 Welcome to the coronavirus weekly brief. Just a note, we are recording this on one-stage July 29th, rather than on Monday as usual. We're your hosts, I'm David Sturman, and I'm Melissa Sallick-Verk with New America. Here are the headlines you need to know. On July 28th, American Federation of Teachers President Randy Weingarden sets a teachers can strike as the last resort if forced to work in unsafe schools during the pandemic. AFT represents 1.7 million members with 76 percent saying that they would return to school buildings if the proper safety measures were taken. According to the Council of Chief State School Officers, these health precautions could cost between $158 billion and $244 billion in federal funds to ensure school safety nationwide. Democrats recently proposed a bill calling for $58 billion in funding for public schools with no stipulations, while Republicans proposed $70 billion in funds for public and private schools, as long as the majority reopened for in-person learning. As we previously covered in the daily brief, President Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos have been outspoken about schools reopening despite continued coronavirus surges throughout the country. The coronavirus may cause at least 10,000 additional child deaths worldwide each month due to hunger, reports researchers of a consortium called Standing Together for Nutrition. The Lancet has published a new article by researchers who analyzed estimates on food supply in 118 poor and middle-income nations and also found from their models that moderate or severe wasting of children under 5 years old will increase 14.3 percent or 6.7 million cases, also reported by France 24. Last year's count was 47 million. 80 percent of the 6.7 million cases are children from Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and half are from South Asia alone, reports UNICEF. Wasting takes place when the body does not have enough nutrients that it feeds on muscle and fat and causes one out of every 10 infant deaths across lower and middle-income countries, notes France 24. The models estimate that at worst, children could miss 50 percent of their nutritional care and treatment services, which could yield up to 180,000 children dying as a result. According to the World Health Organization's nutrition lead, Francesco Bronca, quote, the food security effects of the COVID crisis are going to reflect many years from now on, quote, adding, quote, there is going to be a societal effect, unquote. In response to this report, UNICEF, the World Agricultural Organization, the World Food Program, and the World Health Organization contributed to a commentary published in the Lancet that said at least $2.4 billion is needed to help child and maternal nutrition and includes, quote, an essential package of four life-saving interventions, prevention of wasting in children at risk, treatment for children who are wasted, biannual vitamin A supplementation for children aged 6 to 59 months or 90 percent coverage, and mass communication for the protection, promotion, and support of breastfeeding that focuses on caregivers or families of children aged 0 to 23 months, unquote. A report by the New York Times finds that coronavirus deaths might challenge election prospects for President Trump and Republican congressional members in November. Data from around the country suggests that coronavirus deaths are linked to President Trump's approval rating, where an increase of local deaths from the virus shows a lower approval rating for Trump and a higher favorability for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. While compiling county-level data from around the country is difficult and results depend on the region, the nearly 150,000 American lives lost to coronavirus will likely have a considerable impact on voters in November. Research dating back to the Civil War and as recent as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan shows the similar negative correlation between wartime deaths and electability, although Republicans are still pulling well in states including Wyoming and throughout the Great Plains, recent coronavirus surges in swing states including Georgia, Arizona, and North Carolina may prove a challenge for Republicans. Antiviral immune proteins called interferons may offer a chance to stop COVID-19 from escalating into severe cases, but timing may be crucial to whether that treatment helps or harms. These immune proteins suppress viral replication early in disease, right scientific American, adding, yet if they are active later, some scientists think they can exacerbate the harmful inflammation that forces some COVID-19 patients onto life support. Several trials of interferon therapies are ongoing. British pharmaceutical company Synergyn announced that their inhaled interferon, quote-unquote, greatly reduced the chances of severe disease and hospitalized COVID-19 patients reported by both Biosentry and the New York Times. Their results are unpublished and their study is small, only 101 people. That larger studies are needed to confirm whether the drug is truly effective, but the results show that odds of severe disease were 79 percent lower in patients who received the drug than in those who did not. Several pre-clinical studies in animals and human trials suggest that interferons are a promising avenue for COVID-19 treatment, Report Science Magazine. Earlier this year, a preventive trial in a hospital in China's Hubei province gave daily interferon nose drops to over 2,400 medical workers and found that none of them came down with COVID-19. And at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, a team found that subcutaneous interferon injections lowered mortality and increased the number of patients discharged from hospitals. Both of the aforementioned trials were posted as manuscripts on a pre-print server. The coronavirus pandemic has severely limited the hush, the annual pilgrimage meant to be carried out once in a life of any Muslim who is able. And by extensions of various industries that support the influx of millions of people to Saudi Arabia have been impacted. During a normal year, the hush brings in over 2 million people to Islam's holiest sites in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. But this year, because of the coronavirus, the kingdom limited participation to only 1,000 people who are already living there. This has left Somalia's livestock breeders, traders and exporters who usually supplied the kingdom with millions of cows, camels, sheep and goats needed to feed the pilgrims. With a sudden drop in demand according to a report by the Washington Post, livestock exports make up three quarters of the total exports for Somalia. And 70% of those exports are sent to Saudi Arabia in the months leading up to the hajj. Now, many livestock sellers are left with animals that no one wants to buy, that they accrued earlier in the year to increase their herd, with the expectation of being able to sell the animals and repay the loans. 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