Welcome to NCR’s Coronavirus Tracker, where you can find the latest news about the coronavirus pandemic as it relates to the Catholic Church and other institutions. We hope you find it useful in navigating these complex times and welcome your suggestions for how we might improve it. We’re currently updating the Tracker twice a day, early in the morning and late in the afternoon. To receive the Coronavirus Tracker by email each weekday afternoon, sign up here.
NCR, April 2
The coronavirus pandemic is fundamentally changing how we do and be church.
Over the past week, NCR surveyed two dozen theologians, social directors, non-profit leaders and pastors, asking them each to consider how our response to the pandemic may affect us in years to come. Part two: questions of church governance.
Patrick Egwu (NCR), April 2
During the coronavirus pandemic, dioceses and parishes across Africa are moving Masses online, holding spiritual and special Communion services. Church activities such as Easter programs have also been suspended as a way of combating the outbreak. NCR correspondent Patrick Egwu examines the situation in some African countries.
Rebecca Collins Jordan (NCR), April 2
Over the past few weeks, I’ve started to feel a little cloistered — haven’t you? Shut into my home all day except for a brief walking respite, I have come to know these walls and windows well. And, in the midst of my isolation, I have started to reframe my reality to tolerate it better and to call it a temporary monastic calling.
Fr. Peter Daly (NCR), April 2
It’s quiet. Not much is moving around me in Washington, D.C., in this season of coronavirus.
America, April 1
Some of the holiest experiences of my life have been experiences of mutual aid—the kinds of coming together that are now spreading around the world along with the coronavirus.
America, March 31
The first Sunday the doors of my parish remained locked all day, I needed to go to Mass. As a New Yorker, my Sunday obligation, like that of most American Catholics at that point, had been lifted. But I needed to feel, in a moment when my body had to remain distant from the bodies of others, the paradoxical unity of the Body of Christ.
NPR, April 1
The nationwide move to close churches, synagogues and mosques as part of the broader effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus is meeting some new resistance.
Vox, April 1
The restriction on in-person worship services in the Houston area has sparked a lawsuit, filed by three Texas pastors and Steven Hotze, a medical doctor and anti-LGBT Republican activist whose political action committee was labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The Guardian, April 2
I imagined spending my last weeks with friends. Isolated in my flat, I’m having to rethink what a ‘good death’ might be.
The Washington Post, April 1
Two weeks into mandatory stay-at-home orders in the San Francisco Bay area and Washington state, there’s evidence the curve of infections is flattening compared with other U.S. metro areas.
The New York Times, April 1
Florida’s coronavirus cases kept ballooning, especially in the dense neighborhoods of Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Hospitals in Fort Myers and Naples begged for donations of masks and other protective equipment. Young people started to die.
And still, Gov. Ron DeSantis resisted. The man entrusted with keeping many of the country’s grandparents safe did not want to dictate that all Floridians had to stay at home.
The Washington Post, April 1
Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-diseases expert and the face of the U.S. response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, is facing growing threats to his personal safety, prompting the government to step up his security, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Guardian, April 2
Confirmed Covid-19 infections are nearing the one million mark after “near exponential growth” saw global cases more than double in the past week.
The World Health Organization chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned of the approaching milestone as new cases reached almost every country and territory across the world.
The Daily Beast, April 1
Less than six weeks after COVID-19 turned Italy into the Wuhan of Europe, more than 12,400 people have died, nearly four times as many as China. What Italy’s dead can tell us.
The Guardian, April 2
A major NHS hospital almost ran out of oxygen for its Covid-19 patients on ventilators because it was treating so many people with the disease who needed help to breathe.