Coronavirus Briefing: Pool parties and pool testing

Socializing has become a significant source of resurgences.

View in browser|nytimes.com August 18, 2020 An informed guide to the global outbreak, with the latest developments and expert advice about prevention and treatment. (Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.) The New York Times By Jonathan Wolfe The S&P 500 hit a record despite economic devastation and record unemployment. Deaths from the coronavirus in American correctional facilities surpassed 1,000, as cases rose to 160,000. Get the latest updates here, as well as maps and trackers for U.S. metro areas and vaccines in development. A pool party in Wuhan, China, on Saturday.Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Party fouls Whether it’s illicit raves or pool parties, partying on a large scale has returned to many areas of the world, worrying health officials who say the events are contributing to an uptick in coronavirus cases, particularly among young people. The scenes of revelry would have been unimaginable a few months ago. In Wuhan, the city in China where the coronavirus outbreak began, hundreds of people recently swam shoulder to shoulder at a cramped pool rave — and no one wore a mask. Italy was recently forced to shutter its night clubs after an increase in cases — the first significant crackdown since the country came out of lockdown four months ago — and images circulated of people ignoring mask requirements at clubs and social-distancing rules on crowded streets. The median age of people contracting the virus has dropped below 40. In the United States, people with means continue to fight for their right to party — with their wallets. A cottage industry of medical concierge services has cropped up in wealthy enclaves in the Hamptons and Manhattan to offer rapid screenings for clients hosting exclusive parties — even as most of the country waits two weeks to get test results. Meanwhile, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill shut down in-person instruction for undergraduates and moved classes entirely online because of four clusters of infections. A university official told faculty members this week that most of the cases had been traced to the “social sphere of campus life,” according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. The New York Times has identified at least 251 cases of the virus tied to fraternities and sororities. “The frats are being frats — they are having their parties,” Lamar Richards, a sophomore at U.N.C., told The Times Get the Coronavirus Schools Briefing A newsletter on how the pandemic is upending education. Sign up How U.S. pooled testing failed Pooled testing — a decades-old approach that combines samples from multiple people to save time and supplies — was once hailed by the Trump administration and Dr. Anthony Fauci as a solution to America’s persistent testing headaches. But no longer: The virus is now too widespread in many areas for pooled testing to be effective. As our colleague Katherine Wu reports, pooled testing works only when a vast majority of batches is negative. If the proportion of positives is too high, more pools will need to have each individual sample retested, eliminating efficiency gains. In many parts of the country, positivity rates — the proportion of tests that turn up positive — are above 10 percent, which makes pooled testing largely impractical. Many areas are also reporting delays of two weeks or more for test results to be processed. Still, in New York, where test positivity rates have held at or below 1 percent since June, universities, hospitals, private companies and public health labs are using the technique in a variety of settings, often to catch people who aren’t feeling sick. And there are still more audacious plans to close the testing shortfall. In an article in The Atlantic, Robinson Meyer and Alexis Madrigal report on a proposal to mass-produce inexpensive paper-strip saliva tests and use them on a massive scale, possibly in conjunction with pooled testing. Resurgences After an increase in infections in the past week, South Korea shut down high-risk facilities such as nightclubs, karaoke rooms and buffet restaurants in the Seoul metropolitan area. Greece locked down two facilities for migrants linked to an outbreak of new infections; another overcrowded reception center was put under lockdown last week. France, which has been experiencing a surge in virus cases, will make mask-wearing mandatory in enclosed office spaces by the end of August. Here’s a roundup of restrictions in all 50 states. What else we’re following Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City is facing mounting pressure to delay the start of in-person K-12 schoool. A new report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention points to economic sectors in which workers are at high risk of infection, including factories, warehouses and building sites. A new study determined that a rare immune syndrome that strikes some children with the virus — known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome — is distinct from both Kawasaki disease and Covid-19 in adults. States are testing a new way to combat the spread of the virus in nursing homes: “Strike teams” that apply an emergency response model traditionally used in natural disasters. Harvard researchers developed a formula to determine how many daily tests a state should be conducting in order to slow the spread of the virus. According to that formula, Idaho is doing the least amount of testing in the country necessary to understand and contain the virus. Residents of Flint, Mich., still reeling after the city’s tainted-water crisis, are now facing a new set of worries related to the coronavirus. The pandemic delayed a project to replace lead service lines, violent crime has spiked and opportunities for work have become even more scarce. What you’re doing A dear friend was confiding to me about all the things her 3-year-old grandson was missing out on this year, including no trick-or-treating in October. I told her I’d mail her grandson a small package of candy that he could open on Halloween, and we talked about other friends who could send similar little packages of treats to surprise him with. — Kathleen Lyons, Queenstown, Md. Let us know how you’re dealing with the outbreak. Send us a response here, and we may feature it in an upcoming newsletter. Adam Pasick contributed to today’s newsletter. Email your thoughts to briefing@nytimes.com. Did a friend forward you the briefing? Sign up here. Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for Coronavirus Briefing from The New York Times. 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