Your daily COVID-19 update “There are definitely worse places to be locked down than a palace." — Lucy Hutchings, who is in charge of Hampton Court Palace. When not meandering through its 1,300 rooms, she likes jogging in the formal garden. The number of Canadians infected with COVID-19 has passed 87,000, while 6,700 people have died. Worldwide, 5.6 million people have been infected while 350,000 have died. On March 1, the United States officially recorded its first death due to COVID-19. Today, it passed the 100,000 mark, becoming the first nation to reach that sad milestone, in addition to having the highest number of cases. NBC News has plotted every death, day by day, in an animated map. New research examining the DNA of infected people in Washington state shows that the infection that started the first outbreak in the United States “arrived in the country around Feb. 13, shortly after President Trump’s ban on travel from China went into effect on Feb. 2. Thousands of Americans in the country fled back to the United States in the days after the ban was announced,” reports Helen Branswell of Stat. The research suggests that the ban itself helped ignite the spread of COVID-19 in the United States. In contrast, the Asian nation of Mongolia has recorded no local transmission of COVID-19 and not one death. While having the lowest population density in the world certainly helped, the government also fought to keep the virus out, as this Medium article documents. Toronto just released an interactive map showing where people who have been infected with COVID-19 live. Dr. Eileen de Villa, the city’s medical officer of health, cautions that the map doesn’t indicate where they were infected with the virus. But the map does show that those living in the poorest neighbourhoods in the city have borne the brunt of the pandemic. A documentary called Outbreak, released in 2010 by the National Film Board of Canada, featured the now-familiar figure of Dr. Theresa Tam talking about the now-ubiquitous topic of pandemics, as John Geddes writes in Maclean’s. A Reuters videographer spotted sea turtles swimming near Rio de Janeiro’s airport. It’s the latest instance of wild animals being seen in areas normally dominated by humans. However, biologist Mario Moscatelli is worried, given the amount of refuse in the water, saying, “These beautiful animals end up confusing plastic garbage with food. That can lead to death as the plastic material obstructs the digestive tract.” While stuck at home, comedian Sarah Cooper has become an international star, thanks to her “homemade lip-syncs of [President Donald Trump’s] rambling pandemic-related statements,” the New York Times reports. —Patricia Treble As of the latest update, this is the number of confirmed cases in Canada. We're updating this chart every day.
| 