Your daily COVID-19 update QUOTE OF THE DAY: “If we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases, if any,” said President Donald Trump. To date, more than two million Americans have been infected with COVID-19, including some 114,000 people who have died. The number of Canadians infected with the virus has passed 100,500, while 8,100 people have died. Worldwide, eight million people have been infected and 435,000 have died. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has revoked its emergency usage authorization for chloroquine, “based on new information, including clinical trial data results, that have led [the government] to conclude that this drug may not be effective to treat COVID-19 and that the drug’s potential benefits for such use do not outweigh its known and potential risks.” “The pandemic has created bubbles of personal experience. Every family, every individual, seems to go through it differently,” writes Sarmishta Subramanian in Maclean’s. Not only do we not understand what the virus does to kids physically, we're also in the dark about what this crisis might mean for them psychologically and emotionally. On Easter Sunday, a nurse from her parents’ retirement facility called Mary Ito to say there was an outbreak of COVID-19 in the building. Her mother, Fumiko, 92, was ill. That day, she made her choice, telling the CBC she "had to go to care for my parents.” So, with permission from the home’s executive director, she moved in with her parents, knowing she wouldn’t be able to leave for weeks, if not months, and that she was likely to get sick herself. Alberta Health Services is now asking all residents in the province to be tested for COVID-19, whether they have symptoms or not. “By getting tested, you’re helping AHS and the province better understand the extent of the disease,” explained the province, which has always undertaken a high level of testing. When 640 U.S. Army recruits arrived at Fort Benning in Georgia, they were tested for the virus. Four were isolated after testing positive. Then, after 14 days of self-monitoring and a week of training, one recruit tested positive, a military press release stated. When authorities retested the entire group, 142 were positive for COVID-19, showing how easily it can spread in close quarters. Getting a test for COVID-19 can be uncomfortable, as the swabs are placed at the back of the nose or throat. It also is performed by a health worker wearing layers of personal protective equipment. Now, a small study in JAMA Network offers hope of a simpler option. Researchers compared current swabs with a self-collected lower nose swab and discovered there was no difference in detection of the virus. In another sign of just how disruptive the pandemic has been to the movie business, the 93rd Academy Awards show is being moved back from its usual February next year slot to April 25, 2021. Better mark that date in pencil on your calendars; Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated film Tenet was just pushed back from its July 17 release date to July 31. Worried about COVID-19? Imagine being a sleepwalker married to an insomniac, who has a baby who, you guessed it, won’t sleep. It sounds like the stuff of nightmares, but, as the New York Times excerpt of a book by Mike Birbiglia shows, it is also side-splittingly funny. Did I mention they have a street cat named Mazzy? —Patricia Treble As of the latest update, this is the number of confirmed cases in Canada. We're updating this chart every day.
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