As the coronavirus has spread across the globe in recent months, prisons and jails have emerged as critical hotspots for outbreaks. According to the Marshall Project, more than 14,000 prisoners have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in the United States alone, over 200 of whom have died from the disease. For a look at the challenges prisons and jails are facing amid the coronavirus pandemic, and the strategies they’re adopting to overcome them, WPR recently spoke by phone with Marc Stern, an assistant professor of health services at the University of Washington School of Public Health and a consultant in correctional [...]
New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, declared victory against her country’s coronavirus outbreak last week. “There is no widespread undetected community transmission in New Zealand,” she announced, as COVID-19 had “currently” been eliminated from the country. New Zealand’s director-general of health, Ashley Bloomfield, echoed the prime minister, saying that the continued downward trend in new infections “does give us confidence that we have achieved our goal of elimination.” The country of 5 million people has confirmed around 1,200 cases of COVID-19 and 20 deaths so for, and recorded no new infections earlier this week. New Zealand ranks among the world’s [...]
After months of living under strict lockdowns, many people have grown accustomed to scenes that once would have been utterly surreal, like normally busy highways and thoroughfares suddenly emptied of vehicles. Photographers around the world have documented how wild animals are reclaiming national parks in the absence of human visitors. Atmospheric researchers have documented dramatic declines in air pollution. All of this will simply be a temporary salve for the environment if the economy comes roaring back, business as usual, once the public health threat recedes. But it could also be the beginning of a new normal, a transition point [...]
