Coronavirus Briefing: What Happened Today

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/science/coronavirus-briefing-what-happened-today.html

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This is the Coronavirus Briefing, an informed guide to the pandemic. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.

The World Health Organization reported a global daily record of more than 350,000 new coronavirus cases on Friday.

Miami-Dade Public Schools completed its return to five-day-a-week classroom instruction, becoming the largest U.S. school district to do so.

President Trump is said to be planning an outdoor White House event on Saturday with hundreds of people, before some health experts say he should leave isolation.

Get the latest updates here, as well as maps and trackers for U.S. metro areas and vaccines in development.

The first pictures of the coronavirus, taken just seven months ago, resembled barely discernible smudges. But scientists have since captured the virus and its structures in intimate, atomic detail, offering crucial insights into how it functions.

Less than a millionth of an inch wide, the virus is studded with proteins called spikes that attach to cells in people’s airways, allowing the virus to infiltrate. But under an electron microscope, the proteins look more like tulips than spikes, consisting of long stems topped with what looks like a three-part flower. These spikes also swivel on a three-way hinge, which may increase their odds of encountering and attaching to proteins on human cells.

As the spikes sweep around, they can also be attacked by antibodies. But they are protected by shields made of sugar. Sugar molecules, in navy below, swirl around the proteins and hide them from antibodies.

The coronavirus genome consists of 30,000 letters that hold the information for making its proteins. The genes are arrayed on a molecular strand called RNA.

After the virus enters a human cell, our ribosomes — the tiny cellular factories that pump out proteins — attach to its RNA strands and glide down them like a roller coaster car running along a track. As the ribosomes pass over the genetic letters, they build proteins with corresponding structures.

In just a few hours, an infected cell can make thousands of new virus genomes. Ribosomes read the genes and create more viral proteins, which then combine with the new genomes to make more viruses.

Already, the new pictures of SARS-CoV-2 have become essential for the fight to end the pandemic. Vaccine developers study the virus’s structure to ensure that the antibodies made by vaccines grip tightly to the virus. Drug developers are concocting molecules that disrupt the virus by slipping into nooks and crannies of proteins and jamming their machinery.

But while the past few months have delivered a flood of data about the virus, some studies have made it clear that it will take years to fully make sense of SARS-CoV-2.

The coronavirus is spiraling out of control in rural India, where efforts to contain the virus have faced a significant backlash. The situation has put India on track to have the most reported infections in the world: While the nation currently has 6.9 million cases, compared with 7.6 million in the United States, it is adding about 30,000 more cases a day than the U.S.

A sharp contrast divides India’s urban centers, where public health campaigns have helped to quell the virus, and the rest of the country, where many people think the government has exaggerated the pandemic and doesn’t understand their economic hardship. In many villages, people don’t wear masks or practice social distancing. Residents often refuse to be tested, which carries a social stigma, and hide that they are sick.

The surge stems at least in part from India’s strict lockdown in the spring, which prompted millions of migrant laborers to leave urban areas that they could no longer afford. Their exodus to rural communities helped the virus spread across the country.

The consequences are now clear: Rural hospitals are running out of beds and struggling to provide oxygen to patients. In one rural facility’s coronavirus ward, corpses were left for insects to crawl over.

Ultra-Orthodox communities in New York and New Jersey are facing a surge in cases — driven in part by distrust of scientific messaging, dense living conditions and fatalism about the virus, officials and experts say.

The French Open will most likely finish this weekend as planned, but it has played out amid a rising infection rate in France, with reimposed restrictions in Paris.

Health authorities in Sri Lanka, faced with a growing cluster of new cases, have ordered the closure of bars, restaurants, casinos, nightclubs and spas.

Oman will reintroduce a nighttime curfew and enforce the overnight closure of shops and public places starting on Sunday for two weeks to help contain the virus.

Here’s a roundup of restrictions in all 50 states.

The White House is preparing a new $1.8 trillion coronavirus stimulus proposal, which would increase its previous offer by about $200 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Starting next week, Cuba will reopen to international tourists for the first time in six months, but Havana and other areas with higher case counts will remain closed.

Public health officials in Europe say “pandemic fatigue” is creating resistance to new measures as nations work to avoid full lockdowns.

More parents in the U.S. are seeking private schools for the in-person learning opportunities that aren’t available at many public schools.

Attendance at Disney World has been low since it reopened, but health officials and worker unions also say safety protocols have helped prevent the outbreaks that many feared.

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