NEW YORK (AP) — One of the first book-length inside accounts of the coronavirus pandemic will be coming out in June. Lawrence Wright’s “The Plague Year,” which builds on a New Yorker story that ran earlier this month, will be published June 8. Wright tells The Associated Press that he interviewed more than 100 people for the story, including such government health officials as Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx. “The Plague Year” will document what he calls “the shocking failure” of the United States to contain the virus, which has killed more than 400,000 across the country.
LONDON (AP) — When the U.K.’s coronavirus death toll surpassed 100,000 this week, it was much more than just a number to Justin Fleming. Lying in a hospital bed, he knew how easily he could have become one of them. Fleming was rushed to London’s King’s College Hospital in mid-January as he struggled for breath. The 47-year-old says he was saved from becoming another death statistic by the “incredible” staff. Fleming is one of more than 37,000 coronavirus patients in Britain’s hospitals, where overworked staff on overcrowded wards are fighting COVID-19 one patient at a time with no end in sight. One nursing manager says the pace is relentless but staff just “take every shift as it comes.”