he again described it as a potential wonder drug.
And again, a public health official this time, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top immunologist on the White House's response team tried to rein in the optimism by echoing the need for clinical proof that it would make a difference.
On Thursday, Trump said another drug, Remdesivir, had "also been approved, or very close to approved" by the FDA for treating patients coronavirus. In fact, that drug is undergoing a clinical trial and is months away from being ready for use.
The website
Last Friday, Trump said at a Rose Garden news conference that Google has 1,700 engineers developing a new website that would help Americans determine whether they should seek testing for the coronavirus.
The president sought to cast his own project as a triumph compared with the initial failure of President Barack Obama to roll out a website as part of the changes to the health care market enacted in 2009.
"Google is helping to develop a website," Trump said. "It's going to be very quickly done unlike websites of the past to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location."
Within hours, Google attempted to clarify the president's comments. It said an affiliated company, Verily, was working on the project but on a limited scale only for people in the San Francisco area.
"Verily is in the early stages of development," Google said, "and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time."
The website is now functional in "select counties in the Bay area."
Medical supplies
On Wednesday, Trump met with a group of nurses at the White House, telling them that the administration had arranged for a major new supply of the type of respirator in high demand during the pandemic.
"We've ordered 500 million N95 masks to drive private production," Trump said. He also said that construction companies were being asked to donate unused masks. The next day at a briefing, Vice President Pence stated: "We've vastly increased the supply of medical masks."
But hospitals continue to report that they are running short of masks, as are pharmacists. Authorities are taking donations from unlikely sources, including financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs.
Loose-fitting surgical masks aren't appropriate for dealing with the pandemic authorities say; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a graphic detailing the important differences between a surgical mask and an N95 respirator.
Trump acknowledged the shortfall in supplies on Friday when he said he had invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act, which permits him to direct production of essential items.
"We are using it," Trump said, "for certain things that we need," citing ventilators and masks.
It still isn't clear how much equipment is needed to respond to current and future patients in the pandemic beyond what's in hand today and when or whether the demand will be met.
Testing
One of the most frequent exaggerations coming from the administration is the availability of coronavirus tests.
When he visited the CDC in Atlanta earlier this month, Trump claimed that "They have the tests. And the tests are beautiful. Anybody that needs a test gets a test."
Pence made a similar claim last week, saying that "a million tests are in the field" and that "by the end of this week, another 4 million tests will be distributed."
Even so, anecdotal reports abound about Americans who feel sick struggling to be able to confirm a diagnosis with an actual test. Fauci acknowledged that there clearly is a gap between the supply and the demand.
At the same time, he echoed assurances by Trump and Pence that the situation is improving.
"I get the same calls that many of you get ... for one reason or another they can't get [tests]," Fauci said on Friday. "That is a reality that is happening now. Is it the same as it was a few weeks ago? Absolutely not."
The anecdotal nature of the accounts means it's difficult to assess what the spread might be between the testing capacity available now, or set to come onstream soon, and the pool of people who satisfy the administration's guidelines to request one.
Trump and Pence say they don't want every American particularly those who are feeling well to be tested. It still isn't clear, however, how big the gap remains between requests for tests considered valid under Trump's and Pence's conditions and the capacity to support them.
