Announcement:

We are switching to a twice-weekly Tulane Outbreak Daily format starting this week. After more than a year of 4-5 issues a week covering COVID, the volume of high value news content has slowed down in recent months. We will continue to bring our readers timely, relevant, science based COVID coverage from around the world every Tuesday and Thursday morning. We welcome your feedback, and contributions!

Featured Headlines

No sign of infection after test concert in Spain, researchers say – BBC

Six people tested positive within 14 days of attending the gig in Barcelona, but the incidence was lower than that seen in the general population.
Around 5,000 music fans took part in the experiment after testing negative for Covid-19.

Social distancing indoors may provide ‘false sense of security,’ covid transmission study finds – Washington Post

The common six-foot social distancing guidance on its own may not be enough to protect people from contracting the coronavirus while spending time indoors, according to a report that examined the virus’s airborne transmission risk.

Coronavirus has crushed India’s health system. Patients are on their own. – Washington Post

When Rehmat Ahsan began to have trouble breathing last week, his family went from hospital to hospital in India’s capital looking for a bed in a covid-19 ward. Everywhere they tried was full. Then they started a new search — for the oxygen that might save his life.

U.S. to send more than $100 mln in COVID supplies to India – Reuters

The United States is sending supplies worth more than $100 million to India to help it fight a surge of COVID-19 cases, the White House said in a statement on Wednesday.

Indian Covid-19 Variant Found in U.S., Across Globe as Foreign Help Arrives – Wall Street Journal

A variant of the coronavirus first spotted in India has been detected in the U.S. and 18 other countries and territories, adding to a growing roster of evolutionary spinoffs of the virus that scientists and health authorities are keeping under close observation.

Want a Peek at Post-Covid Life? Check Out Gibraltar – Wall Street Journal

On this strip of densely populated rock jutting into the Mediterranean Sea, people are tasting freedom. Gibraltar, thanks to its small size and access to U.K.-supplied vaccines, is among a handful of places in the world to have vaccinated most of its population against Covid-19.

Filipinos feel helpless against latest coronavirus surge – Washington Post

It was just before Easter. Jayson Maulit and his sister Janine were scrambling to find a hospital that would admit their 95-year-old great-grandmother, Ina Dalling, who was battling covid-19. One finally came through the next day in Batangas, 60 miles from where Maulit’s family lived east of Manila, that could take her as an emergency case — but there was no assurance of a bed if she survived.

The COVID-19 death toll in India has crossed 200,000 as the country endures its darkest chapter of the pandemic yet – ABC News

The COVID-19 death toll in India has crossed 200,000 as the country endures its darkest chapter of the pandemic yet.

Why the COVID-19 outbreak in Brazil has become a humanitarian crisis – Harvard Gazette

The COVID pandemic is ravaging Brazil, where it has killed nearly 400,000 people, a death toll exceeded only by the U.S. Recently, Doctors Without Borders described the public health crisis in South America’s largest and most populous nation as a humanitarian catastrophe, blaming government leaders for the nation’s “failed COVID-19 response.” The Gazette spoke with Marcia de Castro of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health about the lessons the rest of the world can take from Brazil’s plight. De Castro, a native of Brazil who has done extensive work in the Brazilian Amazon,is the Andelot Professor of Demography.