CIDRAP News: Global COVID-19 total blows past 13 million
“In just 5 days, the global COVID-19 total jumped from 12 million to 13 million, with countries in the Americas reporting more than half of the world’s cases and nearly two-thirds of the deaths…” (Schnirring, 7/14).

New Humanitarian: U.N. coronavirus appeal to top $10 billion
“Over $10 billion will be needed this year to deal with the worst effects of COVID-19 in the hardest-hit countries, the U.N. is to say, according to a draft of its updated coronavirus response plan obtained by the New Humanitarian ahead of its publication later this week. As the pandemic spreads, the world body is increasing its emergency funding appeal by about 50 percent above the previous edition announced in May…” (Parker, 7/14).

Wall Street Journal: Walking the Coronavirus Containment Tightrope: How Countries Balance Saving Lives and the Economy
“As the world relaxes its lockdowns against the coronavirus pandemic, the early results range from fragile success to worsening crisis. Much of East Asia and Europe has suppressed the pandemic’s first wave and is fighting to keep infections down to a manageable level. But contagion is still spreading strongly in the U.S., Latin America, and India, among other places, leaving countries with a choice between the economic pain of renewed restrictions on daily life or accepting the human toll of mass infections. … Above all, some countries used the weeks of lockdown better than others to develop less drastic, more sophisticated ways to fight the virus…” (Walker, 7/14).

Washington Post: Global surge in coronavirus cases is being fed by the developing world — and the U.S.
“…The novel coronavirus — once concentrated in specific cities or countries — has now crept into virtually every corner of the globe and is wreaking havoc in multiple major regions at once. But the impact is not being felt evenly. Poorer nations throughout Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa are bearing a growing share of the caseload, even as wealthier countries in Western Europe and East Asia enjoy a relative respite after having beaten back the worst effects through rigorously enforced lockdowns. And then there’s the United States, which leads the world in new cases and, as with many nations that possess far fewer resources, has shown no sign of being able to regain control…” (Witte et al., 7/14).

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U.N. News: ‘Women Rise for All’ to shape leadership in pandemic response and recovery
“Although the COVID-19 pandemic has generated an unprecedented global health, humanitarian, and development crisis, it has also revealed the power of women’s leadership, according to the U.N. Deputy Secretary-General. ‘Over the past months, people around the world have come to see what many of us already knew: women’s leadership makes a profound difference,’ Amina Mohammed said on Tuesday. … Ms. Mohammed was addressing Women Rise for All, a virtual gathering of influential women from across different regions, sectors, and generations, to examine how their leadership is shaping pandemic response and recovery that benefits all people… (7/14).

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Devex: What the U.S. Congress might do next in funding global COVID-19 response
“The U.S. Senate is expected to begin discussions on the next COVID-19 supplemental funding bill next week, and global health and development advocates are pushing for lawmakers to include billions of dollars for the global response. … Thus far, only about 0.1% of total U.S. COVID-19 funding has gone to the global response and the ‘U.S. can and should do more,’ said Porter Delaney, founding partner of the Kyle House Group consulting firm, at a press conference Monday…” (Saldinger, 7/15).

Roll Call: Support grows for foreign aid in upcoming COVID-19 emergency bill
“…Foreign aid advocates — frustrated at the relative absence of international assistance in previous supplemental coronavirus spending measures — are mounting a full-force effort to ensure this next emergency appropriations bill includes billions of dollars for international vaccine efforts and humanitarian support to cope with the nutrition, health, and social welfare consequences of the global pandemic. The effort includes top United Nations officials and dozens of Republican and Democratic lawmakers, who have been speaking out and signing bipartisan letters to Senate and House leadership calling for them to support significant foreign aid levels in the upcoming bill…” (Oswald, 7/14).

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Fox News: FDA head ‘encouraged’ by COVID-19 vaccine progress, says ‘not for me to answer’ if China withheld info (Creitz, 7/14).

The Hill: Fauci: ‘I think you can trust me’ on my track record (Axelrod, 7/14).

The Hill: Trump adviser knocks Fauci: Wrong about ‘everything’ (Moreno, 7/14).

New York Times: Aide Posts Cartoon Mocking Fauci as White House Denies Undermining Him (Rogers, 7/14).

POLITICO: ‘None of us lie’: Coronavirus testing czar rejects Trump’s attacks on health officials (Forgey, 7/14).

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The Hill: Former CDC directors rip Trump for ‘partisan potshots’ and a ‘tragic indictment’ of science
“Four former heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) blasted President Trump for his administration’s push for in-person schooling to resume in the fall, saying the White House is putting politics over science. In a Washington Post op-ed, former CDC Directors Tom Frieden, Jeffrey Koplan, and David Satcher, as well as former acting CDC head Richard Besser, accuse the administration of undermining the agency’s guidance on reopening schools during the coronavirus pandemic…” (Budryk, 7/14).

POLITICO: Former CDC chiefs rebuke Trump for ‘undermining’ agency’s guidelines
“…The condemnation from the former CDC chiefs comes after the president last Wednesday disavowed the agency’s school reopening guidelines as ‘very tough & expensive,’ and threatened to slash federal funding to schools that do not physically reopen. … On Tuesday, the former CDC chiefs noted that during their combined 15-years-plus period leading the agency under Democratic and Republican administrations, they could not ‘recall over our collective tenure a single time when political pressure led to a change in the interpretation of scientific evidence’…” (Forgey, 7/14).

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New York Times: Trump Administration Strips CDC of Control of Coronavirus Data
“The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send all Covid-19 patient information to a central database in Washington beginning on Wednesday. The move has alarmed health experts who fear the data will be politicized or withheld from the public. The new instructions were posted recently in a little-noticed document on the Department of Health and Human Services website. From now on, the department — not the CDC — will collect daily reports about the patients that each hospital is treating, the number of available beds and ventilators, and other information vital to tracking the pandemic. Officials say the change will streamline data gathering and assist the White House coronavirus task force in allocating scarce supplies like personal protective gear and remdesivir, the first drug shown to be effective against the virus. But the Health and Human Services database that will receive new information is not open to the public, which could affect the work of scores of researchers, modelers, and health officials who rely on CDC data to make projections and crucial decisions…” (Stolberg/Abelson, 7/14).

Additional coverage of the order is available from CNN, The Hill, and Washington Post.

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IPS: Q&A: Understanding COVID-19’s Impact on Food Security and Nutrition
“While it is too early to assess the full impact of the global COVID-19 lockdowns, at least 83 million to 132 million more people may go hungry this year — 690 million people were classified as hungry in 2019 — as the pandemic has highlighted the vulnerabilities and inadequacies of global food systems. This is according to the State of Food Security And Nutrition in the World 2020 report jointly launched by United Nations agencies this week…” (Sadeque, 7/15).

U.N. News: ‘Country-driven’ approach needed to limit COVID-19 damage to food security
“…FAO’s comprehensive COVID-19 Response and Recovery Programme aims to avert a global food emergency during and after the pandemic while simultaneously working on medium to long-term development responses for food security and nutrition. To provide a coordinated response that ensures access to nutritious food globally, resources and partnerships must be mobilized at country, regional, and global levels, requiring a $1.2 initial investment. The new program aims to mitigate the immediate impacts of the pandemic while strengthening the longer-term resilience of food systems and livelihoods…” (7/14).

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NPR: What Happens When A Pandemic And An Epidemic Collide
“…AIDS experts have a litany of fears about how the pandemic could affect continuing progress in the fight against AIDS. Perhaps the biggest worry is that patients won’t be able to get the AIDS drugs they need because closed borders can interfere with drug shipments; or because quarantines have slowed down work in industries including drug manufacturing; or because economic losses will threaten funding for AIDS prevention programs from some governments. … A modeling group set up by WHO and UNAIDS have estimated that if COVID-19-related interruptions in antiretroviral therapy for AIDS patients last for six months, it will result in 500,000 additional deaths in sub-Saharan Africa alone. It’s not just drugs for treatment that are at risk. The same drugs are used to help prevent infection in people at high risk…” (Brink, 7/14).

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AP: First COVID-19 vaccine tested in U.S. poised for final testing
“The first COVID-19 vaccine tested in the U.S. revved up people’s immune systems just the way scientists had hoped, researchers reported Tuesday — as the shots are poised to begin key final testing. ‘No matter how you slice this, this is good news,’ Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert, told the Associated Press. The experimental vaccine, developed by Fauci’s colleagues at the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc., will start its most important step around July 27: A 30,000-person study to prove if the shots really are strong enough to protect against the coronavirus…” (Neergaard, 7/14).

Bloomberg Businessweek: Covid Vaccine Front-Runner Is Months Ahead of Her Competition
“…[Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology and researcher with the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute & Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine,] has been all over the British press, but she appears to regard public attention as a distraction. For more than two decades she worked anonymously, developing vaccines while also, of necessity, churning out endless grant applications. Her research was rarely discussed outside scientific circles. Now she’s leading one of the most high-profile and advanced vaccine candidates against Covid-19, with Phase III, or final-stage, trials under way involving thousands of people in Brazil, South Africa, the U.K., and, soon, the U.S…” (Baker, 7/15).

Additional coverage of research into a novel coronavirus vaccine and other vaccine-related news is available from Al Jazeera, CBS News, Financial Times, The Hill, NBC News, New York Times, POLITICO, STAT, The Telegraph, UPI, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post.

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Devex: Adapting humanitarian aid during COVID-19: 3 country directors explain
“When the coronavirus hit Burkina Faso in March and spread quickly across the country, many aid groups were torn about what to do. … As global COVID-19 policies shifted daily with new discoveries about the virus and ways of handling it, aid groups on the ground were inundated with information from headquarters about protocols and best practices. … Devex spoke with three country directors from different aid groups, all based in the capital, Ouagadougou, about how they adapted in the face of COVID-19 and how they continue to deal with challenges as the virus evolves…” (Mednick, 7/15).

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Fox News: Coronavirus infection unlikely in placenta, fetus: study
“The human placenta and fetus are unlikely to be infected with COVID-19 due to minimal expression of SARS-CoV-2-related proteins and receptors in the placenta, a new study says. … Researchers from the National Institutes of Health and Wayne State University, among others, published their findings on Tuesday in the journal eLife. … In the new findings, researchers noted that the placenta has a minimal expression of the ACE2 receptor and an enzyme the virus uses to enter a cell, called TMPRSS2. … Nevertheless, there is a possibility that the virus could infect the placenta through alternate entry routes while interacting with other proteins, ‘however, further research is required to test their participation in the pathogenesis of COVID-19,’ researchers wrote…” (Rivas, 7/14).

New York Times: Baby Was Infected With Coronavirus in Womb, Study Reports
“Researchers on Tuesday reported strong evidence that the coronavirus can be transmitted from a pregnant woman to a fetus. … Since the pandemic began, there have been isolated cases of newborns who have tested positive for the coronavirus, but there has not been enough evidence to rule out the possibility that the infants became infected by the mother after they were born, experts said. A recently published case in Texas, of a newborn who tested positive for Covid-19 and had mild respiratory symptoms, provided more convincing evidence that transmission of the virus during pregnancy can occur. … A study of the case was published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications…” (Belluck, 7/14).

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AFRICA

AP: Rights group: Reporter jailed in Egypt dies from virus (7/13).

AP: South Africa surpasses the U.K. in confirmed coronavirus cases, according to the Health Ministry and Johns Hopkins data (7/14).

BBC: Coronavirus: How fast is it spreading in Africa? (Mwai/Giles, 7/14).

Science: ‘It’s a tricky thing.’ COVID-19 cases haven’t soared in Nigeria, but that could change (Vrieze, 7/14).

VOA: 41 Health Workers Test Positive for Coronavirus in Kenyan Maternity Hospital (Ombuor, 7/14).

ASIA

Al Jazeera: Bangladesh coronavirus patients shun government hospitals (7/13).

Al Jazeera: Where India stands in its fight against coronavirus (7/13).

AP: Lockdowns reimposed in India as virus cases near 1 million (Ghosal, 7/15).

AP: Man blamed for nearly half Sri Lanka virus cases speaks out (Mallawarachi/Schmall, 7/15).

Financial Times: Central Asian countries fear economic hit as virus cases surge (Seddon, 7/15).

NPR: Australia Grapples With New Surge In Coronavirus Cases (Neuman, 7/14).

EUROPE

AP: Germany eyes local travel bans to prevent 2nd virus wave (Jordans, 7/14).

New York Times: Ireland Has a New Coronavirus Fear: Americans Who Flout Quarantine (Specia, 7/14).

New York Times: After Months of Debate, England Requires Face Masks for Shoppers (Mueller et al., 7/14).

Slate: How Sweden Screwed Up (Harris, 7/14).

Wall Street Journal: France to Require Masks in Indoor Public Spaces (Bisserbe, 7/14).

LATIN AMERICA

CNN: Coronavirus hits Latin America’s political class (Rahim, 7/14).

New Humanitarian: COVID-19 sparks push for immigration reform in Brazil (Dias, 7/14).

Reuters: Latin American coronavirus deaths overtake North American fatalities (Leira/Laing, 7/13).

MIDDLE EAST

The National: Middle East faces ‘scary’ rise in Covid-19 deaths, expert says (Reinl, 7/14).

U.N. News: In Yemen, thousands of Ethiopian migrants stranded, COVID-19 likely widespread (7/14).

Wall Street Journal: Israelis Fear Schools Reopened Too Soon as Covid-19 Cases Climb (Schwartz/Lieber, 7/14).

NORTH AMERICA

The Hill: Public’s disconnect from COVID-19 reality worries experts (Wilson, 7/15).

The Hill: CDC urges all Americans to wear masks to combat spread of COVID-19 (Moreno, 7/14).

The Hill: CDC director says Trump, Pence should wear masks to set example (Hellmann, 7/14).

POLITICO: CDC chief: Trump should set example with mask (Ehley, 7/14).

STAT: The U.S. is the accidental Sweden, which could make the fall ‘catastrophic’ for Covid-19 (Begley/Joseph, 7/15).

STAT: If everyone wore a mask, Covid-19 could be brought under control, CDC director urges (Begley, 7/14).

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New York Times: World Population Could Peak Decades Ahead of U.N. Forecast, Study Asserts
“United Nations demographers have been anticipating since last year that the world’s population may stop growing by 2100 as fertility rates decline, projecting a peak of 10.9 billion people by century’s end, compared with roughly 7.8 billion now. But a study published on Tuesday in The Lancet, the medical journal, has challenged that forecast, with major economic and political implications. The study asserted that the global population could peak at 9.7 billion by 2064 — nearly four decades earlier — and decline to 8.8 billion by 2100…” (Gladstone, 7/14).

Washington Post: Coronavirus baby boom or bust? How the pandemic is affecting birthrates worldwide.
“…With millions of people cut off from reproductive health care and stuck at home, some experts predicted that the crisis would create the conditions for a baby boom, at least in some countries. Other analysts predicted a baby bust, driven by economic and social instability. It’s still too early to say for sure, but birthrate trends suggest spikes in some parts of the world and declines in others. Broadly speaking, birthrates should continue to drop in many higher-income countries and climb in many poor and middle-income nations, where the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) projects that pandemic-driven disruptions in access to contraception could lead to millions of unplanned pregnancies…” (Berger, 7/15).

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Reuters: Ebola spreading in western Congo with nearly 50 confirmed cases: WHO
“Ebola is spreading in western Democratic Republic of Congo, with nearly 50 known cases across a large region bordering the Republic of Congo and Central African Republic, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday…” (Nebehay, 7/13).

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Foreign Policy: White House Installs Anti-Abortion Loyalist at USAID
“The Trump White House has added another political loyalist and anti-abortion advocate to its roster of political hires at America’s premier international development agency, expanding the role and influence of the religious right in shaping U.S. priorities on global health and development, U.S. officials told Foreign Policy. Patrina Mosley, who has been named adviser to the director of the Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is an outspoken anti-abortion advocate who recently accused the United Nations and the World Health Organization (WHO) of using the coronavirus pandemic to promote abortions — a claim the U.N. calls patently false…” (Lynch/Gramer, 7/14).

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AP: Report: Mongolian teenager dies of bubonic plague (7/15).

Devex: Q&A: Where is the U.N. heading? USG Hochschild explains need for ‘course correction’ (Lieberman, 7/15).

New York Times: CDC Employees Accuse Agency of ‘Toxic Culture of Racial Aggressions’ (Fortin, 7/14).

New York Times: The Flu May Linger in the Air, Just Like the Coronavirus (Wu, 7/14).

PRI: Discussion: Can advances in testing counter surging COVID-19 cases? (7/13).

U.N. News: ‘Turn the tide’ across a turbulent world, U.N. chief urges key development forum

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Bloomberg: Covid Fear Will Keep the World in a Slump
Peter R. Orszag, chief executive officer of financial advisory at Lazard and Bloomberg Opinion columnist (7/13).

New York Times: The Pandemic Could Get Much, Much Worse. We Must Act Now
John M. Barry, professor at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine (7/14).

New York Times: Trump Isn’t the Worst Pandemic President
Felipe Neto, Brazilian YouTube personality (7/15).

Project Syndicate: Still No Care for Care Workers
Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, executive secretary of International Development Economics Associates, and member of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (7/14).

Project Syndicate: The Politics of a COVID-19 Vaccine
Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations (7/14).

Wall Street Journal: Letter to the Editor: Taxpayer Money Helped to Make Remdesivir
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), chair of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee (7/14).

Washington Post: We ran the CDC. No president ever politicized its science the way Trump has
Tom Frieden, Jeffrey Koplan, David Satcher, all former directors of the CDC, and Richard Besser, former acting director of the CDC (7/14).

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The Conversation: Kenya is having another go at passing a reproductive rights bill. What’s at stake
Anthony Idowu Ajayi, postdoctoral research scientist, and Meggie Mwoka, policy research officer, both at the African Population and Health Research Center (7/12).

Devex: A green recovery action plan for the World Bank
Ladd Connell, environment director at Bank Information Center (7/13).

Devex: Why we need to focus on stigma and discrimination — 5 lessons from the NTD field
Anna van’t Noordende, program support and Ph.D. research officer for No Leprosy Remains’ PEP++ project, and Heleen Broekkamp, program officer and thematic coordinator of stigma reduction and mental well-being at No Leprosy Remains (7/14).

Essence: No Strings Attached: The Only Kind Of Health Care Aid We Want From The U.S.
Tlaleng Mofokeng, South Africa commissioner for gender equality (7/14).

Financial Times: Antimicrobial resistance is the next battle
Emma Walmsley, chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline (7/13).

Forbes: To Succeed In Global Health, We Need To Find The Outliers
Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair of epidemiology and global health at McGill University and director of the McGill International Tuberculosis Centre (7/13).

Foreign Affairs: China’s Troubling Vision for the Future of Public Health
Sheena Chestnut Greitens, associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, and Julian Gewirtz, academy scholar at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (7/10).

Foreign Policy: Present at the Destruction of U.S. Power and Influence
Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, and Philip H. Gordon, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (7/14).

Global Health NOW: Smashing Obstacles to Women’s Global Health Leadership
Anna Kalbarczyk, assistant director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health and faculty member in the Department of International Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health (7/13).

IPS: Can Private Finance Really Serve Humanity?
Jomo Kwame Sundaram, former economics professor and United Nations assistant secretary-general for economic development, and Anis Chowdhury, adjunct professor at Western Sydney University & University of New South Wales (Australia) (7/14).

Ms. Magazine: U.S. to Officially Withdraw From WHO — and Why We Can’t Let That Happen
Violet Rawlings, student at Smith College and editorial and social media intern at Ms. Magazine (7/13).

Nature: Time to revise the Sustainable Development Goals
Editorial Board (7/14).

New Humanitarian: Decolonizing aid, again
Paul Currion, columnist for the New Humanitarian and independent consultant to humanitarian organizations (7/13).

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Brookings: Middle East food security amid the COVID-19 pandemic
Omer Karasapan, partner with Strategies for Stability (7/14).

Friends of the Global Fight: Webinar: The Impacts of COVID-19 on AIDS, Tuberculosis & Malaria Programs in Africa (7/14).

IMFBlog: Why Sustainable Food Systems are Needed in a post-COVID World
Nicoletta Batini, scholar of innovative monetary and fiscal policy practices in the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office, and colleagues (7/14).

UNAIDS: Delivering antiretroviral medicines to homes in Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria (7/14).

UNDP: In CAR, violence against women is surging amid COVID-19 pandemic, study finds (7/14).

UNICEF: Delivering life-saving vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic (7/15).

World Economic Forum: What philanthropy can do to fight pandemics and future health crises
James Chen, chair of the Chen Yet-Sen Family Foundation in Hong Kong SAR (7/15).

WHO: How WHO is supporting ongoing vaccination efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic (7/14).

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White House: Remarks by Vice President Pence and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Briefing on COVID-19 | Baton Rouge, LA
The White House released the transcript from the latest briefing on COVID-19 with Vice President Mike Pence and members of the Coronavirus Task Force (7/14).

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USAID: Acting on the Call: Preventing Child & Maternal Deaths
“Acting on the Call — the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)’s response to the 2012 global Call to Action — lays out a bold agenda to save the lives of women and children. Since 2014, this flagship report has served as a roadmap for accelerating progress against one of the Agency’s top global health priorities: preventing maternal and child deaths. This year’s report highlights how far the global health community has come in accelerating access to essential health care for mothers, newborns, and children in 25 countries where they are most vulnerable. In honor of the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife, USAID has dedicated this year’s report to recognizing the heroic efforts of nurses, midwives, and other health care providers on the frontlines…” (7/14).

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KFF: House Appropriations Committee Approves FY 2021 Health and Human Services (HHS) Appropriations Bill
The House Appropriations Committee approved the FY 2021 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (LHHS) appropriations bill (and accompanying report) on July 13, 2020. The LHHS appropriations bill includes funding for U.S. global health programs provided to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and some funding for global health research activities provided to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The bill also includes emergency funding for COVID-19 response efforts (7/14).

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KFF: COVID-19 Coronavirus Tracker — Updated as of July 15, 2020
Data on country government actions in response to COVID-19 are included in the tracker (7/15).

Additional KFF COVID-19 resources on the global situation, as well as those focused on the response and impact within the U.S., are available here. KFF’s blog series “Coronavirus Policy Watch” is available here.

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KFF: The Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic
This updated fact sheet provides the latest data on the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, including impact by region, treatment and prevention efforts, and an overview of the U.S. and global responses to the epidemic (7/13).

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