 Welcome to the Coronavirus Weekly Brief. For your hosts, I'm David Sturman. And I'm Melissa Sallick-Vark with New America. Here are the headlines you need to know. There have been more than 6.3 million coronavirus cases in the United States, and more than 189,000 people have died according to Johns Hopkins data. Around 2.3 million people have recovered, and the United States has conducted almost 84 million tests. Worldwide, there have been more than 27.5 million confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 898,020 deaths. More than 18.5 million people have recovered from the virus around the world. An international team of researchers combined data of over 399,000 patients across the world, and found that people who were considered obese were 113% more likely than people of healthy weight to land in the hospital, 74% more likely to be admitted to an ICU, and 48% more likely to die from COVID-19, reports Science Magazine. The study was published in Obesity Reviews last month. According to Ann Dixon, a physician scientist at the University of Vermont, we didn't understand early on what a major risk factor obesity was. It's not until more recently that we've realized a devastating impact of obesity, particularly in younger people, adding, quote, that may be one reason for the devastating impact of COVID-19 in the United States, or 40% of adults are obese, unquote. According to the report in Science Magazine, people who are considered obese have other diseases that are independent risk factors for severe COVID-19, including heart disease, lung disease, and diabetes. They are also prone to metabolic syndrome, in which blood sugar levels, fat levels, or both are unhealthy and blood pressure may be high. The first two cases of the coronavirus diagnosed at the Syrian refugee camp in Jordan were reported on Tuesday by the United Nations Refugee Agency. Both cases were detected at the Azraq camp, which houses 40,000 of the 650,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan, who have fled to almost decade-long war in Syria. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees also announced that all of those living with or near the two refugees have been isolated at a center within the camp, as health workers trace and test those whom the patients may have come into contact with. The diagnoses have raised concerns that the spread of the virus within the camps could be devastating, owing to poor sanitation conditions and the inability to socially distance. Around 120,000 Syrians are living within refugee camps in Jordan, with the rest living outside the camp's perimeters. Four refugees living outside the camps previously tested positive, with three recovering. Jordan has reported 2,478 cases and 17 related deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. India overtook Brazil on Monday to become the country with the second highest number of coronavirus infections amid fears that it will overtake the United States to take first place. With around 80,000 new cases reported every day, India is currently seeing the pandemic spread faster within its borders than any country in the world. Experts widely believe the official number of cases is an undercount, as the virus spreads through underserved rural communities in the country of 1.3 billion people. While the government imposed a nationwide lockdown in March, it began lifting restrictions in June as millions of impoverished city dwellers struggled to survive with neither work nor safety nets. The resulting exodus of urban migrants back to their home villages after public transportation resumed has only exacerbated the pandemic spread in the countryside, reports Bloomberg. In the past month, the total case count doubled from 2 to 4 million. India's GDP plunged 23.9% in the first quarter of 2020, compared to the previous year, making it the world's worst affected national economy amid the pandemic, reports CBS News. On Tuesday morning, more than 1.8 million American students returned to school amid debates and concerns over the safety of in-person schooling and the effectiveness of alternatives, according to CNN. The largest school districts are generally operating entirely online, but some districts are open for in-person classes. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association, as of August 27, more than 476,000 children have been infected with the novel coronavirus and the number recorded in the study jumped by 70,330 in the last two weeks of the study, a time period that also saw many school children returning to class. In studies and lab dishes, the SARS-CoV-2 virus appears to dice up the long fibers and cardiac muscle that allow the heart to contract, scientists at Gladstone Institute in San Francisco reported in a pre-print manuscript. COVID-19 causes cardiac problems and up to 50% of patients, researchers wrote, but the mechanism was not clear. A growing body of evidence shows that COVID-19 can cause long-term heart problems, such as reports that athletes are suffering from COVID-19-related cardiac problems, note Scientific American. A German study found that 78% of recovered COVID-19 patients had cardiac involvement or inflammation, according to a report published in JAMA. While the JAMA paper has been amended, its main conclusions still hold. The Gladstone research sheds a possible new light on the subject, showing that in the lab, the virus left the fibers and cardiac muscle looking as if they were surgically sliced. The damage looked like, quote-unquote, carnage, said co-author Bruce Conklin, adding, quote, nothing that we see in the published literature is like this in terms of the exact cutting and precise dicing. We should think about this as not only a pulmonary disease, but also potentially a cardiac one, unquote, reports stat. To see our daily brief, go to the address in our show notes and follow us on Twitter at New America ISP. And tune in next Monday for our next episode.