Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666
The news posted last week for the Wuhan coronavirus 2019-nCoV, which produces COVID-19 disease, has been surveyed and some important articles are summarized here. We start with some general posts on the virus, then go into coverage of the disease spread in the US, before wrapping up with the spread of the disease internationally. The US portion is arranged by state rather than chronologically (as is the international part arranged by country). It’s heavy on number of cases and death counts as the week progressed. I largely collected what I stumbled onto, so likely a lot was missed, although an was made effort to keep track of New York and Italy each day. News items about economic affects of the virus are reported separately in a companion article.
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US faces blood shortage as donation sites shutter – As the coronavirus outbreak spreads across the US, a dangerous blood shortage threatens to create another public health crisis – with one medical director warning: “This could kill our patients.” Coronavirus control methods mandate social distancing that has ranged from banning in-person seating in restaurants to closing schools to issuing shelter-in-place orders. Many places where blood donation might take place – such as campuses and libraries – are presently shuttered. The result has been a disaster for blood donation as the medical sector finds its blood supplies running out. The American Red Cross said that as of 19 March, more than 5,000 of its blood drives were canceled across the US over coronavirus concerns – resulting in approximately 170,000 fewer donations. More than 80% of donated blood collected from the Red Cross is from drives at places closed for social distancing: workplaces, schools, and college campuses.
Here’s What We Know About Ibuprofen and COVID-19 – The World Health Organization (WHO) has changed its stance on taking ibuprofen if you have COVID-19, but people are still scratching their heads over what they should take if or when they contract the virus.After previously announcing that people with the virus shouldn’t take ibuprofen to treat pain and fever, theWHO now says they don’t advise against it. The flip-flopping has a lot of people confused – especially those stocking up on medication in anticipation of getting the virus.Dr. Otto O. Yang, a professor of medicine in the infectious diseases division at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, told Healthline there’s no evidence that ibuprofen causes worsening of COVID-19, “although there is circulating misinformation to that effect.”The concern began after a study in The Lancet stated that ibuprofen boosts the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), which may facilitate and worsen COVID-19. As a result, WHO originally warned most patients to stick with acetaminophen, which is also known as paracetamol or Tylenol.Patients likely have increased ACE2 expression if they’re treated with ACE inhibitors, angiotensin II type I receptor blockers (ARBs), or thiazolidinediones, the report noted. Those drugs are commonly taken by those with cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and diabetes. Ibuprofen can also increase ACE2, the study noted.The notion that anti-inflammatory drugs increase the risk of complications during fever or infection is “mostly theoretical,” Yang said.Medical experts debate whether or not reducing the inflammation that causes fever and muscle ache actually lowers the effectiveness of the immune response. On the flip side, patients who have worse symptoms may be more likely to take ibuprofen, and their outcome may have nothing to do with the medication itself.”There are some clinical observations of small numbers of patients that suggest ibuprofen could slow recoveryTrusted Source from bacterial pneumonias or make some viral infections like chickenpox more severe, but these aren’t careful prospective scientific studies,” Yang said. “Other publications have even argued that ibuprofen can be helpful in lung infectionsTrusted Source by reducing the amount of inflammation, which may be damaging to the lung,” he added.
Treatment Prospects for COVID-19 – Given that the first cases of COVID-19 emerged less than four months ago, the FDA has not yet approved any drug to specifically treat the novel virus. Even globally, no drug has been proven to effectively treat COVID-19. Clinical trials to evaluate the safety and efficacy of new treatments can take years, though the FDA has mechanisms in place to speed up the process when necessary to “treat serious or life-threatening conditions.” President Trump has publicly called for the agency to do just that for two antiviral drugs, a generic antimalarial drug called hydroxychloroquine and Gilead Sciences’ Remdesivir, which was originally developed as a treatment for SARS and MERS. The president’s claim at a press conference on Thursday that these two therapies were “essentially approved” to treat COVID-19 is misleading. Neither drug has been approved by the FDA to treat COVID-19, and neither will be approved to treat COVID-19 until months from now, if at all. As of now, Remdesivir has not been approved by the FDA to treat any condition, let alone COVID-19. A randomized clinical trial of Remdesivir conducted by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases iscurrently underway with patients with laboratory-confirmed novel coronavirus, but it’s still unclear whether the drug effectively fights the virus in human subjects. The president’s statement is a bit more accurate in the context of hydroxychloroquine, a generic drug that has been approved for use in the U.S. to treat malaria and other conditions for decades. Aside from some promising anecdotal evidence, though, hydroxychloroquine has not yet been proven definitively to treat COVID-19. Doctors are technically permitted to prescribe hydroxychloroquine off-label, meaning to treat a different condition or indication than the condition the FDA approved it to treat, which applies to patients with COVID-19. Reports of increases in demand for the drug seem to indicate that physicians are doing just that. But this spike in prescriptions has led to shortages of the drug, causing dire consequences for patients that need the drug for other conditions such as lupus. In response, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and Novartis have committed to donating millions of pills to hospitals and pharmacies across the country, and Mylan announced that it will ramp up its production of the drug. It’s crucial to note that no peer-reviewed clinical evidence exists to support the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19. Physicians are either prescribing the drug to coronavirus patients based on hunches or stockpiling the drug in anticipation of forthcoming research. These off-label prescriptions, based only on doctors’ intuition, could prevent patients with lupus from accessing a drug that they need to survive.
A doctor explains why malaria drugs can’t protect you from Covid-19 – The Indian Council for Medical Research released a statement on Monday recommending the use of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a preventive medicine for those who face a high risk of coronavirus infection, provided they do not have any symptoms of the disease.High-risk individuals include healthcare workers involved in the care of suspected or confirmed cases of Covid-19 and household contacts of laboratory confirmed cases. The ICMR director Balram Bhargava emphasised that the recommendation applies only to these two categories of people and only for pre-exposure prophylaxis – or prevention before exposure.But this advice is likely to be ignored. The drug is already out of stock in many online pharmacies as panicked Indians have started hoarding hydroxychloroquine and another anti-malarial medicine chloroquine in the hope that the drugs are effective against Covid-19. At the moment, the hope is not based on facts. In fact, those who self-medicate face the risk of serious side-effects. The antiviral effects of chloroquine was described in a research paper published in the Lancet in 2003. Chloroquine was reported to be effective in preventing the spread of SARS CoV – severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus – in lab settings in 2005. Researchers have tried this drug in HIV and several ongoing clinical trials have attempted to establish the use chloroquine analogs in the prevention or treatment of several viral infections, including hepatitis, rabies, chikungunya, Ebola virus disease, influenza A and B, and dengue viral infections. A limiting factor in most of these studies were the high levels of chloroquine required inside the cells for meaningful action against virus entry. This meant overall increase in drug toxicity.The exact frequency of side effects, called adverse reactions in medical parlance, is not reported. The life-threatening toxicities are mainly heart related in the form of disturbed heart rhythm and heart failure. Patients are usually advised ECGs before and during treatment.The other much talked about toxicity is irreversible blindness from retinal toxicity, though it is usually not seen in short duration treatment. Patients undergo retinal examination before treatment and yearly. It is not given to patients who already have some retinal diseases.It is also reported to cause fatal lowering of blood glucose, decrease in blood counts and loss of muscle strength. Increased suicidal tendencies and depression are other serious toxicities.
Man dies after taking malaria medication in effort to prevent coronavirus- Health care company Banner Health announced Monday that a patient had died and his wife was in critical condition after they apparently took an anti-malaria drug touted by President Trump as a possible cure for coronavirus without a doctor’s prescription. In a statement, the company urged Americans against taking drugs not prescribed for them in response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has sickened thousands of people across the country. The chemical, which is available in tablet form as an anti-malaria drug, is also used as a cleaning chemical. “A man has died and his wife is under critical care after the couple, both in their 60s, ingested chloroquine phosphate, an additive commonly used at aquariums to clean fish tanks. Within thirty minutes of ingestion, the couple experienced immediate effects requiring admittance to a nearby Banner Health hospital,” the statement read. “Most patients who become infected with COVID-19 will only require symptomatic care and self-isolation to prevent the risk of infecting others. Check first with a primary care physician. The routine use of specific treatments, including medications described as ‘anti-COVID-19’, is not recommended for non-hospitalized patients, including the anti-malarial drug chloroquine,” the statement continued. It was unclear from Banner Health’s statement whether the couple had received confirmed diagnoses of the coronavirus before ingesting the drug. More than 370,000 people have been infected by the coronavirus globally, and thousands have died. Trump tweeted about the use of chloroquine as an effective treatment for severe coronavirus cases over the weekend, urging Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials to put it to use “immediately.” “HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains – Thank You! Hopefully they will BOTH (H works better with A, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents) be put in use IMMEDIATELY. PEOPLE ARE DYING, MOVE FAST, and GOD BLESS EVERYONE!” he tweeted.
DOJ moves against ‘despicable scammers’ operating fake Covid-19 vaccine website – In the first federal action against fraud involving the coronavirus outbreak, the DOJ obtained a temporary restraining order against a website selling a bogus vaccine. The DOJ said Sunday that operators of the website “coronavirusmedicalkit.com” were engaging in an alleged wire fraud scheme to profit from the confusion and fear surrounding Covid-19. The website claimed to offer customers access to World Health Organization (WHO) vaccine kits in exchange for a shipping charge of $4.95. In fact, there are currently no legitimate Covid-19 vaccines and the WHO is not distributing any such vaccine. Austin-based U.S. district judge Robert Pitman issued a temporary restraining order requiring that the registrar of the website to take immediate action to block public access while the investigation of the website and its operators continues. The website domain was registered on March 4 through a registrar based in Arizona. The technical contact listed on the WHOIS record for the domain is a P.O. box in Panama. According to an exhibit the DOJ filed, the website claimed that “you just need to add water, and the drugs and vaccines are ready to be administered.”
Hydroxychloroquine update — A clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine with 30 patients (15 treated 15 controls) has been completed in Shanghai. It is the first genuine randomized trial. It reports no evidence that hydroxychloroquine works at all. It is true, that given the principal outcome measure defined in advance, the trial has no power. Not low power, 0 power. In a hypothetical, if all patients treated with hydroxychloroquine became healthy immediately with no symptoms and no detectable virus, then the report would be that there was not a statistically significant diference in the principal outcome measure for the treated and control subgroups. Given that 14 out of 15 people in the control group had no detectable virus, the best outcome for hydroxychloroquine would have been 15 out of 15 in the treated group. Again a hypothetical, what if all the treated patients were assessed as cured after a week (best possible value of the principle outcome measure). This would reject the null that the probabilities were the same against the 1 sided alternative that treatment was better at the 50% level. It would reject the null against the two sideded alternative at the 100% level (not a typo). With the benefit of hindsight, the researchers write that they could have designed the trial better. This does not mean that mistakes were made. When in a crisis, one has to act and must not make sure that one doesn’t do anything which is clearly suboptimal with the benefit of hindsight. That would imply sitting around thinking. They didn’t have time for that.
FDA will allow doctors to treat critically ill coronavirus patients with blood from survivors – The Food and Drug Administration will allow doctors across the country to begin using plasma donated by coronavirus survivors to treat patients who are critically ill with the virus under new emergency protocols approved Tuesday.The FDA’s decision comes a day after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the state’s health department planned to begin treating the sickest coronavirus patients with antibody-rich plasma extracted from the blood of those who’ve recovered. Under the emergency protocols approved by the FDA, doctors can request permission to treat critically ill COVID-19 patients on a case-by-case basis. For now, the experimental treatment will be reserved for patients who are in dire condition and at risk of death. The FDA will respond to most requests within four to eight hours, the agency said. For patients who require treatment faster, doctors can call the FDA’s Office of Emergency Operations to get approval over the phone. If the treatment is proven safe and effective, experts said it would likely work best if given to patients before symptoms become too severe. And past studies indicate that proactive infusions of convalescent plasma might also be effective in protecting front line health care workers from becoming seriously ill. The FDA cautioned that plasma has not been proven effective for COVID-19 and that researchers wishing to test it more broadly should apply for permission to begin a trial.
CDC says coronavirus RNA found in Princess Cruise ship cabins for up to 17 days after passengers left – Coronavirus RNA survived for up to 17 days aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship, living far longer on surfaces than previous research has shown, according to new data published Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study examined the Japanese and U.S. government efforts to contain the COVID-19 outbreaks on the Carnival-owned Diamond Princess ship in Japan and the Grand Princess ship in California. Passengers and crew on both ships were quarantined on board after previous guests, who didn’t have any symptoms while aboard each of the ships, tested positive for COVID-19 after landing ashore. The RNA, the genetic material of the virus that causes COVID-19, “was identified on a variety of surfaces in cabins of both symptomatic and asymptomatic infected passengers up to 17 days after cabins were vacated on the Diamond Princess but before disinfection procedures had been conducted,” the researchers wrote, adding that the finding doesn’t necessarily mean the virus spread by surface. The CDC said researchers couldn’t “determine whether transmission occurred from contaminated surfaces,” and that further study of COVID-19s spread through touching surfaces on cruise ships was warranted. “COVID-19 on cruise ships poses a risk for rapid spread of disease, causing outbreaks in a vulnerable population, and aggressive efforts are required to contain spread,” the CDC wrote, reiterating its guidance to vulnerable populations to avoid cruises during the pandemic.Researchers from the National Institutes of Health, CDC, UCLA and Princeton University previously found that COVID-19 can last up to three days on plastic and stainless steel. That study also found that the amount of the virus left on those surfaces decreased over time.
Loss of smell, taste, might signal pandemic virus infection (AP) – A loss of smell or taste might be an early sign of infection with the pandemic virus, say medical experts who cite reports from several countries.It might even serve as a useful screening tool, they say.The idea of a virus infection reducing sense of smell is not new. Respiratory viral infection is a common cause of loss of smell, because inflammation can interfere with airflow and the ability to detect odors. The sense of smell usually returns when the infection resolves, but in a small percentage of cases, smell loss can persist after other symptoms disappear. In some cases, it is permanent. Now, there’s “good evidence” from South Korea, China and Italy for loss or impairment of smell in infected people, says a joint statement from the presidents of the British Rhinological Society and of ENT UK, a British group that represents ear, nose and throat doctors. In South Korea, some 30% of people who tested positive for the virus have cited loss of smell as their major complaint in otherwise mild cases, they wrote.So that might be useful as a way to spot infected people without other symptoms – fever, coughing and shortness of breath – of the new coronavirus, they wrote. A similar proposal was published Sunday by the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. It noted “rapidly accumulating” anecdotal evidence from around the world that the pandemic virus can cause not only loss of smell but also a diminished sense of taste. So the appearance of those symptoms in people without another explanation should alert doctors to the possibility of a COVID-19 infection, the group said.
There is a wide misconception of what a ‘mild’ case of COVID-19 looks like. It can be ugly and brutal. – People who get “mild” cases of COVID-19 often still experience a range of uncomfortable and even painful symptoms. Cases in general are categorized as “asymptomatic,” “mild,” “severe,” or “critical.” Studies have suggested that about 80% of infections by the novel coronavirus are mild, but that simply refers to people who don’t need to be hospitalized. Mild cases can also develop into severe cases if the viral infections worsen.Mild COVID-19 cases are often worse than a cold or flu – they’re usually marked by fevers and dry coughs. Less common but still possible are a handful of other symptoms including fluid in the lungs, shortness of breath, headaches, muscle soreness, fatigue, and gastrointestinal symptoms. Recent research suggests that on average, the virus’ incubation period is about five days. Nearly 98% of patients develop symptoms within 11 1/2 days, though about 1% start showing symptoms after 14 days. Here’s how symptoms progress among typical patients day by day, according to the Chinese CDC:
- Day 1 (after the incubation period): Patients run a fever. They may also experience fatigue, muscle pain, and a dry cough. A small minority may have had diarrhea or nausea one to two days before.
- Day 5: Patients may have difficulty breathing – especially if they are older or have a preexisting health condition.
- Day 8: At this point, patients with severe cases (15%, according to a study from the Chinese CDC) may develop acute respiratory distress syndrome, an illness that occurs when fluid builds up the lungs. ARDS is often fatal.
- Day 10: If patients have worsening symptoms, this is the time in the disease’s progression when they’re most likely to be admitted to an intensive-care unit. These patients probably have more abdominal pain and appetite loss than patients with milder cases.
- Day 17: On average, people who recover from the virus are discharged from the hospital after 2 1/2 weeks.
The disease’s symptoms are more severe for older people and those with preexisting conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and cancer.
One Third Of All Coronavirus Cases Show No Symptoms, Classified China Data Reveals – China, which has been praising itself for its draconian response in shutting down much of the country for most of February and thus halting the spread of the coronavirus pandemic domestically (at least if one ignores the glaring discrepancies from reports on the ground), may have a new problem on its hands. According to the South China Morning Post, which cited classified data from the Chinese government, as many as a third of the people who test positive for the coronavirus – also known as “silent carriers” – may show delayed symptoms or none at all.The data show that 43,000 people in China tested positive by the end of February, but had no actual symptoms, the newspaper reported. They were quarantined and monitored, though as we noted last month, in a radical change in how China is underreporting the severity of the disease, asymptomatic cases aren’t included in China’s tally of those infected with the virus. “The number of novel coronavirus cases worldwide continues to grow, and the gap between reports from China and statistical estimates of incidence based on cases diagnosed outside China indicates that a substantial number of cases are underdiagnosed,” a group of Japanese experts led by Hiroshi Nishiura, an epidemiologist at Hokkaido University, wrote in a letter to the International Journal of Infectious Diseases in February. Based on his research, Nishiura put the proportion of asymptomatic Japanese patients evacuated from Wuhan, ground zero of the outbreak in China, at 30.8 per cent – similar to the classified Chinese government data.
March 22 Update: US COVID-19 Tests per Day #TestAndTrace –Tests per day is a key number to track (along with actual cases and, sadly, deaths). But total tests were a key for South Korea slowing the spread of COVID-19. South Korea has been conducting 15,000 tests per day with a 51 million population, so the US needs to test around 100,000 per day. Note: NYC and LA have stopped testing mild cases due to resource constraints. Hopefully testing will continue to improve, and we can test more people – this is important for test-and-trace. The US conducted 44,668 tests in the last 24 hours.Note: About 19% of tests were positive in the most recent report (some are still pending). The high percentage of positives indicates limited testing. This data is from the COVID Tracking Project. Some states could do a better job of reporting the number of tests – so this is probably low. Testing is improving, but needs to more than double from here (maybe three times this much to be sufficient for test-and-trace).
Watch How A Coronavirus Test Is Administered: “Awful, I Wish There Was A Better Way” -The below videos of coronavirus tests being administered could be the most immediately convincing reason for every American to self-isolate and dramatically limit their potential exposure. When earlier this week when President Trump was asked about his own experience being tested after potential exposure via the Brazilian presidential delegation’s March 7 visit to Mar-a-Lago, Trump said candidly it’s “not something I want to do every day.”But many will certainly see the remarks as significantly understated, given the test requires a no doubt deeply unpleasant ten seconds or more swab deep inside a person’s nasal cavity (sometimes multiple swabs are done). At this point over 100,000 have now been tested across the US, with over 18,500 confirmed for the virus.The test is done with a nasopharyngeal swab, which is inserted into a patient’s nose, twisted around and then removed quickly.For a particularly unpleasant and disturbing description, see the following: It “felt like I was being stabbed in the brain,” one TikTok user wrote in a caption of a video showing her getting tested in her car. “It’s awful. I’m sorry,” the health-care worker who administered the test says. “I wish there was a better way to do it.”2020: the year we all make tik toks of our drive-thru coronavirus nasal swab tests pic.twitter.com/nuwKyScVpEThough it’s actually similar to a standard Flu test, also unpleasant, the swab goes much deeper into the nose and it appears almost down the throat. Watching the myriad of videos of tests now appearing on social media could be the surest way to convince most Americans to temporarily stay indoors and avoid non-essential trips to public spaces.
Number of coronavirus cases among troops jumps more than 31 percent –As testing becomes more widespread, the Defense Department is getting a more thorough picture of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the force.As of Friday morning, there are 67 service members battling COVID-19, according to Pentagon data, as well as 15 DoD civilians, 26 dependents and 16 contractors.That’s about a 31-percent jump for troops – 51 cases were reported yesterday – and more than a 60-percent jump for dependents over Thursday’s totals. The military health system had tested more than 1,500 samples as of Thursday.”One of the challenges with any infectious disease is when it becomes testable,” Lt. Gen. Ronald Place, director of the Defense Health Agency, told Military Times Thursday, when asked why the services were not doing more widespread testing. “What we’ve found – at least the current information – is asymptomatic people, even if eventually becoming positive wouldn’t screen positive at that time.”Officials have said that the department has the capacity to test about 9,000 samples a day, but delays arise when swabs have to be flown to one of the 15 military labs equipped to analyze them.While DoD-affiliated cases are on the rise, hospitalizations are not experiencing such a spike. There are currently seven people under 24-hour care, per Pentagon data, one of whom is a service member. So far, three troops and one contractor have recovered from COVID-19, bringing the total to 128.
Harvey Weinstein Tests Positive For Coronavirus In NY State Prison; Convicted Producer In Isolation – Harvey Weinstein has tested positive for the novel coronavirus in prison. Just days after being transferred to the Wende Correctional Facility from NYC’s Rikers Island, the Oscar winning producer and convicted rapist is now in medical isolation, an Empire State law enforcement official confirms to Deadline. Under the policy that they “cannot comment on an individual’s medical record,” New York State’s Department of Corrections representatives did not respond to request for direct confirmation. “Our team … has not heard anything like that yet,” said Weinstein PR chief Juda Engelmayer on Sunday. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” the producer’s personal rep added. Moved to Wende on March 18, the just turned 68 years old Weinstein is one of two prisoners at the 961 capacity maximum security facility just east of Buffalo who was put in isolation after testing positive for the coronavirus. As the global pandemic spreads and surges, New York state has taken the biggest hit domestically of the ever expanding coronavirus. To that, he more than 43,000 prisoners in the state’s already over burdened system are increasingly seen as a high risk category. Already around 40 inmates at Rikers have reportedly been found positive for COVID-19 in the past week, coinciding with Weinstein’s time in that NYC Hellhole. It is unclear if Weinstein himself contracted the disease at the East River complex or when he was in hospital in Manhattan over the past few weeks – both are potential hot spots, especially the former.
21 Inmates, 17 Employees Test Positive for COVID-19 on Rikers Island: Officials Twenty-one inmates and 17 employees tested positive for COVID-19 on Rikers Island, a jail oversight agency reported Saturday Officials have called on the city to immediately remove at-risk inmates and decrease the total jail population Earlier in the week, Mayor de Blasio said staff had identified 40 inmates for release Mayor Bill de Blasio says officials are reviewing 200 inmates that could be released from New York City’s Rikers Island due to the spread of COVID-19. The announcement comes one day after officials revealed that more than three dozen inmates and employees had tested positive on Rikers Island. De Blasio said 23 inmates over 50 years old and at “low risk to reoffend” would be released on Sunday. Additional inmates eyed for release were still awaiting state approval, de Blasio said. Twenty-one inmates on Rikers Island tested positive for novel coronavirus — a dramatic increase from the first case reported by Mayor Bill de Blasio on Wednesday. An additional 17 employees also tested positive, according to Jacqueline Sherman, the New York City Board of Correction’s Interim Chair. The Board of Correction, which provides independent oversight of the city’s jails, sent a letter to New York officials over the weekend with two principle recommendations: to “immediately remove from jail all people at high risk of dying” and “rapidly decrease the jail population.” According to Sherman, 12 of the employees work for the Department of Correction and the other five work under Correctional Health Services. She says 58 people are being monitored in contagious disease and quarantine units and likely passed through “hundreds of housing areas and common areas over recent weeks and have been in close contact with many other people in custody and staff.”
U.S. Churches Hold Public Sunday Services Despite Coronavirus Outbreak: ‘This is Dangerous’ – Multiple churches across the U.S. reportedly chose to ignore social distancing guidelines in favor of in-person services yesterday, citing exceptions for religious institutions in state restrictions that are currently being enforced on the public in an attempt to limit the spread of COVID-19.While some churches have followed the advice from state officials and transitioned their services to a digital-only streaming format, others have seemingly chosen to continue with traditional worship. COVID-19, an illness caused by a new coronavirus, spreads by person-to-person contact and authorities urge citizens to avoid crowded places and keep distance from others.The Solid Rock Church in Warren County, Ohio, was one religiously institution that remained open to the public on Sunday and held religious services both in the morning and evening, the Journal News reported.”We are open! Thankful the governor hasn’t placed restrictions on churches. Join us today! If you can’t make it or aren’t feeling well, watch us online,” it said on Facebook.According to the newspaper, a live-stream of one service showed a choir standing to attendees, and some people who were speaking from the stage during the proceedings appeared to be sharing microphones. The social media announcement has since attracted 2,800 comments, and a lot of criticism. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine this weekend released a “stay at home” order that forced an end to all non-essential business operations. The order said that citizens should “at all times and as much as reasonably possible maintain social distancing of at least six feet from any other person.” For now, DeWine conceded that churches were exempt from the order. But he stressed that does not mean citizens should flock to religious events without being aware of the risks.”We did not order religious organizations to close, but my message to EVERYONE is that this is serious,” the state’s governor wrote on Twitter yesterday. “When you are coming together, whether in a church or wherever – this is dangerous. We have the ability to do religious services in other ways. I implore religious leaders to think about their congregations. Gathering in groups is dangerous.”
Coronavirus can survive on shoes for up to 5 days: experts – The coronavirus is known to make a home on many non-human surfaces, including doorknobs, cardboard boxes and shopping carts. Now, to the surprise of probably no one, experts are calling shoes a “breeding ground” for germs.Infectious disease specialist Mary E. Schmidt warns that the coronavirus could survive on rubber, leather and PVC-based soles for five days or more, theHuffington Post UK reported – and has even suggested that individuals wear shoes that are machine-washable.Depending on what materials are used to make a shoe, the pathogen can remain for days on the upper part as well. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases found that COVID-19 can survive on plastic for up to two or three days, meaning shoes featuring plastic components are also risky – though that’s not a primary concern for some doctors. “The sole of the shoe is the breeding ground of more bacteria and fungi and viruses than the upper part of a shoe,” emergency physician Cwanza Pinckney tells HuffPost.
If You Live With Air Pollution, You’re Already More Vulnerable to Covid-19 — A remarkable thing about covid-19, the coronavirus-caused disease spreading around the globe, is that it induces severe and deadly illness in some people, while other people become only mildly sick. So far, we know that being older or having preexisting health conditions puts a person more at risk of serious symptoms. Unfortunately for so many people, the polluted air they breathe every day likely has already damaged their lungs and made them more vulnerable to the new coronavirus.Covid-19 tends to come with a fever and a dry cough. The virus attacks the respiratory system and becomes fatal when patients succumb to acute respiratory distress syndrome, which causes the lungs to fill up with fluid. The virus has been most deadly to those over the age of 60, as well as people with cardiovascular disease, cancer, and chronic respiratory disease. Guess what is a major driver of all of the diseases above? Air pollution. And who is most likely to be exposed to poor air quality in the U.S.? Low-income families and communities of color. Who’s the most likely to die prematurely due to reduced air quality? The elderly. Today, black people are three times more likely to die from asthma than white people. That becomes 10 times more likely for black children. Black people also suffer the highest death rates from heart disease.That’s why the covid-19 outbreak is an issue of environmental justice, and former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said as much on Twitter Monday. “This crisis isn’t simply a public health issue. It is directly related to social equity and environmental justice,” McCarthy wrote. “It is directly related to our fight for clean air, clean water, a healthy environment, and healthy communities. #COVID19 is affecting all of us – our health and our way of life, but low-income communities and communities of color may face added risk.”
Catastrophic worldwide medical ventilator shortfall despite years of warning – The rapid spread of coronavirus is threatening to overwhelm health services around the world, exposing the gutting of social provisions by the financial oligarchy. A major component of this crisis is the catastrophic and criminal shortage of medical ventilators in quantities sufficient to confront a long predicted and inevitable pandemic. Medical ventilators are relatively complex devices, normally costing up to $50,000. Under normal circumstances, the entire annual global production is estimated at between 40,000 and 50,000. A small number of companies, based in a handful of countries, build the complex devices, which require pressure generators, flow regulators, filters, valves, alarms, numerous sensors and software to allow control and display of the device’s activity and reports of the patient’s breathing. Production is generally licensed and subject to scrutiny and regulation. Specialist clinical engineers and qualified medical staff are required to install and operate the devices, which need careful calibration and skilled supervision, without which the patient has little chance of survival. But under conditions of crisis, when every country is suddenly trying to acquire thousands of the devices, suppliers and global supply chains are being stretched far beyond their capacities. British hospitals, for example, have only 5,000 ventilators attached to intensive care beds. But British Health Secretary Matt Hancock conceded that “many times more” than current levels of supply were likely to be needed in the period immediately ahead. German hospitals have around 25,000, with another 10,000 on order. The US has 62,000 and an additional 99,000 obsolete machines in storage. France is still conducting a nationwide survey of its capacity. While peak demand might be is impossible to predict, it will be many times current production capacity. Swiss-based Hamilton Medical – one of the world’s main producers, usually making 15,000 ventilators a year – has increased production by up to 40 percent. CEO Anthony Wieland warned Reuters of “a huge discrepancy between available ventilators and the need.”
Coronavirus crisis: Supply shortage traced to drop in Chinese imports — Crucial medical supplies needed to fight coronavirus are running dangerously low in American hospitals – because almost all are imported from China.Shipments of face masks, testing swabs, hand sanitizer and surgical gowns cratered in mid-February after Chinese factories shuttered to tamp down the rampant spread of COVID-19.When the plants restarted production, government authorities required manufacturers of N95 masks – used by doctors and nurses – to reserve almost all of them for Chinese customers.No N95 masks have arrived from China since Feb. 19, an Associated Press analysis found.”It’s not safe at all. Nobody is safe,” said Consuelo Vargas, an emergency room nurse in Chicago, who bought out a hardware store’s stock of painter booties and jumpsuits Friday.The sudden fracturing of the supply chain is bringing in new players.A plant in Aberdeen, South Dakota, owned by Minnesota’s 3M, is running around the clock to produce millions of N95 masks a month, while factories in Honduras have taken up the slack in surgical gowns.Even fashion designers are getting into the act, with “Project Runway” star Christian Soriano offering Gov. Andrew Cuomo an assist from his sewing team to send fresh protective gear to hard-hit New York hospitals.
“Critical Medical Supply Shortage”: The Moment US Woke Up To Disaster Of Always Outsourcing To China – No doubt Americans will look back on this current crisis as the moment the country collectively learned its lesson ‘the hard way’ about the dangers of over-reliance on Chinese manufacturing, or sending the vast majority of our manufacturing abroad anywhere for that matter. “The critical shortage of medical supplies across the U.S., including testing swabs, protective masks, surgical gowns and hand sanitizer, can be tied to a sudden drop in imports, mostly from China,” Associated Press reports after a new investigation. Likely Washington’s current panicked mobilization to ensure medical equipment and supply needs are met across the country as the numbers of infected Americans begin to track with the kind of exponential growth rate seen in Italy or Iran is due to political leaders already seeing the writing on the wall, or the plain and simple data for that matter. Trump’s invoking the Defense Production Act and reportedly mulling lifting some tariffs against China is a case in point.”Trade data shows the decline in shipments started in mid-February after the spiraling coronavirus outbreak in China led the country to shutter factories and disrupted ports,” the AP says.Whether ventilators, gloves, surgical gowns or N95 masks (which remove 95% of all airborne particles), or even over-the-counter items like thermometers and bandage kits, the US health system overwhelmingly relies on Chinese manufacturing.But with the United States’ own crisis perhaps in the early stages, and at a moment lack of daily growth in confirmed cases out of Beijing health officials looks promising, the fallout from the prior forced shuttering of many Chinese factories is only now hitting US ports hard and thus is severely depleting hospitals and clinics: The most recent delivery of medical-grade N95 masks arrived from China about a month ago, on Feb. 19. And as few as 13 shipments of non-medical N95 masks have arrived in the past month – half as many as arrived the same month last year. N95 masks are used in industrial settings, as well as hospitals, and filter out 95% of all airborne particles, including ones too tiny to be blocked by regular masks. The AP investigation further found that over the past month vital supplies of things as simple as hand sanitizer and swabs dropped by 40%, with N95 mask imports cut down by over half.
The Entire Healthcare System In The US Is About To Collapse, Doctors & Nurses Warn – Health professionals are increasingly sounding the alarm over the U.S. healthcare system, warning that the coronavirus outbreak could quickly overwhelm unprepared hospitals without swift action to provide equipment to nurses and doctors. “This is a nationwide problem, even on the private side,” an anonymous doctor told NBC News. “No clinic in this country, or hospital for that matter, is going to have enough equipment.”NBC News reported that around 250 doctors and nurses responded to an informal survey request and painted a bleak picture of a healthcare system already on the verge of collapse with at least a month to go before coronavirus cases peak in the U.S. – citing in particular a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE). According to NBC News:Nearly all who responded said there were shortages of PPE in the hospitals, outpatient clinics and offices where they worked. Many reported being forced to ration or reuse supplies, including surgical and N95 masks, for fear of running out. Many also said they were facing shortages of basic sanitary supplies, including hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes.One Philadelphia doctor interviewed by NBC News said her husband – also a doctor – is on the frontlines in the city. “I am so scared,” she said. “I can’t even begin to tell you.” Calls for the federal government to step in and order manufacturers to produce equipment increased Friday, with the union National Nurses United issuing a demand for immediate action to protect healthcare workers. “We need to act now and act fast,” Bonnie Castillo, National Nurses United executive director, said in a statement. “Priority number one is to protect the health and safety of our nurses and health care workers so that they can continue to take care of patients and keep our communities as healthy as possible through this pandemic. If our health facilities no longer stay as centers of healing and instead turn into disease vectors, many more people will needlessly suffer from this terrible disease.”
These charts show how fast coronavirus cases are spreading – and what it takes to flatten the curve As U.S. public officials, health-care workers and epidemiologists struggle to track the course of the coronavirus pandemic, they are being hampered by a dearth of data on exactly how far and how fast the virus is spreading.Despite frequent updates by the news media, public health agencies and independent researchers tracking the outbreak, the available data represents only a portion of the total number of cases, many of which have gone unreported. That lack of data in the U.S. is largely the result of delays in rolling out widespread testing in the early stages of the outbreak. To better track the speed of the pandemic’s spread, CNBC analyzed two months of data collected by researchers at Johns Hopkins University from multiple sources, including the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and various other national and local public health agencies around the world. The analysis looks at the pace of growth of new cases in U.S. states and in countries around the world beginning from time the outbreak began to accelerate. (To make that comparison, we adjusted each time series to start on the day each country or state began reporting more than 100 confirmed cases.) In the U.S., New York state has recently reported the largest number of cases – more than 11,000 as of March 21. That was nearly half of all U.S. coronavirus cases reported by that date in the Johns Hopkins database. New York state independently reported more than 15,000 confirmed cases on Sunday. But that focus on total cases overlooks the critical question of how fast the virus is spreading.So far, the available data on confirmed cases is also severely limited because it only accounts for cases that have been reported. These counts don’t include the unknown number of people who weren’t sick enough to go to a doctor or clinic, or who weren’t tested because there were not enough test kits available.The result is that the number of cases reported daily provides an incomplete picture of the outbreak at any moment in time.Still, researchers say that even incomplete data is critical to the task of controlling the spread of the illness. The hope is that widespread “social distancing” can “flatten the curve” tracking the spread of the pandemic – from the steep rise in the initial phases to a more gradual increase as efforts to contain the outbreak take effect.Delaying the spread of the virus can mean the difference between delivering care to all those patients who need it and overwhelming local or national health-care systems. Countries that appear to have contained the outbreak have taken aggressive measures to test widely and isolate those found to have the most serious cases, according to Rivers. In China and South Korea, she said, this policy of “case based intervention” centered on isolating and treating infected patients quickly to limit the spread of the illness. The impact of those measures can be seen in the the flattening of growth in the number of reported cases for those two countries, where the outbreak first began to spread widely.
Healthy 39-year-old woman dies waiting for coronavirus test results — A healthy 39-year-old social worker died days after initially turning down a coronavirus test because she was told she was “low-risk,” her boyfriend said in a heartbreaking Facebook post.Josh Anderson says he found girlfriend Natasha Ott dead in her apartment in New Orleans on Friday as she still awaited news on whether her sickness and fever were actually COVID-19.He said Ott – who helped people who are HIV-positive – had first told him on March 10 that she had a “respiratory cold” and “tiny fever.””They sent her home, but didn’t test her – she was told she was low-risk,” he wrote, calling his partner “a profoundly kind, passionate, funny and loving 39-year-old woman in good health.”Her own clinic only had five test kits available, he said, adding she told him, “I declined to take one so someone else could.”After her condition deteriorated, she finally got tested on March 16 – almost a week after first falling sick – but was told the results would take at least five days, with a further delay meaning they are still not ready, he said.
We Are About to Lose New York City to Covid – The above data shows the Covid-19 case count in New York (from here). The data are for New York State, but the case count is almost completely dominated by New York City and its suburbs. I plotted the data only from the day before it crossed 100, and the scale is logarithmic. The bottom scale is the date in March, and the graph runs to 35 (that is, April 4th). Thus it extends two weeks from the last data point, which was yesterday (March 21st).The blue straight line is an exponential fit to all the data here, and that translates to a 40% daily increase. The red line is an eyeball fit only to the last six days, and translates to a daily increase of about 47%. I have extrapolated those two lines by nine days.You can see that these rates result in crossing 1m cases around the end of March, or in the first week of April. The population of the New York Metropolitan area is around 20m people, and that is denoted as the very top of the graph. You can see that if these spread rates continue, the epidemic will saturate some time in April – most people in the NYC metro area will have caught it, and then the herd immunity will be high enough that further spread will slow.Probably this is driven by the extremely high densities of people in New York, especially Manhattan. Probably the subway system is a key vector since in normal operation it requires New Yorkers to stand shoulder-to-shoulder for half an hour at at time. In those circumstances, anyone infectious on the subway could easily infect dozens of other people. But just walking around on the street in Manhattan under normal conditions is probably somewhat conducive to spreading the virus.It seems it would be difficult to stop this process now The subway cannot be shut down, and the population of essential workers may be large enough that transmission amongst them is high enough that the epidemic will not slow much, and then they will infect everyone else (by definition of being essential, they must interact with others).It is possible the lockdown taking effect tonight will have some slowing effect. However, consider the time factors in the disease. The data in the graph show positive test results. According to the WHO joint mission to China, mean time from infection to symptoms is 5 days. I have marked that as a black double-ended arrow above. However, there’s also the time from starting to get any symptoms to actually having a known test result. That is is unknown in NY, but has probably also been several days. I have shown a four day bar on the graph. So there is a nine(ish) or so day lag from infections that have already been seeded now to possible test results in the future. So the next nine(ish) days of data would be driven by infections that have already occurred under non-locked-down conditions. So there’s probably already 100k to 1m cases seeded in NYC today, and these will drive a lot of transmission within the enclaves separated by the lockdown.
NYC Update – 46.5% increase Sunday over Saturday. – Today’s number for cases in NY is 15,168, a 46.5% increase over yesterday. I take this as confirmatory of my thesis about New York City. Above is an update of the graph from that piece showing the additional datum. It revises the blue line up a bit, and the red line down a bit, and advances the extrapolation a bit. It suggests the New York metro area currently is incubating somewhere in the mid to high six figures in infections.
New York has 5% of Covid-19 cases worldwide as city becomes battlefront – Confirmed coronavirus cases have risen sharply in New York as both the state governor, Andrew Cuomo, and Mayor Bill de Blasio, called for urgent and better assistance from the federal government. The city has over 15,000 confirmed cases as of Sunday afternoon, up from 4,812 since Saturday. The growth is due, in part, to the rapid expansion of testing but also due to the accelerated growth of the virus throughout the city. Coronavirus cases in the US have increased to more than 30,000. There have been 390 reported deaths in the US, with New York state the country’s hardest hit, with 114 deaths. On Sunday evening the city faced shutdown after Cuomo, on Friday, ordered the shutdown of all non-essential businesses in the state. Except for essential services, all New Yorkers are now ordered to stay indoors from 8pm Sunday evening. By Sunday the state of New York accounted for half the country’s 30,000 cases nationwide. The state’s governor, Cuomo, and New York city’s mayor, de Blasio, both heaped pressure on the White House on Sunday to urgently provide federal assistance on desperately needed medical supplies. “If the president does not act, people will die who could have lived otherwise,” de Blasio told NBC. “If we don’t get more ventilators in the next 10 days people will die who don’t have to die,” he added, speaking to CNN. In response Donald Trump, in his Sunday White House press briefing, promised additional help for New York state (alongside other hard hit states California and Washington), including activating the national guard to help provide an additional 1,000 beds and extra face masks “within 48 hours”. Earlier in the day Cuomo, speaking from the state capital, Albany, had taken aim at New York City dwellers who have been ignoring social distance in parks and on streets, and demanded that the city come up with a plan in 24 hours to reduce “density” in public spaces. “I don’t know what I’m saying that people don’t get,” Cuomo said, calling some New Yorkers’ behavior “insensitive” and “arrogant”. Cuomo had also called on the federal government to take over acquisition of medical supplies so states do not have to compete with each other. “Time matters, minutes count, and this is literally a matter of life and death,” he said at Sunday press conference.
These Two Graphics Show Why New York City Is the Virus Epicenter in the U.S. – For want of a mask the largest economy in the world has been gutted, with Goldman Sachs now projecting that U.S. GDP could contract by as much as 24 percent in the second quarter.New York City, a major contributor to U.S. GDP, is now the epicenter of coronavirus cases in the U.S. We saw this as a likely outcome from the moment that we learned that droplets could be spread from person to person through the air.According to the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan, “the average population density of the U.S. is 87 people per square mile.” But in New York City, “the population density is 27,012 people per square mile,” far greater than any other major city in America.Let that sink in for a moment. The population density in New York City is more than 310 times the average for the rest of the United States and it is 51 times the average population density of Italy, where deaths from the virus are now occurring at over 600 a day.It should not have taken the CDC, the Surgeon General, and the National Institute of Health any longer than it took us to immediately recognize that New York City was going to be the epicenter of this aggressively transmissible virus and to quickly direct federal resources like ventilators, masks, goggles, plastic gowns and gloves and additional hospital beds to the area.The first coronavirus death occurred in the U.S. on February 28 – more than three weeks ago – but New York City is still begging the federal government to get it the resources it needs to fight this deadly disease.As of this morning, New York City was reporting more than 12,000 diagnosed cases of the coronavirus, more than half of the total for the entire state of New York and more than a third of all cases in the U.S., currently reported as 35,224. There are plenty of people to blame for the out-of-control spread. On February 29, the Surgeon General Tweeted that the public should stop buying masks – despite scientific agreement that the virus is spread by sneezing, coughing and talking. The Surgeon General’s advice may have made sense for people living on a 10 acre farm in New Hampshire but it was dangerous advice for people who can’t afford taxis and are forced to ride a packed subway to work each day in Manhattan.
Coronavirus crisis in New York: As doctors warn of “our Chernobyl,” state government plans Medicaid cuts – Over the past week, New York City has rapidly become the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States with a more than twenty-fold increase of confirmed cases. As of Sunday morning, there were 9,654 confirmed cases and 63 deaths in the city, while statewide there were 15,168 cases and 114 deaths.New York state thus accounts for over half of the cases in the US and roughly 5 percent of the cases worldwide. About half of the confirmed cases in New York state are patients under the age of 50, and roughly 13 percent have been hospitalized. A statewide lockdown went into effect on Sunday, at 8 p.m.State and city hospitals have been rapidly overwhelmed, even though the pandemic has only started, with the peak expected to be at the end of April or beginning of May. Officials have said the state would need to at least double its available hospital beds from 50,000 to 100,000 and could have a shortfall of as many as 25,000 ventilators. Most hospitals in New York City, including Presbyterian Hospital and NYU Langone have already canceled elective procedures. The state has also issued an urgent call for retired nurses and volunteers with medical training to join the hospital staff.In a press conference Sunday morning, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio predicted that the city is “ten days away” from seeing widespread shortages of medical supplies and that “the worst is yet to come.” In his own press conference the same morning, Governor Cuomo warned that the crisis could last up to nine months and declared that between 40 and 80 percent of the population of New York state (roughly 19.5 million people) would get infected. Most hospitals in New York already report shortages and dangerous conditions for their medical staff. In interviews with the New York Times, doctors at Lincoln Medical Center in the Bronx say they are down to a few remaining ventilators. In Brooklyn, doctors at Kings County Hospital Center are now “reusing masks for up to a week, slathering them with hand sanitizer between shifts” and placing the “masks in brown paper bags labeled with their names.” The Center for Disease Control and Prevention states that N95 masks should be discarded after each patient interaction and become ineffective after eight hours.On March 17, the city health department published a guideline explicitly stating that medical workers who have had “known high-risk exposure to a patient(s) with confirmed COVID-19” should “take extra care to monitor your health but can keep working.” There was “no requirement for 14-day quarantine of health care workers,” the guideline said. This policy is part of a national move toward dramatically loosening even the most basic safety protocols for health care workers in the face of serious shortages. Even as the number of coronavirus patients in New York has skyrocketed, a special panel appointed by Governor Cuomo called for another $400 million in Medicaid spending cuts for New York hospitals in this fiscal year, starting April 1.
COVID-19 outbreak in New York prisons threatens lives of thousands – The New York Board of Correction (BoC) announced Saturday that 38 people tested positive for COVID-19 last week in New York City’s prison system. As of Sunday the state has topped 15,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus. The announcement in New York was followed by other confirmations of outbreaks across the US prison system, including in California, Arizona and Georgia. Due to lack of testing, and the cramped unsanitary conditions of US prisons, it is likely the number of positive cases is much higher. It was reported Sunday evening that Harvey Weinstein, the recently convicted ex-media mogul, had tested positive for the virus shortly after leaving New York’s infamous Rikers Island Prison Complex, where all of the cases in the state system have been confirmed. Weinstein, 68, was put into isolation at Wende Correctional Facility in Western New York on Sunday after testing positive for COVID-19. Weinstein was incarcerated on Rikers Island until March 18 and given the scale of the outbreak at the prison it is most likely that is where he contracted the disease. Given his age and poor health it is likely that Weinstein’s 23-year conviction, the product of an unconstitutional show trial built on the anti-democratic hysteria of the right-wing #MeToo, will turn into a death sentence. The overcrowding of prisons and lack of sanitation internationally means that prison populations are especially vulnerable to the spread of COVID-19. This has led to widespread anger among prisoners and their families, which has been expressed through a spate of prison riots, including in Italy, Brazil and most recently on Sunday in Colombia, where 23 people died. Concerns have also been raised over the threat posed to WikiLeaks founder and journalist Julian Assange, who is being held in the high-security Belmarsh prison as he awaits a decision on extradition to the United States, and suffers from a variety of health conditions due to 10 years of confinement. New York state has the second largest prison system in the US. According to the BoC’s announcement, the Rikers Island Jail Complex, the state’s largest prison, is the center of the outbreak, with 21 inmates and 17 prison staff testing positive. The first confirmed case of COVID-19 at Rikers came on March 19. On Thursday, Ross Macdonald, the chief physician at Rikers, tweeted, “we cannot change the fundamental nature of jail. We cannot socially distance dozens of elderly men living in a dorm, sharing a bathroom. … a storm is coming.” He went on to call on state authorities to “let out as many as you possibly can.” Homer Venters, former chief medical officer at Rikers, described the lack of basic sanitation at the complex: “There are lots of people using a small number of bathrooms. Many of the sinks are broken or not in use. You may have access to water, but nothing to wipe your hands off with, or no access to soap.” Such conditions are typical of the American prison system.
Cuomo: We have to plan to ‘pivot back to economic functionality’ – New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said Monday the state has to begin planning to move forward economically after shutting down all nonessential businesses in response to the coronavirus pandemic. “There has to be a balance, or parallel tracks that we’re going down,” Cuomo said at his daily briefing, in terms of public health and economic viability. “I take total responsibility for shutting off the economy in terms of nonessential workers, but we also have to start to plan the pivot back to economic functionality. You can’t stop the economy forever,” he added. President Trump signaled he may lift restrictions intended to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, tweeting late Sunday night that “we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.” He added that the White House will make a decision “as to which way we want to go” after the end of the 15-day period implemented in the White House plan released last week. Asked about Trump’s remarks, Cuomo said “you have to walk and chew gum in life,” adding that no executive has the “luxury of being one-dimensional.” “I am very proud of the measures we’ve taken to address this public health crisis,” Cuomo said. “But I’m also very aware you cannot – it is unsustainable to run this state or run this country with the economy closed down,” he added. The governor said officials are looking to create a plan to get the economy back up and running while also taking public health strategy into consideration.
Coronavirus Cases Top 366,000: $2 Trillion Stimulus Deal Close, Fed Steps Up As U.S. GDP Could Crash 50% Amid Coronavirus Market Crash –Coronavirus cases in the U.S. surged above 40,000 Monday, as Covid-19 infections topped 366,000 worldwide. The U.S. is accounting for more new virus cases than any other country. Senate Democrats blocked Congress a $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package Sunday. The Federal Reserve signaled it’ll buy unlimited assets to support the economy after a top Fed official said U.S. GDP could contract 50% in the second quarter. With the stimulus bill in doubt, the Dow Jones fell sharply Monday morning, despite a premarket bounce after the Federal Reserve vowed to buy assets “in the amounts needed.” The Dow Jones pared losses in volatile afternoon trading after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said a stimulus deal is close, echoing Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. More states are under stay-at-home orders. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Tenn., tested positive for the coronavirus. Two more senators self-quarantined, making a total of five Republicans unavailable for any stimulus vote. U.S. coronavirus cases climbed 7,309 so far on Monday to 40,855. The U.S. is behind only China and Italy in terms of total confirmed coronavirus cases. U.S. coronavirus deaths have climbed to 483.The U.S. added 9,339 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, far more than any other country.New York state has 20,875 Covid-19 cases, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday morning. Most of those are in New York City itself.New York officials have been among the most vocal in warning of shortages of key medical equipment and protective gear, calling on federal aid and supplies. FEMA Director Peter Gaynor said Sunday that the federal government is prioritizing supplies to hard-hit states such as New York, Washington and California.”I think that the scenes out of New York are going to be shocking,” former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said on CBS’ “Face The Nation” on Sunday. “I think that the hospitals in the next two weeks are going to be at the brink of being overwhelmed.” The Federal Reserve said it will continue to buy assets “in the amounts needed to support smooth market functioning.” Over the past week, the Fed and central banks around the world have been stepping up extraordinary monetary stimulus. The Fed has ramped up its buys of Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities. It’s already quickly burning through the “at least $700 billion” in asset buys the Fed promised, though it set no ceiling.
New York’s infection “attack rate” is five times higher than the rest of the US, health expert warns – New York, the hardest-hit state in the US, now has 21,689 coronavirus cases and 157 deaths.New York City alone has 13,119 cases. At least 2,213 of those patients are hospitalized and 525 are in the intensive care unit. Earlier today, health expert Dr. Deborah Birx said at a news briefing with President Donald Trump that the greater New York City area has an “attack rate close to one in a thousand” — five times higher than what other areas are experiencing. Some 28% of tests in New York are positive, she said — compared to less than 8% in the rest of the country. “(New Yorkers are) the group that needs to absolutely social distance and self isolate at this time. Clearly the virus had been circling there for a number of weeks to have this level of penetrance into the community,” she said. There are 381,293 cases of novel coronavirus and 16,508 deaths globally, according to the Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking figures from the World Health Organization and additional sources. For the first time in six days, China has reported a new case of coronavirus in Hubei province — ground zero for the pandemic. Mainland China reported 78 new cases on Monday, of which 74 were imported, and seven new deaths, according to the National Health Commission. A total of 73,159 patients in mainland China have recovered and been discharged from hospital. At least 16 states have issued stay-at-home orders, which will impact 142 million people, or 43% of the US population, according to data compiled by CNN using US Census population estimates.Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed the most stringent social restrictions on the British public since the end of World War II. The public is being told stay at home, with exceptions for shopping for basic necessities; one form of exercise a day; medical need; and, for designated key workers, traveling to and from work. Cuba is limiting travel to and within its borders. From Tuesday, all schools will be closed for a month and the government will “regulate” Cubans ability to leave the communist-run island. South Africa will enforce a three-week lockdown starting at midnight on March 26. Zimbabwe announced the closure of all borders, except for returning residents and cargo, effective immediately. The Netherlands will ban all public gatherings until June 1. More than 750 million people across India are under lockdown. Italy has confirmed 601 new coronavirus-related deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of fatalities to 6,077 and 63,927 cases. US state health officials reported more than 100 coronavirus-related deaths in a single day for the first time during the outbreak. There are at least 42,663 cases of the coronavirus in the US, and 541 people have died.
COVID-19 begins to rip through homeless population as 30 test positive in New York City shelters – On Tuesday, 30 cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in 22 different homeless shelters in New York City. Given the still limited testing for the virus in the New York area and the crowded and unsanitary conditions in homeless shelters, the real number of infections is undoubtedly many times higher. Eight of those infected have been hospitalized, while five of the individuals who tested positive have left the shelter system. New York City is currently the center of the coronavirus pandemic in the US. As of Tuesday, New York state had 26,638 confirmed cases, and New York City had over 15,500. New York thus accounts for 7 percent of the world total of coronavirus cases and has an infection rate of 1 per 1,000 residents, on a par with that of Italy. Among those at particular risk of getting infected and dying from COVID-19 is the city’s huge homeless population, which is around 80,000 people on any given day. In 2018-2019, 114,000 children experienced homelessness. That is one in ten school children in the city, an increase of 70 percent over the past decade. Around 44,000 of them lived in shelters. The particular vulnerability of the homeless population, like that of prison inmates and immigrants in detention facilities, has long been known and medical journals have warned of the spread of COVID-19 to these locations. On March 11, the leading medical journal The Lancet published a report warning that the homeless are extremely vulnerable to the virus for a number of reasons linked to their abject poverty. Accommodations used by the homeless provide perfect conditions for the rapid spread of the contagion. Shelters see high numbers of individuals living in proximity, and many of them have been brought together from various parts of the city and may have interacted with hundreds of people. New York’s shelters rarely provide adequate access to hygiene supplies and facilities, and placement in them is only available to those listed in the city’s homeless database. Those who are not registered are often thrown onto the street. For the unsheltered, the unsanitary conditions of encampments, abandoned buildings, and sidewalks also contribute to the spread of the disease. A 25-year old worker at a family shelter in New York City told the WSWS that the city was not doing anything to alleviate the significant pressures and dangers facing people in the shelters. “They’re not even giving the families hand sanitizers. My shelter has 70-75 families. Everything is set up in apartment style and people are in each other’s face.”
Upstate Counties Urge New York City Residents to Stay in Primary Homes – The coronavirus outbreak has led three upstate counties to encourage New York City residents, many of whom have second homes in the area, to remain in their primary homes.Sullivan, Greene and Delaware counties, all in the Hudson Valley north of New York, have urged their residents to remove short-term rental listings online and suggested that people with second homes in the area consider staying away.”I want them to be aware of what they’re putting themselves into,” said Shaun Groden, Greene County’s county administrator, who referred to people seeking to stay in the area to get away from the virus.”Our concern is that we don’t have a hospital,” he said. “The mountains have what we call the ‘Mountain Top,’ which is where the majority of second homes are. It has like two doctors.” Mr. Groden said about 30% of the homes in the area are second homes. He also points to a rush of people who have already come to the area and overwhelmed local grocery stores because they are hoarding, he said. Many stores were unprepared in what is usually a quiet time before tourism revives in the summer. Sullivan County Public Health Director Nancy McGraw said in an email, “our message was a plea to consider the ramifications and resources before leaving one community for another.” “We have not experienced an enormous influx of people fleeing NYC for Sullivan County, though our local towns and supermarkets affirm they’ve seen an uptick in second homeowners and seasonal residents,” Ms. McGraw said. Ms. McGraw said the county worked with representatives from their summer community to draft the statement encouraging people to stay where they are, but that didn’t stop some from becoming upset by what was perceived as an unwelcoming statement.
Confirmed coronavirus cases in NY state surpass 30,000; Long Island has 5,545 cases – As the coronavirus pandemic continued to spread in New York, escalating to 30,000 confirmed cases across the state, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Wednesday banned basketball and other contact sports in New York City playgrounds and pleaded for more federal funding. But, even as he reported that another 5,000 cases were detected overnight, Cuomo said he saw some signs of hope.The projected rate of hospitalizations for coronavirus patients appears to be diminishing, thousands of retired medical professionals are volunteering their services to confront the crisis, and a five-star Manhattan hotel is offering to put up health care workers for free. An initial hot spot in the coronavirus outbreak in Westchester County’s New Rochelle that Cuomo called “the hottest cluster in the United States of America” has been slowed by closing schools and nonessential businesses, banning gatherings, increasing testing, and encouraging social distancing, he said. A day after harshly criticizing the federal government for failing to deliver emergency health equipment, Cuomo sounded a more conciliatory note toward President Donald Trump, but he emphasized the need for more federal help for New York.”We have ten times the problem that the next state has, which is New Jersey,” Cuomo said at a news conference in Albany.”We still have the trajectory going up. We have not turned the trajectory” of increasing coronavirus cases, he said. “Nor have we hit the apex. We’re still on the way up the mountain.”
New York: Cuomo says early signs show coronavirus distancing may be working – New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, has said officials are seeing very early signs that physical distancing may be starting to slow the spread of coronavirus in his state, but cautioned that the number of cases is still rising significantly and hospitals would soon be overwhelmed. The New York City metro area accounts for 60% of new Covid-19 cases in the US. Despite that, Cuomo said it was encouraging that hospitalizations were projected to double every 4.7 days on Tuesday, compared with Monday, when the number was doubling every 3.4 days, and Sunday, when the figure was every two days. “The arrows are headed in the right direction, and that is always better than the arrows headed in the wrong direction,” Cuomo said at a press conference Wednesday. But the virus still continues to spread quickly, and Cuomo said the “single greatest challenge” New York faces right now is a severe lack of ventilators, essential equipment for patients with potentially fatal Covid-19 infections. He said New York needs 30,000 ventilators but only has 4,000 in the current system. Cuomo said the state has purchased 7,000, and the federal government has now provided 4,000 as high-tier officials start to recognize New York’s crisis. Cuomo has said doctors would start trialling the use of one ventilator for two patients. New York City on Wednesday took further steps to decrease the density of people, announcing that some roads would be shut to cars to allow pedestrians to use them, and encouraging social and physical distancing to be observed in playgrounds. Sports that involve “close contact” such as basketball should also be avoided. Cuomo warned that if these measures to reduce the density did not work on a voluntary basis, then the city would make the guidelines mandatory. The moves came after Dr Deborah Birx, part of the White House coronavirus taskforce, said on Tuesday that about 56% of all the cases in the US, and 60% of new cases, are in the New York metro area. Mike Pence called on people who have recently left New York for other parts of the country to self-quarantine for 14 days. The vice-president said: “We have to deal with the New York City metropolitan area as a high-risk area.”
New York records 100 new coronavirus deaths in one day – New York state coronavirus deaths spiked to 385, with 100 new deaths recorded in a single day as Governor Andrew Cuomo warned residents on Thursday that the state’s situation was increasingly dire. The death toll surged to more than 1,000 nationwide in the United States. New York had 37,200 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of Thursday morning. This was an increase of nearly 6,500 cases from the night before. “Almost any scenario that is realistic will overwhelm the current capacity of the healthcare system,” Cuomo said during the briefing. The peak of the virus is expected to hit the US in about two or three weeks. Cuomo previously projected New York would need roughly 110,000 hospital beds, but now says the state would as many as 140,000. The governor also called for increased efforts to produce ventilators, necessary medical tools to deal with severe cases of COVID-19. While most patients with severe cases of COVID-19 need ventilators for three or four days, some have needed them for up to 30 days, according to reports. “We do have people who have been on for quite a period of time,” Cuomo said. “The longer stays without recovery lead to a higher death rate.” Cuomo said he was considering more drastic measures to contain the spread of the virus, including the closure of main thoroughfares in New York City, as well as certain parks and playgrounds. He has repeatedly called for increase support from the federal government. Of the total confirmed cases, 5,327 people, or about 14 percent, have been hospitalised and 1,290, or 3.4 percent, are in intensive care units, according to local media outlet Syracuse.com. “We always said this is not going to be over quickly,” Cuomo said. “I understand people are tired, but I also understand that people in this situation are stepping up to the plate and doing phenomenal work.” Public health officials in the city hunted down beds and medical equipment and called for more doctors and nurses. A makeshift morgue was set up outside Bellevue Hospital, and the city’s police, their ranks dwindling as more fall ill, were told to patrol nearly empty streets to enforce social distancing.
Coronavirus in NY: Video shows disturbing, crowded hospital ER – A shocking new Facebook video shows disturbing, crowded conditions inside the emergency room at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in Queens – with gurneys crammed side by side and sick patients waiting on chairs amid the coronavirus pandemic. “Who is the sickest patient needs to go up?” a stressed voice can be heard asking at one point. “I don’t know,” another voice answers. The video was posted Thursday by a Facebook user who received it from an anonymous hospital worker. At the time it was posted, the latest city figures showed Queens leading New York City with 7,362 reported cases of infection – the highest percentage in the five boroughs. At least 850 New Yorkers were being treated in ICUs out of 4,720 patients hospitalized citywide. A hospital spokesman declined to comment on the video, except to say that it was “unauthorized” and filmed inside the emergency room.
New York City hospitals are running out of room in their morgues, but the flow of coronavirus bodies is just starting to ramp up – New York City is running out of room to store the bodies of those who’ve died from COVID-19, a respiratory disease caused by a novel coronavirus that emerged less than 3 months ago. As increasing numbers of people die from the illness, relatively small hospital morgues around the area are filling up. That’s according to a licensed funeral director, embalmer, and body removal expert who works for a company handling transport of most COVID-19 bodies in the city. “On Sunday the morgues already seemed full,” said the mortuary professional, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of their work, adding that there are typically only one or two corpses on Sundays. (Business Insider confirmed the person’s identity.) “You have to wait for the tests to come back before making the removal for our safety,” they said, and due to a sometimes days-long lag in that testing “the death toll from COVID currently is much higher than it is in the news.” A spokesperson for FEMA independently confirmed the information with Business Insider. “FEMA’s National Response Coordination Center (NRCC) has received requests for HHS Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Teams (DMORT) from the States of Hawaii, New York, and North Carolina,” the spokesperson said in an email. “These requests are currently in the review and approval process.”
Cuomo speculates that quarantine may have backfired in some cases – Sweeping statewide quarantine orders may not have been the most effective strategy to combat the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew Cuomo conceded on Thursday, as he weighed plans to restart the economy. “We closed everything down. That was our public health strategy,” said Cuomo during an Albany press briefing. “If you re-thought that or had time to analyze that public health strategy, I don’t know that you would say ‘Quarantine everyone.'” It’s the third day in a row that Cuomo has publicly mused about quarantines and how best to eventually restart the Empire State’s shattered economy. But Wednesday, Cuomo’s answer during an hour-long news conference about quarantines – which are backed by city and state health officials – took a new turn as he speculated it might have spread the disease. “I don’t even know that that was the best public health policy. Young people then quarantined with older people, [it] was probably not the best public health strategy,” he said. “The younger people could have been exposing the older people to an infection.” So far, New York has clocked 37,258 confirmed cases and 385 deaths from COVID-19.
Older Virus Patients Face Looming ICU Bed Shortage – The need for intensive-care beds for older Americans, the population hardest hit by Covid-19, may outstrip the supply in some regions of the U.S., a Wall Street Journal analysis shows. The Journal examined the number of beds in intensive-care units available for every 100,000 people aged 60 and older in 306 U.S. health regions. Although the national average is 116 ICU beds per 100,000 people 60 and older, nearly one in five regions have fewer than 75, and six have fewer than 50. The analysis was based on data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the U.S. Census Bureau. New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show those 60 and older have so far accounted for about three-fifths of Covid-19 ICU patients in the U.S., while just one-fifth of the country’s population is in that age group. The Journal’s analysis suggests that hospitals in some communities likely won’t have enough beds available for the sickest patients of any age if the pandemic spreads more widely. ICU beds per 100,000 people aged 60 and older, by hospital referral region: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday morning that the state, currently the epicenter of the country’s Covid-19 outbreak, soon could need 40,000 ICU beds given the trajectory of infections. “Those are troubling and astronomical numbers,” he said. The Journal analysis shows that the state has about 3,800 beds, or 96 per 100,000 older residents, putting it slightly below the national average. The Manhattan health region, which includes Brooklyn, Staten Island and part of Queens, had about 1,100 ICU beds before the crisis. Areas ranking near the bottom in ICU beds per older resident in the Journal analysis include the Hackensack, N.J., Fort Myers, Fla., and Santa Cruz, Calif., regions. “We are working nonstop to protect our elderly,” said Florida’s top hospital official, Mary Mayhew, secretary of the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration. She said the state is working with hospitals to convert surgical beds to work as ICU beds, and has sent out guidance for hospitals to test every symptomatic elderly person to keep those infected from returning to senior homes.The findings also show vulnerabilities in areas that have both low levels of ICU beds and higher levels of older people with underlying health conditions such as asthma and diabetes, which are associated with higher risk from the coronavirus.
New York’s Javits Center Will Be A 2,000 Bed Hospital Within A Week – This week, the Jacob K. Javits center in New York City is being turned into a 1,000 bed hospital. That’s part of a plan to eventually turn it into a 2,000 bed hospital, according to Bloomberg. Governor Andrew Cuomo has proposed that the Center’s main showroom is broken up into four 250 bed hospitals, each about 40,000 sq. feet in size. New Jersey is taking similar measures, asking FEMA, with help from the President, to operate four pop-up hospitals. In Manhattan, the Javits centers is one of the biggest pieces of event spaces in the nation. The New York National Guard and the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers are working on preparing the center, which is slated to open over the next 7 to 10 days. The hope is that the center will house 1,000 beds for intensive care and another 1,000 for less intensive care.Governor Cuomo said: “For us a major thrust is increasing hospital capacity.”The state is expecting to need 110,000 beds as a result of the virus spread, 57,000 more than the state currently has on hand. Cuomo is also preparing an executive order to allow hospitals to increase their capacity by 50% to handle the growing number of patients. The number of infections in New York had surged past 15,000 on Sunday, making it the clear U.S. epicenter of the virus outbreak. New York now accounts for more than a third of all deaths nationwide from the virus.
Cuomo Approves ‘Splitting’ Of Ventilators As Some COVID-19 Patients Stay Intubated For Up To 30 Days – Andrew Cuomo and the federal government are battling it out over 20,000 ventilators believed to be idling in a federal stockpile, ventilators that the governor – who is enjoying a moment of celebrity thanks to his swift and reassuring response to the crisis, even as New York has emerged as the epicenter, and one of the few places where hospitals are truly overwhelmed by the crisis – badly needs.Without them, the state could see dozens of unnecessary deaths, something that would reflect poorly on the national mortality rate, and an easily preventable tragedy.As deaths spiked on Wednesday and Thursday, Cuomo proclaimed that he had given hospitals permission to split ventilators between two patients, something that can be accomplished with a minor modification, but is said to be a practice of last resort, as it greatly diminishes the quality of care, according to professional medical groups.During his Thursday press conference, Cuomo revealed that the need for ventilators is on track to be even greater than he initially anticipated, as the state is finding that patients with severe cases are staying on the ventilators longer than expected. Typically, serious respiratory illnesses requiring ventilation will have a patient hooked up for 3-4 days. For COVID-19, the range expands to 11-21 days, with some cases lasting as long as 30 days. The longer a patient is ventilated, the lower their odds of survival, Cuomo added. Because of this, the state needs three times as many ventilators as it would for other respiratory illnesses. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday made an impassioned plea for thousands of ventilators to be sent to his state within the next 14 days to deal with an expected severe shortage given the wave of patients expected to be infected with the coronavirus. He urged the Trump administration to use the Defense Production Act to get corporations to produce the equipment. And the government should also send the state the 20,000 ventilators now in a federal stockpile, he said.
EXCLUSIVE: Top CDC official warns New York’s coronavirus outbreak is just a preview – American health officials are deeply concerned that the coronavirus outbreak that has overwhelmed New York City hospitals in recent days is just the first in a wave of local outbreaks likely to strike cities across the country in the coming weeks. In an exclusive interview, Dr. Anne Schuchat, the principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said her agency is seeing early signs that the number of cases in other cities are already beginning to spike. While New York City is home to almost half the cases in the country at the moment, other cities are seeing their case counts rising at alarming rates. “We’re looking at our flu syndromic data, our respiratory illness that presents at emergency departments. Across the country there’s a number of areas that are escalating. The numbers in New York are so large that they show up, but we’re looking at increases over time and we’re really seeing some in a number of places. It would be surprising to me based on what I’ve seen about how this virus spreads if it were not going to increase in many other parts of the country,” Schuchat said. The CDC has deployed about 1,500 of its epidemiologists, scientists and experts to hot spots around the country, including the New York City area and Seattle, where the first American cases of the coronavirus emerged in January and early February. Now, Schuchat said, the CDC has dispatched teams to Louisiana, Wisconsin and Colorado, among others. Schuchat declined to name the cities that are likely to become the epicenters of new and worrying outbreaks, but New Orleans has stood out in recent days for the rapid growth in cases it has seen. Louisiana reported its first case of coronavirus on March 9; it crossed 100 cases a week later. Its case count doubled between Sunday and Wednesday, when the state reported almost 1,800 cases. Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) said Tuesday that the pace of growth in the number of confirmed cases in Louisiana was on par with countries like Italy and Spain, two of the hardest-hit nations in Europe where health systems have quickly become overwhelmed and doctors are having to make gut-wrenching decisions about rationing care.
Rhode Island Police to Hunt Down New Yorkers Seeking Refuge – Rhode Island police began stopping cars with New York plates Friday. On Saturday, the National Guard will help them conduct house-to-house searches to find people who traveled from New York and demand 14 days of self-quarantine. “Right now we have a pinpointed risk,” Governor Gina Raimondo said. “That risk is called New York City.” New York is the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., on Friday reporting a total of 44,000 cases. Rhode Island has just over 200, and it has begun an aggressive campaign to keep the virus out and New Yorkers contained, over objections from civil liberties advocates. Raimondo, a Democrat, said she had consulted lawyers and said while she couldn’t close the border, she felt confident she could enforce a quarantine. Many New Yorkers have summer houses in Rhode Island, especially in tony Newport, and the governor said the authorities would be checking there. “Yesterday I announced and today I reiterated: Anyone coming to Rhode Island in any way from New York must be quarantined,” the governor said. “By order. Will be enforced. Enforceable by law.” Raimondo signed an executive order Thursday that applies to anyone who has been in New York during the past two weeks and through at least April 25. It doesn’t apply to public health, public safety, or health-care workers. White House Calls For 14-Day Quarantine For All Leaving New York National Guard members will be stationed at the T.F. Green airport, Amtrak train stations and at bus stops. The citizen-soldiers will be following up with people at local residences. The maximum penalty for not complying: a fine of $500 and 90 days in prison. The local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union blasted the new rules, objecting to the collection of motorists’ contact information in particular. “While the Governor may have the power to suspend some state laws and regulations to address this medical emergency, she cannot suspend the Constitution,” Rhode Island ACLU executive director Steven Brown said in a statement. “Under the Fourth Amendment, having a New York state license plate simply does not, and cannot, constitute ‘probable cause’ to allow police to stop a car and interrogate the driver, no matter how laudable the goal of the stop may be.”
Coronavirus live updates: Trump considering quarantine in New York, parts of New Jersey and Connecticut; Italy deaths top 10,000 – President Trump said Saturday he may announce later in the day a federally mandated quarantine on the New York metro region, placing “enforceable” travel restrictions on people planning to leave the New York tri-state area because of the coronavirus outbreak. The news comes as the United States has become the epicenter of the pandemic, with more than 116,000 confirmed infections and 1,900 deaths. Here are some significant developments:
- The outbreak in New York – the state hit hardest so far – will reach its apex in “14 to 21 days,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) anticipated. The surgeon general warned that Detroit, New Orleans and Chicago are becoming “hotspots.”
- Italy has now seen more than 10,000 coronavirus fatalities. More than 600,000 people have been infected worldwide with 30,000 total deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
- South Korea marked a new milestone, as more coronavirus patients have been discharged than those undergoing treatment.
- Following several days of back-and-forth criticism with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), Trump granted her request for a disaster declaration, as well as one for Massachusetts.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Saturday that an infant who tested positive for the novel coronavirus has died, the youngest person in the country believed to have succumbed to the illness. An autopsy will determine whether the virus caused the death, state officials said. No other details were announced. “I want everyone to take covid-19 serious. If you haven’t been paying attention, maybe this is your wake-up call,” Illinois public health chief Ngozi Ezike said. “People of all ages and people, even healthy, will and have contracted the virus and can develop serious illness, including death.” The infant was among 13 deaths Saturday attributed to the virus, Pritzker (D) said. Illinois has reported 3,491 total known cases and 47 deaths. Although older people are more vulnerable to the illness, there have been numerous cases of youthful victims. Louisiana health officials announced Thursday that a 17-year-old from Orleans Parish died of covid-19, the disease the coronavirus causes.
US coronavirus deaths surpass 2,000 as Trump says New York quarantine ‘will not be necessary’ – New York, New Jersey and Connecticut could soon be placed under a “strong travel advisory” just as the United States topped 2,000 coronavirus-related deaths on Saturday.President Donald Trump said a quarantine will not be necessary in those states but he’s asked the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue a “strong travel advisory.”The CDC is expected to issue guidelines on the advisory Saturday night, Trump said.Earlier on Saturday, Trump tweeted that he was considering a two-week quarantine due to the pandemic, even though the governors of New York Connecticut and New Jersey were unaware of the possibility. In an interview with CNN’s Ana Cabrera Saturday evening, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said a quarantine “would be chaos and mayhem.””It’s totally opposite everything he’s been saying. I don’t think it is plausible. I don’t think it is legal.” In the past days, federal and state authorities have been scrambling to slow down the spread of the deadly virus. As of Saturday evening, 2,010 people have died in the US, according to CNN’s tally. The US surpassed Italy and China this week to become the country with the most coronavirus cases in the world and now has at least 120,000 known cases.
New Jersey Orders 9 Million Residents To ‘Stay At Home’; 86 Million Americans Now On Lockdown – Following a hint from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who suggested during a press conference earlier this week that Connecticut and New Jersey might follow suit with lockdowns of their own, NJ Gov. Phil Murphy on Saturday signed an executive order barring citizens from leaving their homes unless they’re part of the “essential” workforce.The stay-at-home order covers all of the state’s 9 million residents, and follows similar mandates that have been handed down in California, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania.Murphy insisted that residents practice social distancing when they leave the house to buy food or pick up medicine, or go to perform ‘nonessential’ jobs.“We must flatten the curve and ensure residents are practicing social distancing,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said in announcing the new restrictions. But, he added, “Even with this order in effect…life in New Jersey does not have to come to a complete standstill.”He told residents not to panic, but added “we are at war.”Starting at 9 p.m. Saturday, New Jersey residents must stay home and all nonessential businesses have to close indefinitely. All gatherings including weddings, in-person services and parties, are canceled until further notice, Murphy said. He added that the rules he laid out supersede all those set by towns or cities or counties in his state, The governor made the announcement during his Saturday press conference. “We need you to just stay home,” he said, adding that, as of 12:30 pm, the state had counted 1,327 positive tests and 16 deaths. Including New Jersey’s 9 million people, 86 million Americans are under a China- or Italy-style lockdown, or something closely approximating that.
New Jersey family hit by coronavirus see two more relatives test positive – A New Jersey woman and her daughter tested positive for the coronavirus Sunday – two additional members of the same family that saw four relatives die within days of each other and several others sickened after supposedly spreading the infection at a gathering earlier in the month. Elizabeth Fusco, 42, of Freehold, said Sunday she and her daughter, who has unspecified underlying health conditions, have tested positive for the coronavirus, the New York Post reported. Both are continuing to quarantine in their home – a step they initially took last week as their family became possibly the worst-hit in America amid the outbreak of the novel disease. Elizabeth Fusco is the youngest of 11 children. She lost her mother, two brothers, and a sister last week all to the coronavirus. It is believed the infection spread between relatives at a recent family gathering on March 10. Another relative, Gabrielle Cartagena, said on Facebook Sunday that she tested negative for the coronavirus and now just two family members remain hospitalized with the disease. Her mother is also one of the 11 children. Cartagena said she recently lost her grandmother, two uncles, and an aunt. Vincente Fusco died last Thursday at CentraState Medical Center in Freehold, one day after his mother and brother died of the virus, Roseann Paradiso Fodera, a cousin and lawyer representing the Fusco family, told NJ.com. His sister died days before. Grace Fusco, 73, a mother of 11 from Freehold, died last Wednesday at CentraState Medical Center. Her son, Carmine Fusco, a New York- and New Jersey-based horse racing trainer, died that same day at St. Luke’s University Hospital-Bethlehem Campus in Pennsylvania. Both had tested positive for the coronavirus. Sayreville Police Dept. Lt. James Novak and Sgt. Tom Sheehan on how they’re helping the community. Her daughter, 55-year-old Rita Fusco-Jackson, died March 13 at the hospital in New Jersey. She tested positive for the coronavirus after her death, which deemed her the second person in New Jersey to die from a COVID-19 illness.
Mom, sister, two brothers gone: How coronavirus ‘decimated’ a New Jersey family – An unimaginable tragedy in New Jersey may have started around the dinner table of a big Italian-American family on March 3, where health officials say the novel coronavirus was an unexpected guest.Two weeks later, the Fusco clan is reeling after the COVID-19disease killed the family matriarch and three siblings, hospitalized another three and potentially infected more than a dozen others who were at that dinner. “It’s absolutely surreal,” said Elizabeth Fusco, 42, who has lost her mother, two brothers and eldest sister within a six-day span. All of her siblings were in their 50s and her mom was 73.”It’s like the second we start to grieve one, the phone rings and there’s another person gone, taken from us forever,” she told CNN. Fusco and her remaining family are now hoping and praying that they can grieve in peace, and that matters won’t get any worse.Three of her relatives remain in hospital, while 19 of them are in self-isolation amid concerns that they, too, might be infected with the potentially deadly disease. “If they’re not on a respirator, they’re quarantined,” Roseann Paradiso Fodera, a relative and lawyer for the family, told the New York Times.
“We’re All Going To Get It” – New Jersey Top Health Official Warns – New Jersey’s top public health official, Judith Persichilli, told NJ.com some frightening news last week when she said everyone would get the virus, including her. “I’m definitely going to get it. We all are,” Persichilli said. “I’m just waiting.” At the age of 71, Persichilli is at high-risk for severe illness relating to a COVID-19 infection. She said when she gets sick, it’ll probably be mild and will last for a few days. Persichilli has studied all the COVID-19 pandemic models and consulted with experts on how best to prepare New Jersey for an outbreak. “It seemed that we were being cautious. We are really proud of ourselves. We said let’s get our emergency preparedness plan. Let’s get it documented. Let’s make sure it gets to the governor’s office and that they know what we’re doing,” She said. On Sunday, New Jersey’s COVID-19 testing center in Bergen County hit full capacity and was forced to close as confirmed virus cases increased to 1,914 with 20 deaths.
Coronavirus dashboard for March 22 –This is a new daily or nearly daily update I hope to post, including the most important metrics to show how controlled – or out of control – the cononavirus pandemic is. Hopefully the numbers will move ever closer to the tipping point where the epidemic is under control.In order to bring this pandemic under control, and prevent both health and economic catastrophes, in my opinion the US needs 2 weeks of China (total lockdown, preventing community spread) followed by 1 month of South Korea (extremely aggressive testing). The metric to be watched for testing is a ratio of 15 tests administered for every infection found (the ratio at which South Korea turned the corner).Here is the update through yesterday (March 21)
- Number and rate of increase of Reported Infections (from Johns Hopkins via arcgis.com) Number: up +7,123 to 26,747 (vs. +5,374 on March 21) Rate of increase: day/day: 36% (vs. 34.6% baseline exponential average per Jim Bianco) (and vs. 38% on March 21) In the last five days, the rate of exponential growth has actually risen from about 28% to 40% and even 50%, probably due to increased testing being able to uncover more infections.
- Number and rate of increase of testing (from COVID Tracking Project) Number: 44,068, up +7,414 vs. March 21 day/day. Rate: increase of 27% vs. number of tests previous day
- Comparison of rates of increase in documented infections vs. testing Infections +36% vs. Tests +27% day/day. Result: Infections continue to increase a faster rate than tests: i.e., we are falling further behind in testing.
- Ratio of tests to positives for infection (from COVID Tracking Project) 44,068 new tests vs. 6,165 new diagnosed infections Ratio: 7.1:1In South Korea, where aggressive testing has led to a near-total disappearance of new cases, the inflection point where the number of new daily cases plateaued was reached when the ratio of tests to new cases found reached 15:1. Any ratio less than that suggests that not enough testing is being done. Yesterday’s ratio of 7.1:1 is poor. We are way behind in the number of tests we are administering.
Death toll in the US grew by more than 100 on Monday as governors instituted even more rules – CNN – Monday was the deadliest day in the United States’ fight against the Covid-19 disease caused by the coronavirus with more than 100 new deaths reported. And Monday saw more governors taking actions such as restricting group sizes, closing bars and restaurants, and in the case of Texas, restricting medical procedures including abortions. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Gov. Greg Abbott’s order to postpone “all surgeries and procedures that are not immediately medically necessary” includes abortions that are not needed to preserve the life or health of the mother. New measures were taken in more than a dozen states. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who said his state has seen an influx of people flying in from Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, said anyone coming from those states will be told to self-quarantine for 14 days. “Today there’s over 190 direct flights from the New York City area to the state of Florida, and I would reckon, given the outbreak there, that every single flight has somebody on it who’s positive for Covid-19,” DeSantis said. More than 42,000 people in the United States have been infected with coronavirus, and at least 515 people have died. At least 15 states have issued stay-at-home orders that are either in effect or will take effect this week. More than 137 million Americans live in states that will have those new rules in place by Wednesday. And in other states, mayors in cities such as Denver and San Antonio are putting in place similar orders. The country’s top health official said the number of cases isn’t subsiding. “I want America to understand — this week, it’s going to get bad,” US Surgeon General Jerome Adams told NBC’s “Today” show Monday. “We really, really need everyone to stay at home. I think that there are a lot of people who are doing the right things, but … we’re finding out a lot of people think this can’t happen to them.” President Trump acknowledged the effects of coronavirus are likely to worsen. “Certainly this is going to be bad,” Trump said, agreeing with the surgeon general. “We’re trying to make it much much less bad,” Trump added. “Obviously the numbers are going to increase with time and then they’re going to decrease.”
So Far, The Number Of Americans That Have Died From COVID-19 Is Greater Than The Number That Have Recovered – One of the great mysteries of this coronavirus pandemic has been the widely varying death rates that we have been witnessing all over the world. For example, South Korea has had 8,981 confirmed cases so far. Of those cases that have been resolved one way or the other, 111 victims have died and 3,166 victims have recovered. So that would seem to indicate a very low death rate in that nation. But in Italy, things are very different. Up to this point, there have been 59,138 confirmed cases. Of the cases that have been resolved, 5,476 victims have died and 7,024 have recovered. Needless to say, that would seem to indicate a very, very high death rate in Italy. Nobody really knows why this is happening. Scientists in China claim that there is more than one strain of the coronavirus and that one is more deadly than the other. So it has been theorized that the strain hitting Italy and other European countries is different than the strain that is affecting South Korea.Alternatively, there are some that believe that certain pain killers used in the western world greatly accelerate the multiplication of the virus, and this is something that I wrote about a few days ago. But the truth is that we really don’t know for sure why death rates in different countries are so vastly different. At this moment, there are 34,717 confirmed cases, but the vast majority of them will not be resolved for some time. Of those cases that have reached a final resolution, 452 have died, and only 178 have recovered.
This is what exponential growth looks like: 2,500,000 infected in the next 15 days, 50,000 deaths – I had originally planned on limiting this post to the next 10 days. But then the Buffoon-in-Chief tweeted this: So let’s look at the number of diagnosed infections and deaths in the US by the time Trump gets around to deciding what to do. Bottom line: about 2.5 million *diagnosed* infections, and about 50,000 deaths baked in the cake at a 2% mortality rate, if the current exponential rate of spreading continues. Let me start by revisiting Jim Bianco’s March 10 graph one last time. At the time he put up the graph, there were 959 diagnosed coronavirus cases in the US: That’s the information he had to work with. He deduced an exponential growth rate of 34.6% per day. Using that, he projected that over the next 10 days ending March 21, there would be 24,275 diagnosed cases: Since then, I have pointed out how close to accurate those projections were. I’ll spare you the day by day count, but now that we have the actual numbers, here’s the actual vs. projected cases as of March 21: Bianco’s projections weren’t perfect, but they were stunningly close. So now let’s take that same 34.6% growth rate and project it forward 15 days, starting with the actual March 21 number: 2% of the April 5 number is 50,037. That number won’t appear for another week or two later, because of the lag between onset of infection and death, but it will be, as I said above, “baked in the cake.” That’s where the US will be, if the current exponential growth rate of diagnosed coronavirus infections continues, when Trump finally gets around to “deciding” what to do. Hopefully, since “social distancing” really took off about 10 days ago, later on this week we’ll see it starting to have a downward impact on the trajectory of this growth. By the way: while Bianco hasn’t updated his graph, this morning Mike Shedlock a/k/a Mish, did a nice exponential extrapolation of actual cases. Here it is: He has cases crossing the 1 million threshold on April 3 rather than April 2. I have criticized Shedlock’s economic analysis many times, but I have always appreciated that he takes a deep dive into the numbers. Hats off for this graph.
Despite White House claims, Roche CEO says US COVID-19 testing capacity continues to be limited – On Monday, Severin Schwan, CEO of Swiss diagnostics company Roche, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the United States’ ability to conduct tests to detect the virus that causes COVID-19 infections continues to remain constrained. This comes despite repeated promises by the White House that these tests, numbering in the millions, would soon be available across the nation. “No doubt, ideally, we would have broader testing,” Schwan said. “But at the moment, capacities are limited. I think this is still a couple of weeks, if not months, out and the reason is very simple.” Schwan said that in the past week, Roche had distributed almost 400,000 test kits across the country. However, because the virus is spreading so quickly throughout communities, companies are currently not able to manufacture them quickly enough. “The industry is increasing capacities, but at the same time, infection rates are even increasing faster. At the moment, capacities are limited. That is why we have to prioritize testing to higher-risk patients.” For several weeks running, the World Health Organization has been emphatically counseling all nations to test every suspected case. “If they test positive, isolate them and find out who they have been in contact with two days before they develop symptoms and test those people, too.” The testing is critical to determine not only who is infected but where the virus is spreading. These vital data allow epidemiologists and public health officials to allocate resources to areas becoming affected and stop the transmission of the infection deeper into communities. However, due to the disastrous efforts by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to roll out their test kits to states and local labs, the US has been flying blind through the outbreak since the beginning and up to the present moment, in which the epicenter for the pandemic is shifting to the US and now seeing daily new cases approaching 10,000. Health care workers and the public, in general, are vexed by the constant lying by the Trump administration and the assortment of flunkies that attempt to downplay the deadly seriousness of this disease.
‘Atypically High’ Levels Of Fever With Flu-Like Symptoms Detected In Florida — A surge in seasonal illness linked to fever – specifically ‘influenza-like illness’ – has been observed in Florida, according to a ‘US Health Weather Map’ provided by smart thermometer manufacturer Kinsa in collaboration with Oregon State University. The map uses anonymized data from users to flag “anomalously high” cases by comparing it to expected seasonal flu trends (read more here). The map shows two key data points: (1) the illness levels we’re currently observing, and (2) the degree to which those levels are higher than the typical levels we expect to see at this point in the flu season. (Details on how we calculate this are available in our technical approach document.) We believe this latter data point – which we’re calling “atypical illness”, may in some cases be connected to the COVID-19 pandemic. –Healthweather.usKinsa says in a disclaimer that they are “not stating that this data represents COVID-19 activity. However we would expect to pick up higher-than-anticipated levels of flu-like symptoms in our data in areas where the pandemic is affecting large numbers of people.” In Florida, restaurants are still open. Many localities have closed beaches but there is no statewide closure or enforcement. Florida notably has a shortage of test kits, and is limiting COVID-19 testing to those who have been referred by their doctor based on CDC guidelines.”I think to be perfectly honest the amount of supplies that were needed have caught everyone off guard,” said Carmen Wiley, Chief Medical Officer for the Veravas, a laboratory medicine company. “We have to use the materials we have judiciously.”
Fatal Coronavirus Outbreak at Assisted Living Center Is Grim Reminder That Both Residents and Staff Are at Risk – Richard Curren and his wife, Sheila, were living out their retirement at Atria Willow Wood, a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, assisted living facility near their daughter and two grandchildren, when he started feeling weak and had trouble breathing.By the early morning of March 16, the burly 77-year-old was gone. He was the first of three residents at Atria Willow Wood to die from the coronavirus.Four days later, the assisted living facility reported that a second resident died from the disease. The 93-year-old man, whose name was not released, had initially tested negative. And over the weekend, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis confirmed a third death during a briefing with reporters.Amid heightened fears over the spread of the coronavirus throughout densely populated South Florida, the assisted living facility has become a worrisome hot spot. At least seven residents who were hospitalized tested positive, and results were pending for five others, according to Mike Gentry, senior vice president of care. The Atria Willow Wood outbreak is a grim reminder of the vulnerability of residents and staff in assisted living facilities, nursing homes and other senior care centers, where the virus has been rapidly spreading.Nationwide, at least 73 nursing homes and senior care centers have reported infections, according to a Washington Post review published Saturday of reports and announcements from states, local media and nursing homes. At least 55 coronavirus deaths can be linked to such facilities, but the number is likely higher, The Post reported.A deadly outbreak that killed 35 people at a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington, was the first to reveal the havoc the virus could cause in elder care communities, where susceptible residents live in tight quarters and regularly interact with each other, staff members and visitors.In some states such as Florida, leaders and industry representatives have broadened measures to slow the spread, barring visitors and limiting residents’ interactions. But the cases persist. In New Orleans, five people died after being exposed to the virus at a senior living center. Another 32 people – including 16 residents, 14 staff members and two visitors – were symptomatic after possible exposure at an Ohio assisted living facility. In Florida, at least 19 long-term care facilities had either suspected or confirmed cases of the virus as of Wednesday, said Mary Mayhew, head of the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration. State leaders have declined to identify the homes, providing only the counties where such exposures were identified, and have not offered more recent information.
DeSantis orders quarantine of N.Y., N.J., Conn. airline passengers – Gov. Ron DeSantis has been under fire from Democrats and some in the media for taking a slower approach to the coronavirus outbreak than some other governors. Guess it was time to show them he could wield a hammer. The governor put out an executive order Monday evening directing that airline passengers arriving in the state from New York, Connecticut or New Jersey must be quarantined or isolated for 14 days after they arrive here. (Let’s set aside the lingering legal questions, and it wasn’t that long ago DeSantis said he didn’t think he even had the legal authority to ban large gatherings in the state.) This sends a message, and not just to Democrats who have ramped up their rhetoric in the last few days. DeSantis has been asking President Donald Trump to restrict domestic travel – and he apparently did it again this weekend during a call with his ally. It didn’t work. “They thought we were going to have bans from within the United States,” Trump told reporters Monday. “We’re not going to do that.” DeSantis’ actions followed mounting frustration over his attempts to step up restrictions while dealing with people traveling into the state from a known hot spot. One apparent key moment? When the governor got the actual number of flights (190) still heading into the state. And amid this dust-up, DeSantis made it clear he still has no plans to issue a statewide order for people to stay at home like governors in New York, New Jersey and Illinois have done. He gave his most forceful remarks on the topic right before he announced his latest plans. “If you look at the Florida situation right now, this is not a virus impacting every corner of the state,” DeSantis said, adding a stay-at-home directive would ultimately be a “blunt instrument” against Floridians. Time to pound New Yorkers instead.
Coronavirus travel: Restrictions, isolation in Florida, Hawaii, Alaska -Travelers looking to escape to the sunny beaches of Florida and Hawaii or the mountains of Alaska during the coronavirus outbreak may want to reconsider as the states mandate visitor quarantines to keep the virus from spreading in their communities. Governors in both Alaska and Hawaii have issued orders mandating a 14-day quarantine for all visitors and residents arriving at state airports. Alaska’s order goes into effect Wednesday and will be reviewed by April 21. Hawaii’s order is effective Thursday.Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also issued an executive order requiring anyone flying to Florida from New York, New Jersey or Connecticut to self-isolate for 14 days upon arrival. That mandate took effect Tuesday. Alaska, Florida and Hawaii are the first states to place restrictions on domestic travelers. President Donald Trump has not ordered any domestic travel restrictions but did recommend that Americans avoid “discretionary travel” during the 15 days that the country is asked to follow guidelines aimed at containing the coronavirus. Trump, who rolled out the guidelines March 16, has signaled that they won’t last much beyond March 31. “America will again and soon be open for business. Very soon,” Trump said at the White House press briefing Monday.
New Orleans emerges as next coronavirus epicenter, threatening rest of South – (Reuters) – New Orleans is on track to become the next coronavirus epicenter in the United States, dimming hopes that less densely populated and warmer-climate cities would escape the worst of the pandemic, and that summer months could see it wane. The plight of New Orleans – with the world’s highest growth rate in coronavirus cases – also raises fears that the city may become a powerful catalyst in spreading the virus across the south of the country. Authorities have warned the number of cases in New Orleans could overwhelm its hospitals by April 4. New Orleans is the biggest city in Louisiana, the state with the third-highest case load of coronavirus in the United States on a per capita basis after the major epicenters of New York and Washington. The growth rate in Louisiana tops all others, according to a University of Louisiana at Lafayette analysis of global data, with the number of cases rising by 30% in the 24 hours before noon on Wednesday. On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump issued a major federal disaster declaration for the state, freeing federal funds and resources. Some 70% of Louisiana’s 1,795 confirmed cases to date are in the New Orleans metro area. The culprit for the rapid spread of coronavirus in the Big Easy? Some blame Carnival. “Mardi Gras was the perfect storm, it provided the perfect conditions for the spread of this virus,” said Dr. Rebekah Gee, who until January was the Health Secretary for Louisiana and now heads up Louisiana State University’s health care services division. She noted that Fat Tuesday fell on Feb. 25, when the virus was already in the United States but before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and national leaders had raised the alarm with the American public. “New Orleans had its normal level of celebration, which involved people congregating in large crowds and some 1.4 million tourists,” Gee said. “We shared drink cups. We shared each other’s space in the crowds. People were in close contact catching beads. It is now clear that people also caught coronavirus.” Gee said that the explosive growth rate of the coronavirus in the Mississippi River port city means “it’s on the trajectory to become the epicenter for the outbreak in the United States.”
U.S. Coronavirus Update as Death Toll Hits 400, ‘Stay at Home’ Orders issued for Michigan, Massachusetts – Cases of the novel coronavirus in the U.S. have now surpassed 35,200, while the death toll has reached nearly 445. Most of the cases are within New York, Washington state and California, according to the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University.The virus has affected more than 353,000 people globally and more than 100,000 people have recovered from infection to date, while the global death toll has climbed past 15,400.More cases of the virus, which was first reported in China’s Wuhan city of the Hubei province, have now been reported outside China than within. The country has seen nearly 81,400 people infected, more than 70,000 of whom have recovered. The country claims the outbreak has now largely been contained, having reported only one new domestic case on Sunday, its first in four days. New York’s death toll has surpassed that of Washington state, with at least 153 fatalities reported so far, while has seen 92 deaths.The state is home to nearly half of the total confirmed cases in the country, with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo saying on Monday that 20,875 people had tested positive for COVID-19. The state has issued a “stay at home” order mandating “100 percent of the workforce must stay home, excluding essential services,” the governor’s office confirmed in a statement on Sunday. The latest mandate could be in place for up to nine months, Cuomo warned.All casinos, gyms, theaters, shopping malls, amusement parks and bowling alleys have been closed until further notice while bars and restaurants were limited to offering only takeout services. All residents aged 70 and over and anyone with compromised immune systems must:
- Remain indoors;
- Can go outside for solitary exercise;
- Pre-screen all visitors by taking their temperature;
- Wear a mask in the company of others; and
- Stay at least six feet from others.
Coronavirus forces states to order nearly one in three Americans to stay home – (Reuters) – Nearly one in three Americans was under orders on Sunday to stay home to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic as Ohio, Louisiana and Delaware became the latest states to enact broad restrictions, along with the city of Philadelphia. The three states join New York, California, Illinois, Connecticut and New Jersey, home to 101 million Americans combined, as cases nationwide topped 32,000, with more than 415 dead, according to a Reuters tally. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2w7hX9T) “Every piece of evidence that I can lay my hands on indicates that we’re at an absolutely crucial time in this war and what we do now will make all the difference in the world,” said Ohio Governor Mike DeWine. “What we do now will slow this invader. It will slow this invader so our healthcare system … will have time to treat casualties.” Ohio has 351 cases and three deaths, while Louisiana has 837 cases and 20 deaths, several in a senior-care facility. Louisiana has the third highest number of cases per capita and saw a 10-fold increase in cases in the past week, Governor John Bel Edwards said. Ohio’s order will go into effect at midnight EDT on Monday and stay in effect until April 6. Louisiana’s order goes into effect at 5 p.m. CDT on Monday and lasts through April 12. Delaware’s order starts at 8 a.m. EDT on Tuesday. Dallas County in Texas, home to over 2.5 million people, and Philadelphia, with 1.6 million residents, told non-essential businesses on Sunday to close and residents to stay home. In Kentucky, non-essential businesses must close by 8 p.m. EDT on Monday but authorities stopped short of ordering residents to stay home.
Inslee orders residents of Washington state to stay home amid coronavirus outbreak – Gov. Jay Inslee (D) ordered Monday that the residents of Washington state stay at home as much as possible as the coronavirus outbreak continues to hit the state hard. Inslee announced the stay-at-home order in a live televised address to the state, saying residents have to remain home unless they are “pursuing an essential activity,” including grocery shopping, doctor appointments or essential work duties. All gatherings of people in public and private groups will be banned, including weddings and funerals. “This is a human tragedy on a scale we cannot yet project,” Inslee said. “It’s time to hunker down in order to win this fight.” The order will go into effect immediately and last for at least two weeks, the governor said. He added that the order is “enforceable by law.” “The fastest way to get back to normal is to hit this hard,” the governor said during his address. All nonessential Washington businesses will need to close within 48 hours. The state defines essential workplaces as restaurants for take-out and delivery, pharmacies, food banks, convenience stores, banks and laundromats, The Seattle Times reported. The Washington governor assured residents in a tweet that they can still go outside. “Take a walk. Ride a bike. Garden. But you must remain six feet away from everyone at all times,” he posted.
Health officials: 131 new COVID-19 cases, state total rises to 777 with 9 coronavirus-related deaths – There are now 777 confirmed coronavirus cases in Massachusetts, up from 646 cases on Sunday, health officials announced Monday. Nine deaths have been reported.The cases involve 399 men and 378 women. Seventy-nine of the patients have been hospitalized, 286 not hospitalized and 412 are under investigation.Thirty are from Barnstable County, 26 are from Berkshire County, 25 are from Bristol County, 1 from Dukes and Nantucket, 73 from Essex County, 2 from Franklin County, 15 from Hampden County, 6 from Hampshire County, 232 from Middlesex County, 82 from Norfolk County, 32 from Plymouth County, 154 from Suffolk County, 42 from Worcester County and 57 are unknown, according to the DPH.The nine people who died, including six men and three women, ranged in age from 50s to 90s, health officials said.Three of the six men were from Suffolk County, the other three were from Norfolk, Hampden, and Berkshire counties. The three women were from Worcester, Essex, and Middlesex counties. As of 4 p.m. Monday, 8,922 Massachusetts residents have been tested for COVID-19 by the State Public Health Laboratory and commercial and clinical labs, up from 6,004 residents on Sunday.Of the 777 positive cases, 99 have been linked to the Biogen conference at the Long Wharf hotel in Boston.Symptoms of coronavirus include fever, cough, and shortness of breath, according to the CDC. Reported worldwide illnesses have ranged from mild symptoms to severe illness and death.
March 24 Update: US COVID-19 Tests per Day #TestAndTrace –Tests per day is a key number to track (along with actual cases and, sadly, deaths). But total tests were a key for South Korea slowing the spread of COVID-19. South Korea has been conducting 15,000 tests per day with a 51 million population, so the US needs to test around 100,000 per day.
Note: NYC and LA have stopped testing mild cases due to resource constraints. Hopefully testing will continue to improve, and we can test more people – this is important for test-and-trace. The US conducted 63,851 tests in the last 24 hours. Note: About 15% of tests were positive (red line, ht: NDD) in the most recent report (some are still pending). The high percentage of positives indicates limited testing. For Test-and-trace to be effective, the percent positive would probably be at 5% or less.This data is from the COVID Tracking Project. Some states could do a better job of reporting the number of tests – so this is probably low.Testing is improving, but needs to double from here to be sufficient for test-and-trace. Test. Test. Test. But protect our healthcare workers first!
Coronavirus dashboard for March 24 – Here is the update through yesterday (March 23) In order to succeed in containing the pandemic, I believe that the US needs 2 weeks of China (nearly complete lockdown) followed by at least a month of South Korea (very aggressive and widespread testing). At minimum, that means at least 50% of the US population under lockdown and a ratio of 15:1 in tests to results showing infection. The recent exponential growth of about 35% per day must be stopped. Those three most important metrics are starred (***) below.
Number and rate of increase of Reported Infections (from Johns Hopkins via arcgis.com)
- Number: up +11,226 to 46,450 (vs. +8,477 on March 23)
- ***Rate of increase: day/day: 32% (vs. 34.6% baseline and vs. 32% on March 22)
Number and rate of increase of testing (from COVID Tracking Project)
- Number: 65,840, up +21,772 vs. March 23 day/day
- Rate: increase of 49% vs. number of tests previous day
Comparison of rates of increase in documented infections vs. testing
- Infections +32% vs. Tests +49% day/day
- Result: for the first time, testing has increased at a faster rate than infections. Testing is beginning to catch up.
Ratio of tests to positives for infection (from COVID Tracking Project)
- Number: 65,840 new tests vs. 10,296 new diagnosed infections
- ***Ratio: 6.4:1
In South Korea, where aggressive testing has led to a near-total disappearance of new cases, the inflection point where the number of new daily cases plateaued was reached when the ratio of tests to new cases found reached 15:1. Any ratio less than that suggests that not enough testing is being done. Yesterday’s ratio of 6.4:1 is poor. We remain way behind in the number of tests we are administering. Bottom line: as of March 23, a lot of progress has been made on the State level, as well as the number of tests administered. The first benefits of “social distancing” may be beginning to show up. But it is still not enough. More States need to follow suit with lockdowns, well over 100,000 tests a day need to be administered. Those States which have gone to lockdowns need to cooperate regionally in quarantining incoming visitors.
Bureau of Prisons Imposes 14-Day Quarantine -The federal Bureau of Prisons on Tuesday said it has imposed a 14-day mandatory quarantine for all new inmates entering any of its facilities, a challenging directive for the nation’s crowded prisons as they try to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The effort came as bipartisan pressure mounted for the Trump administration to transfer at-risk inmates to home detention and as civil-rights groups urged President Trump to commute the sentences of sick and elderly prisoners who could benefit from compassionate release. Health experts have long warned that a disease outbreak could devastate jail and prison populations. The federal system’s roughly 175,000 inmates share tight quarters, spend much of their time together and often have what prison-reform advocates have described as inadequate access to health care. “It’s chaos, and it’s going to get worse,” said Joe Rojas, Southeast regional vice president of the Council of Prison Locals, who works at FCC Coleman in Florida. Three inmates and at least three employees within the federal prison system have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the bureau’s website, though union officials said at least eight employees have tested positive, with others in quarantine. Federal prisons have suspended visitation, limited inmate movement and are separating groups during meals and recreation time, among other measures, inmates and officials said. But union leaders doubted such measures would be enough to stop the spread of the virus, and some inmates are pessimistic as well.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine issues ‘stay-at-home’ order to contain spread of coronavirus (WOIO) – Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and state health officials addressed the public at 2 p.m. with the latest COVID-19 mitigation measures and updates. As of Sunday morning, at least 27,004 people across every state, plus Washington, D.C., and three U.S. territories, have tested positive for coronavirus, and at least 340 people have died from the disease. In Ohio, 351 people have been infected with COVID-19 across 40 counties. And three elderly men, from Cuyahoga, Erie and Lucas counties, have passed away due to the illness in the past week.And worldwide, 318,209 cases have been confirmed. Of those cases, 13,672 people died and 94,700 people recovered.
- Gov. Mike DeWine issues “stay-at-home” order. The order will take effect at 11:59 p.m. on Monday, and will last through at least April 6. State officials have released the full details of the “stay-at-home” order, which can be found here.
- Ohioans may leave home for essential activities. This includes shopping for food, supplies and medicine, and taking care of family members.
- First responders and health care workers will continue to report to work, but non-essential businesses will close. Restaurants offering carry-out services will remain open.
- Residents are allowed to go outside, but they are not permitted at playgrounds.
- “We are at an absolutely crucial time in this war, and what we do now will make all the difference in the world,” DeWine said.
- Child day cares will be limited to six children per room, starting March 26. This measure will last through at least April 30.
Ohio reports 442 confirmed coronavirus cases, 6 deaths – – Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton provided an update on the coronavirus outbreak during their daily briefing Monday afternoon. As of Monday, there were 442 confirmed cases, resulting in 104 hospitalizations and six deaths, the Ohio Department of Health said. The deaths are in Cuyahoga, Erie, Franklin, Lucas and Stark counties. More deaths are under investigation, Acton said. Illness onset dates are between Feb. 7 and March 23. The ages are infant to 93 years old. Acton said we are very limited in our testing right now. There are numerous clusters under investigation. She said they stopped reporting the number of persons under investigation because testing is now happening in the public and private sector. Where are we on the coronavirus curve? “On a sharp way up,” Acton said. Acton applauded the work in the state’s nursing homes. She also said primary care doctors will be getting new guidelines for treating the virus soon, including using telemedicine and taking detailed family histories to keep people out of health care facilities. “Some of our greatest spreads are in our nursing homes and hospitals,” Acton said. The state’s top health official said we must stop the spread while we are building up resources, like equipment, hospitals beds and bringing physicians out of retirement to operate hotlines “The most important thing we can all do right now is stay at home, unless you are absolutely essential to those lifelines of food, water, the transportation that supports that, our health care services, our front line workers,” Acton said. On Monday, DeWine ordered an immediate hiring freeze in state government, except for those directly involved in fighting coronavirus. He said he will meet with cabinet members to cut budgets. When asked if he plans to tap into the state’s rainy day fund, DeWine said, “It’s raining,” but said we need to cut back on spending. DeWine also said he hopes to align the state’s tax filing deadline with the federal changes, but that will be up to the state legislature. Beginning Thursday, childcare providers must have a temporary childcare license. There cannot be more than six kids per room. DeWine said they must reserve the spots for parents who are health care workers, first responders, pharmacy staff and nursing home workers. Coronavirus cases by Ohio county:
Coronavirus: Franklin County cases see large jump as infection spreads – News – The Columbus Dispatch – Cases of coronavirus reported in Franklin County spiraled on Tuesday as Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine shared President Donald Trump’s frustration — but not his thinking — in hoping to liberate America from economy-choking public-health restrictions by Easter. “The truth is protecting people and protecting the economy are not mutually exclusive. In fact, one depends on the other,” DeWine said. “When people are dying and people don’t feel safe, the economy is not going to come back.” With Ohioans ordered to stay home on Tuesday in the first of at least 14 days, state health officials announced two more deaths and 122 more coronavirus cases, a jump of 28% from Monday’s figures. The state now has recorded 564 cases of the contagious infection, including 75 in Franklin County as its reported number of cases jumped by 31 or 70% on Tuesday, according to state health figures. However, Columbus Public Health on Tuesday afternoon reported 51 cases in its jurisdiction (which includes Worthington) and Franklin County Public Health reported 28 cases for a total of 79. State health director Dr. Amy Acton said increasing numbers in big cities were not unexpected and attributed the sudden jump in the Columbus area to increased testing. The state now has seen 564 cases of the contagious infection. The number of statewide cases stood at three on March 9, a little more than two weeks ago, when Franklin County had none. Ohio now has recorded eight deaths — including two in Franklin County — attributed to coronavirus. The new deaths on Tuesday were in Cuyahoga and Gallia counties.
Coronavirus patients exhibiting new symptoms, Ohio health director says – Patients who contract COVID-19 are showing new symptoms previously not associated with the virus, according to Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton. Acton said some of the data, particularly out of Cuyahoga County, show patients exhibiting gastrointestinal upset, more fatigue, and sometimes not showing a fever, in addition to the previous flu-like symptoms. “My best advice to everyone is if you don’t feel well in any way, stay home and make that call,” she said. Previously, symptoms of viral infection were thought to be limited to those similar to the flu – fever, tiredness, and a dry cough, with difficulty breathing in more severe cases. Patients continue to show those symptoms as well. A small study out of China found similar cases. Published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, the study found that GI upset, not previously considered to be a common symptom, were the “chief complaint” in almost half of the COVID-19 cases studied, CNN reports. Symptoms ranged from loss of appetite to diarrhea and vomiting. The study involved 204 confirmed COVID-19 patients in Hubei Province, China. Researchers warned, “If clinicians solely monitor for respiratory symptoms to establish case definitions for COVID-19, they may miss cases initially presenting with extra-pulmonary symptoms, or the disease may not be diagnosed later until respiratory symptoms emerge.” They went on to suggest that missing early GI symptoms could have contributed to the early spread of the virus among health care workers in China.
116 confirmed coronavirus cases in Ohio’s health care workers (WJW)– Of the state of Ohio’s 704 confirmed cases of coronavirus, 16 percent are health care workers. Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton said there are 116 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 in health care workers. She said they are at a higher risk so they are tested more. There are protocols in place at hospitals, doctor’s offices and nursing homes to minimize the risk to those workers, including taking employee temperatures, Acton said. She asked anyone who is ill to call before going to the doctor or emergency department. That way the workers can be prepared. Acton said they are expanding the health care workforce, by bringing back retired doctors for telehealth, using retired health department workers and training medical students.
867 coronavirus cases in Ohio, deaths rise to 15 with 223 hospitalizations – Ohio had 867 confirmed cases Thursday with 223 hospitalizations and 15 deaths. The health department said 92 people have been admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). Officials said the age range of ICU patients is between 23 to 92-years-old. Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton confirmed 145 healthcare workers have tested positive. Dr. Acton said 17,316 has been tested in the state. Cases have been confirmed in 60 counties: Cuyahoga (259), Franklin (108), Hamilton (53), Mahoning (51), Summit (50), Lorain (44), Lucas (35), Medina (24), Butler (21), Miami (20), Lake (19), Stark (16), Delaware (15), Mongomery (14), Trumbill (12), Warren (10), Portage (8), Geauga (7), Wood (6), Fairfield (6), Clermont (6), Licking (5), Columbiana (5), Marion (4), Coshocton (4), Union (3), Tuscarawas (3), Richland (3), Madison (3), Huron (3), Greene (3), Erie (3), Carroll (3), Belmont (3), Ashtabula (3), Wayne (2), Pickaway (2), Logan (2), Knox (2), Hancock (2), Defiance (2), Clinton (2), Clark (2), Champaign (2), Wyandot (1), Washington (1), Shelby (1), Seneca (1), Sandusky (1), Muskingum (1), Mercer (1), Lawrence (1), Jefferson (1), Highland (1), Gallia (1), Fayette (1), Darke (1), Crawford (1), Athens (1), Ashland (1), During the news conference Lt. Governor Husted said unemployment benefits will be applied retroactively from the day some files. Lt. Gov. Husted reiterated again not to contact local health department or police department to ask how to interpret the stay at home order, he said use your good judgement to follow the order. Governor Mike DeWine said his office has created away for the residents of Ohio to contact him. Emails came been sent to [email protected].
Coronavirus in Ohio Saturday update: 1,406 cases, 25 deaths reported – Ohio Governor Mike DeWine held his daily news conference Saturday, providing an update on the state’s effort to fight COVID-19 spread in the state. DeWine was joined by Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton, Lt. Governor Jon Husted and U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown. As of Saturday, there were 1,406 cases reported in Ohio, 344 leading to hospitalizations and 25 deaths. DeWine opened Saturday’s news conference by pointing out the production of the daily briefings was affected by a capital square employee going to the hospital with pneumonia. They are now producing each day’s briefing with a skeleton crew. That employee tested negative for COVID-19.The governor also discussed the Battelle Institute’s efforts to come up with a way to sterilize masks in order to reuse them. He called on the FDA to quickly approve the technology.”We have nurses, doctors, and others who need these masks. We would be able to sterilize 160,000 per day. This is a matter of life and death. We need to protect or people who are risking their lives,” said DeWine.Governor DeWine also urged private labs to accurately and quickly report testing data to the state. “We absolutely have to have those results, and we have to have them in real time,” said DeWine.
Coronavirus: Summit County reports 86 confirmed cases, 5 deaths – – Confirmed COVID-19 cases here and statewide continue to climb, but the state’s public health leader says the situation would be much more dire without the stay-at-home order and other efforts to slow the spread.Summit County now has a total of 86 confirmed cases, including five deaths, according to updated figures released Saturday by Summit County Public Health.As of 2 p.m. Saturday, the Ohio Department of Health reported 1,406 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 25 deaths statewide. At the time, the state was reporting 79 cases in Summit County, including four deaths.The state total includes 37 in Medina, 25 in Stark, 19 in Portage, four in Wayne and two in Ashland. Coronavirus has been identified in 66 of Ohio’s 88 counties. Confirmed cases statewide increased 24% from Friday, when 1,127 cases were reported by the state health department.
Coronavirus cases in Ohio could reach 6,000-8,000 a day -Dr. Amy Acton said based on current models, Ohio could see a surge of 6,000 to 8,000 coronavirus cases a day by the peak of the curve, which is projected to be May 1. “Remember it’s doubling in New York right now. It’s doubling every three days,” Dr. Acton said. “The more we can push that surge off the better our hospitals are getting ready and building out their systems so everyday matters.” Earlier in the press conference, Dr. Acton said the effort being made by Ohioans right now has already decreased the the virus’ impact on Ohio’s health care systems by 50 to 75 percent. She added staying at home will need to continue so that hospitals don’t become overwhelmed and run out of supplies by the time the surge hits Ohio. During Thursday’s daily briefing, Dr. Amy Acton also revealed a new interactive dashboard with the latest information on coronavirus in Ohio. As of Thursday at 2 p.m., there are 867 cases of novel coronavirus confirmed in Ohio.
Michigan has 3 times more coronavirus cases than Ohio: 2,294 v. 704. Why? – cleveland.com — Two weeks into the Midwest’s war with coronavirus, Ohio has has 704 cases of coronavirus, while Michigan has more than three times as many, at 2,294. As of Monday, Ohio, with 11.7 million residents, had 10 deaths from COVID-19; Michigan, with 10 million, had 43. Why the stark difference in neighboring states, where the first cases were confirmed one day apart? Is it the number of tests? That’s a big unknown. Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton on Wednesday said the state had 14,764 total tests. Michigan stopped reporting negative tests a week ago. The independent covidtracking.com site is weeks behind. Was it the primary election? Cleveland.com’s Andrew Tobias is investigating. Michigan’s primary was held March 10 — the day after Michigan’s first two cases, and two days after Ohio’s first three. But Ohio canceled its primary March 17. Both Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine governors closed schools March 12, starting March 16. The numbers remained close for a week before diverging radically. Now both states have ordered residents to stay at home, and nonessential businesses to close. See how the states’ timelines compare:
Detroit hospitals warn many “extremely sick” patients will be denied lifesaving treatment – As COVID-19 cases throughout the metro Detroit area soared, the Henry Ford Health system warned patients that “because of shortages,” patients who are “extremely sick” may be “ineligible for ICU or ventilator care.” In a letter to patients and families shared widely on social media, the hospital chain stated: “We currently have a public health emergency that is making our supply of some medical resources hard to find. Because of shortages, we will need to be careful with resources. Patients who have the best chance of getting better are our first priority. Patients will be evaluated for the best plan for care and dying patients will be provided comfort care.” Letter from the Henry Ford hospital system It continues, “[I]f you (or a family member) becomes ill and your doctor believes you need extra care in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) or Mechanical Ventilation (breathing machine), you will be assessed for eligibility based only on your specific condition. “Some patients will be extremely sick and very unlikely to survive their illness even with Mal treatment. Treating these patients would take away resources for patients who might survive.” The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services reported that the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the city of Detroit rose to 851 on Thursday afternoon, 146 people more than the previous day, or an increase of 21 percent. Fifteen Detroit residents have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Driven by the increase in confirmed cases in the city, the number of people with coronavirus in Wayne County, where Detroit is located, has among the most rapidly rising infection rate of any county in the US outside of New York City and New Orleans. The number of cases in Wayne County went up by 239 people on Thursday, up to a total of 1,389, or an increase of 24 percent. Local hospitals are already being overwhelmed by the number of cases, with nurses reporting that they are running out of critical supplies and that patients are dying before their test results come back positive for COVID-19. The dramatic spread of COVID-19 cases in Detroit and Wayne County is so stark that it was taken note of by Dr. Deborah Birx of the White House Coronavirus Task Force during the press briefing on Thursday. Showing that the White House is very well aware of the developing crisis in Detroit, Birx said, “We are concerned about certain counties that look like they are having a more rapid increase,” adding that Wayne County is among the “hot spots” in “urban areas or communities that serve that urban area.”
Coronavirus dashboard for March 25: decisive moves by States toward lockdowns, first signs of benefits of “social distancing” -Here is the update through yesterday (March 24) In order to succeed in containing the pandemic, I believe that the US needs 2 weeks of China (nearly complete lockdown) followed by at least a month of South Korea (very aggressive and widespread testing). At minimum, that means at least 50% of the US population under lockdown and a ratio of 15:1 in tests to results showing infection. The recent exponential growth of about 35% per day must be stopped. Those three most important metrics are starred (***) below. Yesterday we crossed two out of three of those thresholds – just over 50% of the population is under lockdown or near lockdown, and the rate of increase in new infections decelerated substantially. The amount of testing continues to fall are short of what is necessary.
Number and rate of increase of Reported Infections (from Johns Hopkins via arcgis.com)
- Number: up +8,775 to 55,225 (vs. +11,126 on March 24)
- ***Rate of increase: day/day: 19% (vs. 34.6% baseline and vs. 32% on March 23)
Number and rate of increase of testing (from COVID Tracking Project)
- Number: 65,840, down -735 vs. March 24 day/day
- Rate: decrease of -1% vs. number of tests previous day
Comparison of rates of increase in documented infections vs. testing
- Infections +19% vs. Tests -1% day/day
- Result: After appearing to improve, the rate of testing is failing abysmally again.
Ratio of tests to positives for infection (from COVID Tracking Project)
- Number: 65,105 new tests vs. 9,806 new diagnosed infections
- ***Ratio: 6.6:1
In South Korea, where aggressive testing has led to a near-total disappearance of new cases, the inflection point where the number of new daily cases plateaued was reached when the ratio of tests to new cases found reached 15:1. Any ratio less than that suggests that not enough testing is being done. Yesterday’s ratio of 6.6:1 is poor. We remain way behind in the number of tests we are administering.
Nearly Half Of All Patients At Bay Area Hospital Are Confirmed Or Suspected Coronavirus Cases — Approximately half of the patients at a Kaiser Permanente hospital in San Jose, California are either confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases, according to a hospital vice president. “Our San Jose facility in California actually has almost half of the hospital filled either with COVID-confirmed or persons under investigation,” Dr. Stephen Parodi told the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA). “So we’ve literally had to revamp the hospital to make sure that we’ve got enough capacity from a personnel standpoint. Because to provide the care to these patients requires resource intensive personnel.”Parodi, a Kaiser executive VP, is an infectious disease expert and national incident commander for the company’s COVID-19 response.Santa Clara County is currently the hardest-hit area in the state in terms of fatalities, which currently stand at 17 – whole total case count is 459. There are 3,166 cases in California as of this writing. In terms of infected, Los Angeles County is the worst-hit, with 662 cases and 13 fatalities. Based on Oakland, Kaiser has 12 million patients and 39 hospitals, as well as 706 medical offices across the US. They also operate in Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Georgia, Washington D.C., Virginia, Maryland and Hawaii.
California’s coronavirus crisis feared to be next New York – The coronavirus crisis in California could escalate to be as bad as the Big Apple’s outbreak, officials warned this week.By Friday afternoon, a total of 4,533 COVID-19 cases and 91 deaths had been reported in the Golden State, The Los Angeles Times reported.In Los Angeles County alone, cases surged to 1,481 Friday, with a total of 26 deaths, the paper reported.Those numbers are still thousands fewer than the figures in New York, where 44,635 cases have been reported – 25,398 in the city alone. But Barbara Ferrer, director of the LA County Department of Public Health, told the Times that the mortality rate in her county is about 1.8 percent – higher than that of New York City and the US as a whole. However, LA has tested far fewer people than in the Big Apple, so the true number of people infected is far less clear, she said.If each person who tested positive for the virus infected two others, “within a few weeks, there could be over a million people that would be infected in LA County,” Ferrer added. “I was asked by a reporter today, ‘Is Los Angeles the next New York?'” he said Thursday, according to CNN. “And I said sure in the same way that New York is now the next Italy, and Italy was the next Iran and Iran was the next China, and no matter where you live, you are the next.”
Teen Who Died of Covid-19 Was Denied Treatment Because He Didn’t Have Health Insurance – A 17-year-old boy in Los Angeles County who became the first teen believed to have died from complications with covid-19 in the U.S. was denied treatment at an urgent care clinic because he didn’t have health insurance, according to R. Rex Parris, the mayor of Lancaster, California. Roughly 27.5 million Americans – 8.5 percent of the population – don’t have health insurance based on the latest government figures.”He didn’t have insurance, so they did not treat him,” Parris said in a video posted to YouTube. The staff at the urgent care facility told the teen to try the emergency room at Antelope Valley (AV) Hospital, a public hospital in the area, according to the mayor. “En route to AV Hospital, he went into cardiac arrest, when he got to AV hospital they were able to revive him and keep him alive for about six hours,” Parris said. “But by the time he got there, it was too late.” The name of the urgent care clinic that refused to treat the teen has not been released. Mayor Parris explained in his YouTube video that the 17-year-old is believed to have had no underlying conditions that may have contributed to his death.”He had been sick for a few days, he had no previous health conditions. On the Friday before he died, he was healthy, he was socializing with his friends,” the mayor explained. Los Angeles County currently has 1,216 covid-19 cases and 21 deaths, according to the L.A. County Public Health Department’s website. The U.S. as a whole has identified at least 85,991 covid-19 cases and 1,296 deaths as of Friday morning, according to the Johns Hopkins online coronavirus tracker. The U.S. became the country with the highest number of confirmed cases of the virus in the worldyesterday, surpassing China and Italy.
Hawaii: In a Pandemic, No State Is an Island – James “Jiro” Yuda holds a sign at the entrance to the access road to the Hilo, Hawaii, airport. It reads, in part, “Be Responsible. No More Flights to Hawaii.” Yuda, 44, is the former deputy public defender on the Big Island, and now works in the Family Law Division of the Hawaii Department of the Attorney General. “I’m doing this,” he tells Capital & Main, “because someone has to. Our leaders have to accept the reality of this situation, and what has to be done. We face an existential threat.” Yuda says his protest was motivated by the inactivity of the Big Island’s political leaders in the face of the Covid-19 crisis. On March 20 Hawaii Lt. Governor Josh Green, an emergency room physician on the Big Island, urged the state to suspend “all non-essential travel” in and out of the islands. Some airlines have stopped or limited their service, including Hawaiian Airlines, which suspended its nonstop service between Maui and Las Vegas. In the meantime, the Big Island’s County Council urged Governor David Ige and island Mayor Harry Kim to impose a 15-day lockdown with a mandatory “shelter-in-place” order if conditions deteriorate, a move the mayor continues to oppose. In the meantime, another council resolution urged a limited restriction allowing only “essential businesses” to operate. Hawaii has a state government, and each island is a county with a mayor and council. Kim has argued that it is sufficient for the island to help businesses use preventative practices and for the county to sanitize its public areas. In a broadcast statement last Tuesday Kim announced, “The County of Hawaii will maintain all of its services and operators as normal.” He called a state directive on restaurant and church closures “a guide” and declared, “Within this county, restaurants, bars and places of worship may make their own decision as to open or close.” Some Big Island restaurants have begun serving take-out food only, while others still have table service. In the island’s numerous farmers’ markets, booths selling items other than food are now banned, while others selling fruit and vegetables from local farms continue. Hilo’s Farmers’ Market, normally thronged with people, has seemed virtually deserted, while other markets have closed entirely.
Hawaiian Airlines suspends nearly all mainland-Hawaii flights -Following the Hawaiian state government’s order over the weekend that all arriving travelers (locals and visitors alike) must self-quarantine for 14 days, Hawaiian Airlines has become the first carrier to announce it will cut back service from the mainland, including the Bay Area.The government’s order takes effect Thursday for all passengers arriving in Hawaii, whether they are coming from the mainland or foreign countries, including returning state residents. Hawaiian said it will maintain its regular schedules through Wednesday. But after that, the airline said, it will “suspend most long-haul passenger service.”The impact of that decision wasn’t immediately clear because the airline hasn’t yet identified specific routes that will be cut. Hawaiian said on Monday it has started notifying passengers about the new quarantine rule and has started to restrict bookings as it works on a final schedule for April.”Hawaiian is committed to providing one daily nonstop flight between Honolulu (HNL) and Los Angeles (LAX) and its Thursday flight between HNL and American Samoa (PPG) in order to provide a baseline of out-of-state access,” the company said, adding that it “may provide passenger access on any additional flights for travelers willing to undergo that mandated self-imposed quarantine.” Spokespersons for Southwest Airlines and Alaska Airlines said that they are evaluating demand on Hawaii flights, but have not made decisions on changing schedules at this time. This week United suspended flights from Denver to Kona and Lihue, and moved up the suspension of Chicago-Maui and Dulles-Honolulu flights to March 25, although these decisions were made prior to Governor Ige’s order.
Doctors consult black lung patients over the phone to protect them from COVID-19 –According to the CDC, in West Virginia one in five coal miners who worked in mines for at least 25 years have black lung. Dr. Doyle, family physician at New River Health Associates, said at New River Health Association in Scarboro, WV doctors see many patients with chronic health conditions, who could be at higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19, including patients with black lung, a disease that affects coal miners. “They have a reduced resistance to the virus and so they are more likely to get into serious problems in their lungs and respiratory failure than other people,” Doyle explained. So they are taking extra steps to protect their most vulnerable patients, as well as themselves. Angela Barker, Chief Medical Officer of New River Health Association, said this means screening people at the door, not letting anyone in who has a fever, symptoms or possible exposure. “We do not want our patients with multiple conditions to come in to be in the waiting room to expose them to any unnecessary illnesses. We want them to call our phone number first and we’re going to triage them over the phone,” Barker said. Doyle, who primarily works with black lung patients, said it also means closing the breathing center and checking up on patients over the phone. Doyle said going to a doctors office or emergency room right now could put patients at greater risk of getting COVID-19. He encouraged lung patients to stay home, increase fluids, and call your doctor if you are sick.
Mine workers’ union wants more protections against COVID-19 – The United Mineworkers of America is asking the federal government to issue emergency rules to prevent the spread of COVID-19 inside coal mines. UMWA President Cecil E. Roberts sent a letterthis week to the Mine Safety and Health Administration asking for the agency to issue emergency standards for disinfection, social distancing, and access to protective gear inside coal mines. MSHA currently points coal mine owners to the Occupational Health & Safety Administration’s COVID-19 guidelines, but the union says there should be different standards for the confined work spaces inside coal mines. The union says its members are particularly vulnerable to the spread of the novel coronavirus because they work in tight spaces, riding elevators and transport cars into work zones. “Our miners work in close proximity to one another from the time they arrive at the mine site,” Roberts said in the letter. “They get dressed, travel down the elevator together … work in confined spaces, breathe the same air, operate the same equipment, and use the same shower facilities.” The letter also states that many miners are older and suffer from underlying health conditions, like pneumoconiosis, or Black Lung disease, which may “greatly exacerbate the severity of the symptoms related to COVID-19.” In addition, most live in rural areas “that do not provide the same access to healthcare centers as workers in urban areas. This makes miners one of the most vulnerable populations for the virus.”
Kentucky governor says person tested positive for virus after attending ‘coronavirus party’ – Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said someone in the state tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a “coronavirus party.” “We have a positive test from someone who attended a ‘coronavirus party,'” Beshear said at a press conference Tuesday. “We ought to be much better than that.” Beshear added that the gathering consisted of a “group of young adults in their 20s who I guess were thinking they were invincible” and warned that while younger people may not feel serious symptoms if they contract the virus, they could spread the illness to more susceptible populations. “For those folks who thought ‘we’d be all right if we got it,’ what about everybody else you’ve seen?” he asked. “We need everybody doing the right thing.” Beshear said Kentucky now has 163 confirmed coronavirus cases in the Bluegrass State. There have been 39 new cases in the state in the past day.
Reported COVID-19 cases exceed 1,200 in Washington, D.C. region as public health disaster looms -As of Thursday, there were 1,277 reported cases of COVID-19 in the Washington, D.C. extended region, which encompasses Virginia, the District of Columbia and Maryland. Since the first initial infections were detected in early March, the region has seen an explosive growth in confirmed coronavirus infections, hitting the young and the old alike. Maryland, which reported the initial cases of the virus on March 5, had 581 confirmed cases. The District of Columbia, where Democratic Mayor Muriel E. Bowser ordered a complete closure of nonessential businesses Wednesday night, has over 271 cases, including a two-month year old infant. There are over 461 verified cases in Virginia. As of this report, the region has reported over 20 deaths. In Henrico County, Virginia, a retirement community has reported the region’s first cluster of coronavirus cases, with 14 residents and 4 staff contracting the illness. Three residents have already died due to complications from the virus. However, those most afflicted so far are aged 18-64, a range corresponding to the common ages of working adults. According to a CBS local affiliate, 61 percent of COVID-19 cases in the District of Columbia in the last week were under the age of 40, reflecting both the infectiousness of the disease and the tenuous unemployment of younger adults, whose jobs are largely centered in low-paying work which has remained active during the pandemic. The recent explosion of positive cases is largely attributable to wider screenings of the population. “When we see an increase in cases day by day … it isn’t telling us what’s happening currently, it’s really telling us what happened a few weeks ago,” said Eric R. Houpt to the Washington Post .
A Georgia healthcare worker was found dead in her home, and a posthumous test found she was infected with the new coronavirus – Diedre Wilkes’ was a mammogram technician at Piedmont Newnan Hospital. She died in her home last week and a posthumous coronavirus test came back positive, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Wilkes was 42 years old. She appears to have died 12 to 16 hours before her body was found in her home. Her four-year-old child was near her body when police found her.
Coronavirus: US has world’s biggest outbreak, topping China, Italy – – Confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the US have topped the totals in China and Italy, making the US the center of the global outbreak. In the US, confirmed cases hit 82,404 on Thursday evening, surpassing China’s 81,782 and Italy’s 80,589. The total number of confirmed cases globally is 526,044, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Since the US reported its first coronavirus case on January 20, more than 1,100 people in the country have died from the disease. The death tolls in Italy and China are higher.Many of the new cases in the US are in major cities, like New York and New Orleans, where densely packed residents help the virus spread. Mayors and governors have said that patients with the virus could overwhelm hospitals, which would contribute to a rising death count. To halt the virus’ spread, people in many US cities and states are under some form of lockdown order. People are supposed to leave their homes only to go grocery shopping and take care of other essential activities. According to data from Worldometer, coronavirus cases peaked in China in mid-February. The country combated the virus with strict quarantine measures covering 60 million people in Hubei province, where the outbreak originated. Life is returning to normal in China, but the US has a long road ahead, and the economic fallout from the widespread shutdowns has affected millions of workers and companies. US weekly jobless claims for the week ending March 21 totaled 3.28 million, the Labor Department reported Thursday, exceeding the consensus analyst forecast of 1.5 million. That was up from 281,000 in the previous week, which already marked a two-year high, Business Insider’s Carmen Reinicke reported.
US coronavirus cases top 100,000 as reported deaths hit new daily high – The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States topped 100,000 on Friday as infections quickly spread to new areas of the country. As of Friday evening, the US has at least 101,242 known cases of coronavirus and 1,588 people have died, according to CNN’s tally of cases reported by health officials. More than two months have passed since the first case of coronavirus was reported in the country and the US has become the epicenter of the global pandemic, overtaking China and Italy. The virus has hit New York and Washington especially hard but a new wave of coronavirus hot spots is already emerging. Chicago, Detroit and New Orleans are seeing a rapid increase of cases and officials there and in many other cities say they don’t have enough medical resources. Federal officials repeatedly warned that US hospitals lacked enough ventilators Federal officials repeatedly warned that US hospitals lacked enough ventilators Mayors from 213 cities across the country have said they do not have, and have no way of acquiring adequate equipment and supplies to protect first responders, according to a survey released Friday. Long lines of cars were seen at the three testing sites in New Orleans on Friday. Within two hours, one of the sites had reached its 250-test daily capacity. In Michigan, where the number of cases skyrocketed to nearly 3,000 from fewer than 350 a week ago, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said 468 police officers are under quarantine while the police chief and 39 police officers have tested positive for the virus. Hospitals in Chicago and New Orleans are preparing for a spike in cases but the city’s convention centers will soon become medical facilities to treat thousands of coronavirus patients, similar to New York City.
Coronavirus: United States’ COVID-19 growth ‘off the charts’ as confirmed cases surpass 650,000 worldwide (AP) – The coronavirus continued its unrelenting spread across the United States, pummeling major cities like New York, Detroit, New Orleans and Chicago, where an infant that tested positive for the virus died Saturday. It made its way, too, into rural America, where hotspots erupted in ski havens in the Rockies and small towns in the Midwest. Elsewhere, Russia announced a full border closure while in parts of Africa, pandemic prevention measures took a violent turn, with Kenyan police firing tear gas and officers elsewhere seen on video hitting people with batons. Worldwide infections surpassed the 650,000 mark with more than 30,000 deaths as new cases also stacked up quickly in Europe, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. leads the world in reported cases with more than 115,000, but five countries exceed its death toll of around 1,800: Italy, Spain, China, Iran and France. Italy alone now has more than 10,000 deaths, the most of any country. New York remained the worst-hit U.S. city. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said defeating the virus will take “weeks and weeks and weeks.” The U.N. donated 250,000 face masks to the city, and Cuomo delayed the state’s presidential primary from April 28 to June 23. But some states without known widespread infections began to try to limit exposure from visitors from their stricken neighbors. In Rhode Island, Gov. Gina Raimondo said Friday that the state National Guard would go door to door in coastal communities to find visitors from New York. and advise them about a mandatory 14-day quarantine for people from the state.
Coronavirus outbreaks will be worse in Detroit, Chicago and New Orleans next week, surgeon general says – Certain coronavirus “hot spots” in the United States are expected to see the pandemic hit even harder next week, US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said on CBS. “We also see hot spots like Detroit, like Chicago, like New Orleans that will have a worse week next week than what they had this week,” Adams said this morning. “The virus and the local community are going to determine the timeline. It’s not going to be us from Washington, DC. People need to follow their data, they need to make the right decisions based on what their data is telling them,” Adams added. He said the US has seen a significant increase in testing, which is “good news.” “We’re approaching a million tests. We’re trying to give people the data so that they can make informed decisions about where they are on their timeline and what they should be doing,” he said. During a White House briefing yesterday, Vice President Mike Pence said that “in partnership with commercial labs across America, this morning we received word that 552,000 tests have been performed and completed all across the United States.” Adams also said Friday that as the coronavirus pandemic continues, each region in the United States might experience differences in case numbers and deaths. “Everyone’s curve is going to be different,” Adams said. “New York is going to look different than Boise, Idaho or Jackson, Mississippi, or New Orleans.”
Federal law enforcement document reveals white supremacists discussed using coronavirus as a bioweapon – White supremacists discussed plans to weaponize coronavirus via “saliva,” a “spray bottle” or “laced items,” according to a weekly intelligence brief distributed by a federal law enforcement division on Feb. 17. Federal investigators appeared to be monitoring the white nationalists’ communications on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app that has become popular with neo-Nazis. In the conversations, the white supremacists suggested targeting law enforcement agents and “nonwhite” people with attacks designed to infect them with the coronavirus. “Violent extremists continue to make bioterrorism a popular topic among themselves,” reads the intelligence brief written by the Federal Protective Service, which covered the week of Feb. 17-24. “White Racially Motivated Violent Extremists have recently commented on the coronavirus stating that it is an ‘OBLIGATION’ to spread it should any of them contract the virus.”The intelligence brief, marked for official use only, noted the white supremacists “suggested targeting … law enforcement and minority communities, with some mention of public places in general.” According to the document, the extremists discussed a number of methods for coronavirus attacks, such spending time in public with perceived enemies, leaving “saliva on door handles” at local FBI offices, spitting on elevator buttons and spreading coronavirus germs in “nonwhite neighborhoods.”
FBI agents kill man allegedly plotting bomb attack on hospital amid coronavirus pandemic A man fatally injured by the FBI was planning a bomb attack on a medical facility in the Kansas City area, the agency said in a news release on Wednesday. Timothy Wilson, 36, was injured on Tuesday when FBI agents served a probable cause arrest warrant in Belton, Missouri, after a long-running domestic terrorism investigation, according to a statement on Wednesday from Timothy Langan, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Kansas City office. The statement did not detail what happened when agents served the warrant, but said Wilson was armed when he was injured and died later at a hospital. A months-long investigation determined that Wilson was a potentially violent extremist, motivated by religious, racial and anti-government beliefs, according to the statement. He had planned for several months to carry out a bombing and decided to target a Kansas City-area hospital using a “vehicle-borne” improvised explosive. Wilson chose a hospital that was providing critical care during the current coronavirus pandemic and had taken steps to acquire materials to build the bomb in an attempt to cause “severe harm and mass casualties”, according to the statement. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force kept close watch on Wilson and was prepared to arrest him when he tried to pick up what he thought was a bomb, although there was no bomb, the statement said. The FBI worked with federal prosecutors in the US attorneys office in Kansas City during the investigation.
COVID-19 and Class in the United States — Lambert Strether – In the United States, #COVID-19 began with globalization and globalizers. One thing we can be of is that grovery workers – to whom the virus will “trickle down” soon enough – didn’t create the conditions for it, or introduce it. Let’s take a look at the grocery workers before dollying back to the global. From the Los Angeles Times, “Column: How coronavirus turned supermarket workers into heroes“: Today supermarkets are playing a ground-zero role in our struggle to adapt to restrictions imposed by COVID-19. And grocery workers are bearing much of the the brunt of our anxiety and frustration, as we [who?> descend on depleted stores. Without masks or barriers, employees are working long hours, risking infection and battling exhaustion to do their jobs. They connect us to material essentials, like bread and toilet paper. But they’re also part of the social fabric that holds us together in unsettling times. Markets are about the only place we’re still allowed to gather en masse. And their employees – pressed into service in ways they never expected – are our new first responders. They’re apt to see us at our worst, and they aim to ease our strain. “They’re dealing with a public that’s fearful, apprehensive and frustrated, and it gets hostile,” “This wasn’t what they signed up for, but they realize it’s their responsibility. They’ve cursed how vulnerable they are, and yet they keep going out of their profound dedication to their communities.”Funny thing. The people who “connect us to material essentials” are suddenly more important than Senators and Represenatives (who can fly home), or all the MBAs in the head office, or the CEOs. Heaven forfend they collectively decided to withdraw their labor! “Vulnerable” as the grocery workers are, they didn’t bring #COVID19 on themselves or us. First, I’ll look at how globalization made the “material essentials” to deal with #COVID19 so hard to obtain. Then, I’ll look at how globalizers were vectors for the diseases spread. The story of how the United States 1% deindustrialized American by moving our manufacturing base offshore (mostly to China) is well known and I will not rehearse it here. From the New York Times, “How the World’s Richest Country Ran Out of a 75-Cent Face Mask“: The answer to why we’re running out of protective gear involves a very American set of capitalist pathologies – the rise and inevitable lure of low-cost overseas manufacturing, and a strategic failure, at the national level and in the health care industry, to consider seriously the cascading vulnerabilities that flowed from the incentives to reduce costs.
Freaky-Deaky – Kunstler – I never subscribed to the nostrums of Marxism, but old Karl sure had a point when he said, “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.” Is that exactly where we’re at, or what?The hologram of capital that was not really there dissolves before our eyes. That capital, you understand, was our notion of how wealthy we used to be, like, five minutes ago. And now the capital, the money, the mojo of modern life is going-going-gone. The hologram was projected by a fantastically hypercomplex hologram machine jerry-rigged with frauds, swindles, and false promises to pay tomorrow for that proverbial hamburger today. The people running it left the robots in charge and went off to frolic with the likes of Jeffrey Epstein, speaking of the profane. Then, the hologram machine broke and the iridescent image just plumb flickered out.Now, under the shadow of the corona virus, everybody has been sent home to wait and see what happens next, hostages to the flat-screen, where the cable networks show little besides a non-stop real-time horror movie called The End of Your Future. It’s hard to keep morale up when you realize that all the usual conveyer belts of stuff you need to keep going are breaking down. It’s not hard to imagine fights, sure to come, over that dwindling stuff, which we will struggle heroically to allocate because we are really not all bad. Goodness abides, even in that America we managed to so deeply profane. Let’s hope there’s enough of it.When these convulsions are over, we’ll have to reorganize those real conditions of life very differently in North America. There will still be considerable capital, but not the hocus-pocus Wall Street kind. There will be a lot of places with good-enough soil left —– – or at least soil that can be nursed back to health – to grow food. There are plenty of well-watered places. We have a marvelous system of navigable rivers, all outfitted with canals connecting them. (The Erie and Champlain Canals that connect the Hudson River estuary to the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence have been kept in immaculate condition, by some miracle of forethought.) Our ancestors moved most of their stuff that way, and so can we. We have plenty of human capital: strong backs and agile minds. They just have to be reconditioned off their addictions to canned entertainments, drugs, and the Faustian raptures of techno-narcissism – in other words, we need to get real. Real means recognizing that we’ve crossed over into a new chapter of the human project and that it requires different behavior (the relations with our kind old Karl Marx spoke of.) Mostly that means readjusting our attention back to the people and the place around us, while expecting a whole lot less from distant institutions far away. Gawd knows there is enough to do, if we can get our minds right.
Help Flatten The Curve – Pornhub Offers Free Premium Service To Everyone – Pornhub is offering free premium accounts to anyone in the world, a statement from the company read.The new campaign is called “Help Flatten the Curve,” a move that it says could “encourage people around the world to stay home to help flatten the Coronavirus curve by self-isolating with FREE Premium!” Having first tried this in Italy, Pornhub vice president Corey Price stated: “With nearly one billion people in lockdown across the world, it’s important that we lend a hand (LOL) and provide them with an enjoyable way to pass the time,” adding that he believed it would prove “an extra incentive to stay home and flatten the curve.”Price said a non-premium user of the site could click the box titled “I agree to self-isolate and enjoy Premium Videos for Free.”In response to the pandemic, Pornhub has been actively donating medical supplies to local governments across the US and in Europe. Here are some of their efforts:
- 15,000 surgical masks to protect first responders from the Local 2507 of New York City, which represents emergency medical technicians (EMTs), paramedics and fire inspectors of the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY).
- 15,000 surgical masks to the Uniformed Firefighters Association (UFA) Local 94 of New York City to protect first responders.
- 20,000 surgical masks to Mount Sinai South Nassau to bolster the safety of nurses, physicians and support staff caring for Coronavirus patients.
- euro 50,000 to various European organizations to purchase additional masks and medical equipment, including Dein Quarantane Engel / Deutsches Rotes Kreuz in Germany, Croce Verde di Vicenza in Italy, Espana vs Coronavirus. Mascarillas AQUI AHORA and Material Sanitario para Hospitales Publicos ESPANA in Spain.
- $25,000 to Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP), contributing directly to sex worker relief funds in the SWOP-USA network to meet immediate requests for support from sex workers impacted by COVID-19.
Condom shortage looms after coronavirus lockdown shuts world’s top producer – (Reuters) – A global shortage of condoms is looming, the world’s biggest producer said, after a coronavirus lockdown forced it to shut down production. Malaysia’s Karex Bhd makes one in every five condoms globally. It has not produced a single condom from its three Malaysian factories for more than a week due to a lockdown imposed by the government to halt the spread of the virus. That’s already a shortfall of 100 million condoms, normally marketed internationally by brands such as Durex, supplied to state healthcare systems such as Britain’s NHS or distributed by aid programs such as the UN Population Fund. The company was given permission to restart production on Friday, but with only 50% of its workforce, under a special exemption for critical industries. “It will take time to jumpstart factories and we will struggle to keep up with demand at half capacity,” Chief Executive Goh Miah Kiat told Reuters. “We are going to see a global shortage of condoms everywhere, which is going to be scary,” he said. “My concern is that for a lot of humanitarian programs deep down in Africa, the shortage will not just be two weeks or a month. That shortage can run into months.” Malaysia is Southeast Asia’s worst affected country, with 2,161 coronavirus infections and 26 deaths. The lockdown is due to remain in place at least until April 14.
Coronavirus kills more than 2,600 across Europe in one weekend – The coronavirus pandemic surged across Europe this weekend, with more than 2,600 deaths, the majority of them in Italy, followed by Spain, France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The weekend toll by itself nearly equaled the entire three-month death toll in China, where the epidemic began. On Sunday alone there were 1,287 deaths and 17,303 new cases, with Italy, Spain and France all seeing record numbers of deaths from the epidemic. The total for the continent as a whole reached 168,803 cases and 8,785 deaths. The toll from the pandemic in Europe has now reached more than double the impact in China, which saw 81,054 cases and 3,261 deaths. Worldwide, there have been 335,377 declared cases of coronavirus and 14,611 deaths. A third major epicenter is Iran, where there have been at least 21,638 cases including 1,685 deaths, while the number of cases in the United States has skyrocketed to more than 32,000, with 400 deaths. There is also a rapid growth in the number of cases in Africa and Latin America. Though Italy, Spain and France are under country-wide lockdown, as well as large parts of Germany, the contagion is spreading relentlessly across Europe, after governments refused for weeks to adopt shelter-in-place orders or make any serious effort to actually stop the contagion by combining lockdowns with testing, contact-tracing and quarantining all those either infected or in contact with the infected. Italy, Europe’s worst-hit country for now, saw 5,560 new cases and 651 deaths on Sunday after 6,557 new cases and a record 793 deaths on Saturday, for 59,138 cases overall and 5,476 deaths. On Saturday, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced that all factories would close indefinitely except for those “strictly necessary … to guarantee us essential goods and services.” Officials in Lombardy, the hardest-hit region, warned that stricter measures, like a ban on anyone leaving their homes, might be taken as hospitals continue to be flooded with critically ill patients gasping for air.
Italy reports 651 new coronavirus deaths as toll nears 5,500 – Italy’s world-topping toll from the coronavirus pandemic approached 5,500 on Sunday after the Mediterranean country reported another 651 deaths.The latest daily toll was smaller than Saturday’s record 793 fatalities but still the second-highest registered during Italy’s month-long crisis.The number of confirmed new infections rose by 10.4 percent to 59,138. Italy’s death toll now stands at 5,476.The one-day total is less than the 793 new coronavirus deaths recorded on Saturday, a one-day record.Italy has reported over 2,000 deaths since Friday, a grim figure that suggested the pandemic may be breaking through the government’s various containment and social distancing measures.But Italian civil protection service chief Angelo Borrelli was hopeful.”The figures announced today are lower than those for yesterday,” he told reporters.”I hope and we all hope that these figures can be borne out in the coming days. But do not let your guard down.”Sunday’s figures suggest that strict containment measures imposed around the northern epicentre of the crisis near Milan on March 8 might be starting to bear fruit. Milan’s Lombardy region reported just 30.4 percent of the new infections on Sunday.
Israeli doctor in Italy: We no longer help those over 60 – Dr. Gai Peleg told Israeli television that in northern Italy, the orders are not to allow those over 60 access to respiratory machines.Italy has suffered more coronavirus-related fatalities than China, with 4,825 confirmed deaths and 5,000 confirmed patients in the last 24 hours, Channel 12 reported on Sunday. Israeli M.D. Gai Peleg, who is currently working to save lives in Parma, Italy, told Channel 12 that things are only getting worse as the number of patients keeps growing. As his department receives coronavirus patients who are terminally ill, the focus is to allow patients to meet loved ones and communicate with them during their last moments despite the quarantine regulations. Other reports claim that, as the number of dead increases, some families find themselves unable to secure a proper burial for their loved ones. Peleg said that, from what he sees and hears in the hospital, the instructions are not to offer access to artificial respiratory machines to patients over 60, as such machines are limited in number.
New coronavirus cases drop in Italy for second day – Italy recorded a lower day-to-day increase of coronavirus cases for the second day in a row Monday, officials said.Italy’s Civil Protection agency documented 4,789 new cases Monday, 700 less than the 5,560 new cases reported Sunday, The Associated Press reported. But officials cautioned that it’s too early to know if the worst is behind the country that has experienced the most deaths due to the virus.The day-to-day death count also fell to just over 600 deaths Monday compared to 651 on Sunday.The coronavirus has hit Italy hard, overwhelming its health care system and killing 6,077 people. The country has 63,927 confirmed cases, compared to China’s 81,496.Before the recent decrease, Italy had seen the daily death toll from COVID-19 rise to new highs.One of Italy’s national health officials, Silvio Brusaferro, warned against any optimism, saying the decrease in new cases reflected actions taken at the beginning of the month.”We need more consecutive results to confirm the trend, to be more certain that we are in a favorable situation,” Brusaferro said, according to the AP.The U.S. trails Italy for the third-most confirmed COVID-19 cases at more than 41,500, with 573 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Public officials have warned the U.S. could follow in Italy’s footsteps if precautions are not taken.
Latest Italian coronavirus death toll dashes hopes worst is over – Fatalities in Italy from coronavirus have surged in the last 24 hours, the Civil Protection Agency said on Tuesday, dashing hopes the epidemic in the world’s worst hit country was easing. The death toll rose by 743 on Tuesday, the second highest daily tally since the outbreak emerged in northern regions on February 21, after more encouraging numbers in the previous two days. Some 602 deaths were recorded on Monday, far lower than the world record 793 deaths last Saturday. Italy has seen more fatalities than any other country, with latest figures showing that 6,820 people have died from the infection in barely a month. The total number of confirmed cases hit 69,176 on Tuesday, but with Italy testing only people with severe symptoms, the head of the Civil Protection Agency said the true number of infected people was probably 10 times higher. “A ratio of one certified case out of every 10 is credible,” Angelo Borrelli told La Repubblica newspaper, indicating he believed some 700,000 people could have been infected. However, there was reassuring evidence that Italy’s coronavirus infection rate was slowing. Officially registered new infections rose just eight percent – the same as Monday, and the lowest level since Italy registered its first death on February 21. It had been running at as high as 50 percent at the start of March. Borrelli said more data over the next few days will help show “if the growth curve is really flattening.” Still, the latest data comes as a disappointment to a country that has been in lockdown for two weeks, with schools, bars and restaurants shut and Italians forbidden from leaving their homes for all but essential needs. “Basically we have to test more, and people know it by now. So new measures will probably be implemented in Italy to try to trace the movement of people by using their GPS, their smartphones, because the lockdown maybe is not enough.”
Italy reports 683 deaths, 5,000 new coronavirus cases in one day – Italian authorities reported 683 new deaths related to the coronavirus outbreak on Wednesday and a total of 7,503 new cases, a short drop from Tuesday’s spike in deaths but higher than several previous days’ totals. The country’s Civil Protection Agency now lists the total number of confirmed coronavirus infections at 74,386, with 1,000 Italians reporting that they had recovered from the disease since Tuesday, according to the Johns Hopkins tracking map. The day before, 743 deaths were reported. Reuters reported Wednesday that Angelo Borrelli, head of the Civil Protection Agency, has exhibited fever symptoms and is himself awaiting test results for a possible coronavirus infection. He was absent from a daily news conference on Wednesday, according to the news service. Italy remains the country hardest-hit by the virus in Europe, with Spain following at 47,000 confirmed cases and 3,434 confirmed deaths. The two countries have both outpaced China, thought to be where the outbreak began, in numbers of deaths from the disease, though China still ranks No. 1 in total number of confirmed cases. Some 3,489 Italians remained in intensive care units on Wednesday, according to Reuters, as hospitals have struggled to accept an overwhelming influx of patients. “If a patient has a low likelihood to benefit from the hospital, we have to not accept them. You send them home.” Dr. Marco Metra, chief of cardiology at the University and City Hospitals in Brescia, told The New York Times. “This is also what I am seeing every day.”
Coronavirus: Italy sees unexpected spike in cases, deaths – – Hopes that Italy’s coronavirus epidemic might be in retreat suffered a setback on Thursday when data showed that both the number of new cases and deaths had ticked higher, underscoring how hard it is to halt the disease. Officials said 712 people died of the illness in the last 24 hours, pushing the total tally to 8,215, well over double that seen in anywhere else in the world, while new infections rose by 6,153 to 80,539. The number of cases is nudging close to the more than 81,000 infections recorded in China where the pandemic began. The relentless rise in Italy is despite stringent lockdown measures introduced progressively since Feb. 23 to try to stop the spread, which authorities had hoped would be having more of an effect by now. There had been slight declines in both new cases and deaths earlier this week, but the northern region of Lombardy, the epicenter of the outbreak, saw its numbers climb on Thursday. “I do not know if we have hit the peak or if we have missed something … all I can say is that I am worried,” Lombardy governor Attilio Fontana told reporters, adding that the situation would soon become clearer. “I think that in two or three days we will understand if the measures we have taken are working,” he said. However, he warned that when new cases finally receded, the government would not necessarily be able to relax the lockdown, which is due to be lifted on April 3. “Even if the number of cases declines, I think we will have to carry on with (the restrictions) until we are quite certain that this contagion has been stopped.” The situation appeared particularly worrying in Lombardy’s capital Milan, which is also Italy’s financial hub, where new infections jumped by more than 800 to almost 7,000. Only the neighboring provinces of Bergamo and Brescia have a higher number of cases. Highlighting the scale of the drama, Bergamo said that over the last 10 years it had recorded on average 45 deaths a week. This ticked up to 64 at the end of February and then soared, hitting a peak of 313 deaths between March 15-21.
Italy posts more grim coronavirus records as deaths, cases rise – Italy has posted more grim records related to the new coronavirus, becoming on Friday the second country after the United States to overtake China in terms of infections as it announced almost 1,000 deaths in a day – a worldwide record since the epidemic began. Officials said the number of cases had risen to 86,498 in Italy, as 919 more people died in the space of 24 hours, bringing the total death toll to 9,132 – the world’s highest. China has so far recorded 81,782 cases and 3,291 deaths. Italy’s 4,401 new contagions in one day mean a 6.6 percent daily increase that is consistent with the trend recorded in recent days. The gruesome milestones nevertheless came on the same day Italian health officials said they were seeing a slight slowing down in new positive cases, two weeks into a nationwide lockdown. The Civil Protection Agency noted that the cumulative death tally of 9,132 included 50 fatalities that actually occurred on Thursday in the northern Piedmont region, but whose notification arrived too late to be included in the official figures for March 26. Recoveries are up by about 6 percent to 10,950, while the number of intensive care patients – a closely watched figure given the shortage of hospital beds – has risen by 3.2 percent, to 3,732. In a rare, televised address to the nation, Italian President Sergio Mattarella warned that the European Union had to react before it was too late and should adopt new measures to confront the threat posed by the coronavirus, “New initiatives are vital, overcoming old ways of thinking that are now out of touch with the reality of the dramatic conditions facing our continent,” Mattarella said on Friday. “I hope everyone fully understands, before it is too late, the seriousness of the threat faced by Europe.”
Italy coronavirus death toll passes 10,000. Many are asking why the fatality rate is so high – When Milan resident Antonia Mortensen was pulled over by police while driving recently, it wasn’t for a traffic offense. It was to instruct her fellow passenger to sit in the back of the car and to check that both were wearing face masks. “We were told we cannot both sit in the front,” said the CNN journalist, who was on her way to hospital with her husband to visit a sick relative. “We have a special certificate giving us permission to go to the hospital,” she said, adding that the relative does not have coronavirus. Such are the tight restrictions on Italians now living in the deadliest hotspot of the global coronavirus pandemic. Italy’s death toll is now the highest in the world at 10,023. Fatalities passed the grim milestone on Saturday, with an increase of 889 since the last figures were released on Friday, according to Italy’s Civil Protection Agency. With 92,472 confirmed cases, Italy appears to have the highest death rate on the planet. Compare it to China, the epicenter of the pandemic, which has a roughly similar number of confirmed cases at 81,997, but under a third as many deaths, at 3,299, according to Johns Hopkins University and Medicine. Indeed Italy now has the second-highest number of confirmed cases in the world after the United States, which stands at 105,470. But the US has a fraction of the deaths, at just over 1,700. As Italy enters its sixth week of restrictions, many are asking: why does its death rate seem so much higher than other countries? Experts say it’s down to a combination of factors, like the country’s large elderly population which is more susceptible to the virus, and the method of testing that’s not giving the full picture about infections.
Doctors and nurses in Spain are taping garbage bags to their bodies for protection against the novel coronavirus as supplies dwindle – Doctors and nurses at hospitals in Spain are taping garbage bags to their arms in hopes of protecting themselves against contracting the novel coronavirus,Bloomberg reported. As more people around the world are being admitted into hospitals, medical workers are being forced to ration their protective gear. Marcia Santini, a registered nurse at an emergency room in California, told Business Insider, “We need to keep our healthcare workers healthy, and if they get sick, that would collapse the healthcare system.” But that’s proving hard to do with limited protective equipment. A note written in marker on a box of procedure masks in Southern California hospital states that each staff member is allotted one mask for the entirety of their shift. At a Barcelona hospital, a lack of high-protection masks is leading to doctors and nurses stacking two less-protective surgical masks on top of one another. “This thing blew up on us,” Dr. Pelayo Pedrero, head of labor risk prevention at doctors’ union AMYTS in Madrid, told Bloomberg. “No one was ready for this. They didn’t buy the supplies, they didn’t prepare the hospitals to receive and treat all these patients. Not just in Madrid or Spain, but all over Europe.”
Ice Rink in Madrid Turned Into a Morgue – The news out of Spain is grim: As the coronavirus death toll continues to rise, Madrid has turned an ice rink into a temporary mortuary for victims of COVID-19. On Tuesday, health officials in the country announced there had been 514 new deaths over the past 24 hours, a new record for the country that brought its death toll to 2,696 so far, theBBC reports. There are currently 39,673 confirmed cases in Spain, the second highest number in Europe behind Italy. Madrid’s municipal funeral home announced it would stop collecting coronavirus victims because it doesn’t have the necessary protective equipment, so the city will use the Palacio de Hielo (Ice Palace) temporarily until funeral homes can collect bodies. The ice rink is near a field hospital that has been set up for coronavirus patients. The Spanish defense minister also said this week that while making rounds, the army found older people “abandoned” by staff at some care homes, “completely left to fend for themselves, or even dead in their beds,” per Sky News. Anyone found to have abandoned their responsibilities in cases like that will be prosecuted, the minister said, per theGuardian. Health officials say 87% of coronavirus deaths in Spain were people aged 70 or older. Meanwhile, Italy has 69,176 confirmed cases and 6,820 deaths, but since not everyone is being tested, one official says the true number of confirmed cases is likely 10 times higher, per Reuters.
Coronavirus Deaths: Spanish Military Finds Dead Bodies At Elderly Care Center – Spanish soldiers on Monday stumbled upon a tragic scene due to COVID-19. The country’s military reported that soldiers working to provide medical support to care homes for the elderly found numerous dead bodies and other completely abandoned at several facilities. Authorities have reportedly launched an investigation into the incidents. Spain has been hit particularly hard hit by the global outbreak. With nearly 40,000 confirmed cases and 2,696 deaths, the country ranks only behind Italy amongst European nations. Elderly people are said to be at an increased risk of the virus.Margarita Robles, Defense Minister for Spain, said during a television interview with Telecinco that the Spanish government will “be strict and inflexible when dealing with the way older people are treated” at retirement facilities in light of these discoveries.”We will exercise the most intensive monitoring of these centers,” Robles said. Staff members at these care homes had reportedly abandoned their posts and left residents alone as coronavirus continued to spread. An exact number for the dead found by the military has not been given. In order to handle this influx of dead, an ice rink in the capital city of Madrid has been taken over for use as cold storage. Roughly 19% of Spain’s population is over the age of 60 and therefore at considerable risk from coronavirus. The country also boasts one of the highest life expectancies in the world at 82.83 years.
Spain’s retirement homes with dead bodies found (AFP) – Spanish soldiers deployed to help fight the new coronavirus outbreak have found elderly patients abandoned, and sometimes dead, at retirement homes, as an ice rink inside a Madrid shopping mall was turned into a temporary morgue to cope with a surge in cases. The army has been charged with helping to disinfect retirement homes in Spain, one of the countries worst hit by the pandemic. Dozens of deaths from COVID-19 have been recorded at facilities across the country. “We are going to be strict and inflexible when dealing with the way old people are treated in these residences,” Defence Minister Margarita Robles said in an interview with private television channel Telecinco. “The army, during certain visits, found some old people completely abandoned, sometimes even dead in their beds,” she added. An investigation has been launched; the general prosecutor announced. The coronavirus death toll in Spain surged to 2,182 on Monday after 462 people died within 24 hours, according to health ministry figures. Meanwhile, the ice rink at the Palacio de Hielo, or Ice Palace, shopping center in Madrid was turned into a temporary morgue to deal with a surge in deaths in the capital, a spokeswoman for Madrid city hall told AFP. Earlier, the city hall said the city’s 14 public cemeteries would stop accepting more bodies because staff there did not have adequate protective gear. The improvised morgue would start to be used “in the coming hours,” the regional government of Madrid said.
Spanish Military Found Bodies Abandoned In Nursing Home During Lockdown — In the wave of coronavirus quarantines that have swept across the world in recent months, medical systems have become overwhelmed by the number of cases that required hospitalization. In many places, doctors and nurses were put in a terrible position of needing to ration medical care and decide who gets a ventilator and who doesn’t. In many cases, it ends up being elderly, disabled, and immunocompromised people who are the first to miss the cut and be denied service. In Spain, which is now beginning to see its first major clusters of the virus, reports have emerged of older residents in nursing homes being left completely abandoned to pass away in their beds. During a television interview on Monday, Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles said that the Spanish military found many nursing homes that were filled with bodies of older residents who had been left there. The bodies were found as the Spanish military was cleaning and disinfecting residential areas. However, the minister did not reveal the exact location of the nursing homes or how many bodies were found.Robles said that the staff in some of these nursing homes abandoned the facilities when learning that there were cases of the coronavirus among the tenants, and promised that those who are responsible for what happened will be held accountable.”We will be completely relentless and forceful with the kind of treatment elderly residents receive in these centers,” Robles said, adding that “I know that a vast majority [of centers] are fulfilling their obligations.” The number of new coronavirus cases in Spain jumped from 33,089 on Monday to 39,673 on Tuesday, according to the health ministry. The number of fatalities in the country rose from 2,182 to 2,696 overnight, the ministry told Reuters.
Spain overtakes China as second worst-hit country by Covid-19 – as it happened – Spain is now reporting more than 3,400 COVID-19 deaths, making it the second European country with a death toll higher than in China, where the new coronavirus was first detected in late 2019. Italy is reporting 7,503 deaths from the viral respiratory disease – the most in the world, and more than double the 3,285 deaths reported in China. The pandemic has severely disrupted life in Spain and Italy, countries that have much smaller populations than China (1.4 billion). Both European countries are more closely comparable to Hubei province, the area in China where the outbreak was first detected. Italy has around 62 million people, according to the most recent CIA World Factbook data, similar to Hubei’s nearly 60 million residents. By comparison, Spain has just 50 million people. Spain now has at least 47,610 coronavirus cases, the country’s Ministry of Health says. Of that number, nearly 8,000 people were confirmed to have the virus in the past 24 hours. As of Wednesday, nearly 27,000 people were hospitalized in Spain because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the health ministry said in its latest update on the coronavirus. As it detailed the toll the outbreak is taking on Spain, the health ministry also announced that it will buy more than $460 million worth of coronavirus-fighting equipment and supplies from China – including more than 5 million “quick tests” to help diagnose people who are infected.
Spain defends response to coronavirus as global cases exceed 500,000 – The Spanish government has defended its response to the coronavirus pandemic as the death rate in the country slowed for the first time in a week, insisting its actions have always been firmly rooted in scientific advice. Spain recorded 655 deaths from Covid-19 over the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 4,089, the health ministry said on Thursday. The number of confirmed cases stands at 56,188. The numbers offered a glimmer of hope a day after the country recorded one of the world’s highest single-day death tolls of the pandemic to date at 738, and its total figure eclipsed that of China. The number of cases worldwide passed 500,000 on Thursday. Spain’s foreign minister, Arancha Gonzfllez Laya, acknowledged that some things could have been done differently but said the nationwide “state of alarm” and lockdown imposed on 14 March was beginning to show results. “It’s an unprecedented [crisis] in both depth and breadth,” she told the Guardian. “We’ve seen pandemics in the past, we’ve seen Ebola, for example, but it was much more localised. We’ve seen Sars, but it was much more localised. The impacts at a global level were much smaller, and Ebola was concentrated in countries that had extremely weak healthcare facilities and systems. “But here we’re talking about a pandemic that is hitting the most prepared countries in the world hardest.”
Merkel in quarantine after doctor tests positive for virus (AP) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel has gone into quarantine after being informed that a doctor who administered a vaccine to her has tested positive for the new coronavirus. Merkel, 65, was informed about the doctor’s test shortly after holding a news conference Sunday announcing new measures to curb the spread of the virus, her spokesman Steffen Seibert said. He said that Merkel had received a precautionary vaccine Friday against pneumococcal infection. For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever or coughing. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. About 93,800 people have recovered, mostly in China. Seibert said in a statement that Merkel would undergo “regular tests” in the coming days and continue with her work from home for the time being.
Coronavirus: Germany bans groups of more than two people | DW News –The German government has decided to ban gatherings of more than two people outside of workplaces to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The nationwide ban is to be enforced for at least two weeks. Exceptions will include families and people living in the same household.
Germany Bans Groups of More Than 2 to Stop Coronavirus as Merkel Self-Isolates – NYT – Germany announced on Sunday new nationwide measures to limit contact between people – barring groups of more than two people, except for families, to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Chancellor Angela Merkel said the new social-distancing rules, which will be put in place for at least two weeks, are among the strictest by any country on movement outside the home, as global infections surpassed 300,000 and the death toll topped 13,000. The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany had risen to more than 23,900 by Sunday, with more than 90 deaths. “We are further reducing public life and social contact and ensuring that the measures will be nationwide,” the chancellor said, adding that the regulations would remain in place for at least two weeks. “Everyone should organize their movements according to these regulations.” Under the new restrictions, restaurants, which were previously allowed to seat customers during the day at a safe distance from each other, will be allowed to stay open but provide only delivery and takeout services. Hairdressers, massage studios and tattoo parlors must now close their doors. Merkel’s announcement, after a telephone conference with the governors of Germany’s 16 states, fell in line with restrictions put in place by the state of Bavaria, which on Friday restricted all movement outside the home, except for trips for shopping, work, doctor’s visits and exercise. The announced came as officials prepared to make 150 billion euros (more than $160 billion) available to help the country weather the fallout.
Cat contracts coronavirus FROM sick owner in new case of human-to-animal transition – As scientists around the world battle for a cure or vaccine to Covid-19, a new case of human-to-animal transmission has arisen in Belgium, where health experts say a cat contracted the disease from its coronavirus-stricken owner. Just one week after the pet owner in Liege, Belgium was diagnosed with Covid-19, their cat also started showing symptoms of the disease, including respiratory problems and diarrhea. As panic over the outbreak keeps gaining ground, spokesman for Belgium’s coronavirus crisis center, Emmanuel Andre, tried to reassure the public that the infected animal was an “isolated case.” “There is no reason to think that animals are vectors of the epidemic,” he told local media, and the risk of people becoming sick from their pet remains extremely low. Andre added that the cat contracted the disease due to “close contact between the animal and the master.” There has only been one other known case to date involving a pet becoming infected with Covid-19 by its owner. In early March, a dog in Hong Kong was placed in quarantine after it tested “weakly positive” for the virus. As for the human toll of the coronavirus in Belgium, 289 people have died, with 1,049 new cases confirmed in the last 24 hours bringing the total cases there since the pandemic began to 7,284.
Boris Johnson orders UK lockdown to be enforced by police – After days of being accused of sending mixed messages about what the public should do, Johnson significantly escalated his language as he urged people to comply with the more stringent measures. “You should not be meeting friends. If your friends ask you to meet, you should say no. You should not be meeting family members who do not live in your home. You should not be going shopping except for essentials like food and medicine – and you should do this as little as you can,” he said. “If you don’t follow the rules, the police will have the powers to enforce them, including through fines and dispersing gatherings.” The decision follows Friday’s announcement that all pubs, restaurants and gyms should shut down, then the continuation of commuters packing into trains on Monday, and of sun-seekers crowding into parks over the weekend. After weeks of being reluctant to copy the draconian measures seen elsewhere in Europe, Johnson announced the plan after coming under pressure from his own cabinet and Tory backbenchers as well as Labour. “In this fight, we can be in no doubt that each and every one of us is directly enlisted. Each and every one of us is now obliged to join together. To halt the spread of this disease. To protect our NHS and to save many many thousands of lives,” he said.
10 Days That Changed Britain: “Heated” Debate Between Scientists Forced Boris Johnson To Act On Coronavirus – It was on Wednesday, March 11 that some of the experts on the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies began to realise that the coronavirus was spreading through the UK too fast for the NHS to cope. Over the next few days, Britain’s leading epidemiologists were embroiled in a series of extremely tense – and until now private – discussions among themselves, with the UK’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, and Boris Johnson’s government over what to do. There was no consensus. Several of the scientists frantically argued that the UK must immediately introduce social distancing to halt the spread of the virus. Some pleaded with the government to change tack or face dire consequences. But others continued to believe that introducing social distancing now would be unsustainable for a long period and would lead to a more disastrous second wave of infection. The dayslong debate between the experts themselves and with the government was “heated” and “extremely difficult”, multiple sources familiar with the discussions told BuzzFeed News. Vallance admitted as much at a health select committee hearing this week: “If you think SAGE is a cosy consensus of agreeing, you’re very wrong indeed”. The extent of the disagreement between the nation’s top scientists and the government can be revealed at the end of one of the most extraordinary weeks in modern British history. As chancellor Rishi Sunak unveiled an unprecedented package of state intervention in the economy, and Johnson enforced the closure of pubs, restaurants, theatres and gyms, it also emerged that: Ministers have criticised the prime minister’s senior aides for “outsourcing” leadership on the coronavirus to a small group of experts; Downing Street is still considering a partial lockdown of London in the coming weeks; and cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill introduced a series of new Whitehall structures after concerns that the government was acting too slowly on both its health advice and its economic response.
NHS staff contract COVID-19 as UK government refuses to provide testing and protective equipment – The Conservative government’s failure to provide testing and protective equipment for National Health Service (NHS) staff has resulted in the first cases of doctors and nurses contracting COVID-19 in the UK while performing their frontline duties. Their lives have been placed unnecessarily at risk and they are now on ventilators, which they would otherwise have used to treat critically ill patients struck down by the virus. They have been removed from emergency response, which even in the initial stages of the outbreak is being overwhelmed. This is the inevitable outcome of the criminal negligence of the Boris Johnson government and its key scientific and medical advisors, who two weeks ago advocated allowing infections to spread in order to create “herd immunity.” The government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, went on record at the time, stating, “It’s not possible to stop everyone getting it [COVID-19] and it’s also not desirable because you want some immunity in the population to protect ourselves in the future.” [Emphasis added]. The implications of this policy are now being felt in hospitals around the country. In the West Midlands, one of the main hotspots in the UK for the virus outside of London, a staff nurse has been taken into intensive care at Walsall Manor hospital, where she works. She is on a ventilator after testing positive for COVID-19. The 36-year-old mother of three, Areema Nasreen, had no pre-existing medical conditions. Her sister, Kazeema, informed Birmingham Live that Areema had been ill for some seven days, with symptoms including a soaring temperature, body aches and a cough, before the decision was made for her to be tested. In London, three junior doctors, all aged 30, have been taken into critical care and are now on ventilators, according to the Sun on Sunday. It is reported that they all worked at the same hospital. The location where they are being treated has not been disclosed. This follows a fortnight in which doctors and nurses have been raising the alarm regarding the disastrous consequences of NHS staff not being tested while having symptoms of the virus, and not being provided adequate personal protective equipment (PPE). In addition to the risk of exposure to themselves and their families, this raises the very real prospect that vulnerable patients have been placed at risk.
Boris Johnson’s coronavirus measures: Political criminality that will cost tens of thousands of lives — “Without a huge national effort to halt the growth of this virus, there will come a moment when no health service in the world could possibly cope; because there won’t be enough ventilators, enough intensive care beds, enough doctors and nurses,” Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared Monday. A massive audience of 27 million watched his address to the nation live on TV. Factoring in internet viewing platforms, it will likely be the most-watched broadcast in British history. But for those millions seeking guidance from the government, the message was one of calculated contempt. If “too many people become seriously unwell at one time, the NHS [National Health Service] will be unable to handle it – meaning more people are likely to die, not just from Coronavirus but from other illnesses as well,” Johnson said. Therefore, to slow the disease he offered the “British people a very simple instruction – you must stay at home.” A lockdown was now in place, to be enforced by the police. Aside from this repressive measure, nothing else was on offer. And when the caveats were piled up on Johnson’s “simple instruction,” it became clear that millions of workers would have no possibility of staying at home. At the end of a list of reasons to leave home, including shopping for necessities, limited exercise and providing care to a vulnerable person, came “travelling to and from work, but only where this is absolutely necessary and cannot be done from home.” Yesterday’s newspapers and TV were dominated by pictures of platforms and tube trains in London full to overflowing, as millions of workers were forced to travel on a much-reduced service. They included nurses and other medical staff who risk infection, but also workers in construction, food production, retail, local and central government employees and delivery services. The list of exemptions for shop workers includes supermarkets, grocery shops, newsagents, pharmacies, petrol stations, garages, pet shops and banks. Workers who refuse to work can be sacked. Others are self-employed and will get nothing if they do not work. This includes construction workers employed by major concerns, only some of which suspended operations after a public outcry yesterday.
After Prince Charles, UK PM Boris Johnson tests positive for coronavirus – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has tested positive for coronavirus and is self-isolating at his Downing Street residence but said he would still lead the government’s response to the accelerating outbreak. Johnson, 55, experienced mild symptoms on Thursday – a day after he answered at the prime minister’s weekly question-and-answer session in parliament’s House of Commons chamber. “I’ve taken a test. That has come out positive,” Johnson said on Friday in a video statement broadcast on Twitter. “I’ve developed mild symptoms of the coronavirus. That’s to say – a temperature and a persistent cough. “So I am working from home. I’m self-isolating,” Johnson said. “Be in no doubt that I can continue, thanks to the wizardry of modern technology, to communicate with all my top team to lead the national fightback against coronavirus.”Johnson chaired a government meeting on the coronavirus on Friday morning via video conference. It was not immediately clear how many Downing Street staff and senior ministers would now need to isolate themselves given that many have had contact with Johnson over recent days and weeks. His finance minister, Rishi Sunak, is not self-isolating, a Treasury source said. Britons paid tribute to health workers on Thursday evening, clapping and cheering from doorways and windows. Johnson and Sunak took part, but came out of separate entrances on Downing Street and did not come into close contact, according to a Reuters photographer at the scene. It was not immediately clear whether Johnson’s 32-year-old partner, Carrie Symonds, who is pregnant, had been tested.
Queen interacted with Boris Johnson, Charles – On Friday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson became the first major world leader to test positive for coronavirus. Johnson was last in the presence of the 93-year-old Queen Elizabeth II on March 11, the palace told USA TODAY in a statement. Also on Friday, Buckingham Palace announced that the annual Trooping the Colour parade, the popular celebration of the queen’s official birthday, will not go ahead “in its traditional form” in June. “A number of other options are being considered, in line with relevant guidance,” the palace statement said. The queen turns 94 in April, but her birthday is celebrated in June when the weather is usually better. The queen’s son, Prince Charles, also tested positive for the coronavirus earlier this week and last came into contact with the queen on March 12. “The Queen remains in good health. The Queen last saw the (prime minister) on the 11th March and is following all the appropriate advice with regards to her welfare,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement Friday. The palace declined to comment on whether the queen, 93, and Prince Philip, 98, have been tested for coronavirus. The 71-year-old Prince of Wales, the heir to the British throne, tested positive for the virus after “displaying mild symptoms,” Clarence House, his official royal residence, said in a statement Wednesday. The statement from Clarence House announcing Prince Charles’ positive test results noted: “It is not possible to ascertain from whom the Prince caught the virus owing to the high number of engagements he carried out in his public role during recent weeks.” The Prince of Wales is self-isolating at Birkhall, the prince’s home on the royal Balmoral estate in Scotland. His wife, Duchess Camilla of Cornwall, 72, has tested negative for the virus and is also self-isolated apart from Charles at Birkhall.
UK’s coronavirus deaths surge past 1,000 as another Cabinet minister self isolates – The number of people who have died after contracting coronavirus in the UK passed 1,000 as it was revealed another Cabinet minister has been forced to self-isolate. The jump in Covid-19-related deaths in the UK from 759 to 1,019 is an increase of 260 – by far the biggest day-on-day rise in the number of deaths since the outbreak began. More than 120,000 coronavirus tests have taken place, with more than 17,000 positive results. The latest figures come after Scottish Secretary Alister Jack revealed he had developed mild symptoms of coronavirus and was self-isolating. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is already having to lead the response to the pandemic from Downing Street after he was diagnosed with the disease. He has been accused of failing to follow his own social distancing rules after Health Secretary Matt Hancock tested positive and England’s chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty began self-isolating with symptoms.
Europe’s coronavirus death toll passes 10,000 – More than 10,000 people have been killed by coronavirus across the European continent. The gruesome milestone has been reached just five weeks after the first death was recorded on the continent, in France, on February 15. With yesterday’s 1,414 new deaths, the total for the entire continent reached 10,220 deaths from 192,663 cases. Among the European Union’s 27 countries, 9,720 deaths have been recorded from 172,407 cases. In Italy, 601 new fatalities brought the total to 6,077 deaths. Almost 5,000 new cases of the virus were reported. Many more lives are threatened even before these new cases, with 50,418 active cases and 3,204 classed as “serious, critical.” All told, 63,927 people have been infected in Italy. In Spain, the death toll reached 2,206, with 434 new deaths reported, up from 391 the previous day. There were 4,321 new cases, making for a total of 27,528 active cases. Some 2,355 are classified as “serious, critical.” The inability of health and social care services across Europe to cope with the destructive impact of the virus – after decades of being underfunded, privatised and de-staffed – resulted in soldiers, drafted to disinfect and run residential homes in Spain, finding elderly people dead in their beds, abandoned to their fate with the country under a strict lockdown. In France, there were 186 new deaths, an increase over the previous day’s 112, bringing the total to 860. The deaths included another two medics, one a GP and the other a gynaecologist. There are over 13,000 active cases in the country, 8,675 people in hospital and 2,082 people in critical condition. A further 34 people perished in the Netherlands, bringing the total to 213, and 24 people died in Germany, bringing fatalities to 118. In the UK, after it was announced that 54 more people had died, and 335 in total, Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a lockdown of the country Monday evening. People can leave their homes only for “very limited purposes,” including “shopping for basic necessities, as infrequently as possible” and “one form of exercise a day.” Only two people can be together, unless they live in the same household. Police can enforce the lockdown, “including through fines and dispersing gatherings,” said Johnson. The Foreign Office advised the up to one million Britons on holiday or on business trips abroad to return to the UK immediately. They warned that otherwise there would likely be no more commercial flights available, with air routes likely shutting without warning Tuesday and Wednesday. Johnson’s government has refused to take a number of critical measures to stop the spread of the virus. Its original plan, before being forced to retreat, was to allow the mass infection of the population, supposedly to achieve “herd immunity.” The government still advises all who suspect they have the virus not to seek treatment in hospital, but to “self-isolate” at home – without being tested. More evidence is emerging that those who are contracting the virus and in some cases dying are from many age ranges, including younger, fitter people, from a baby who was born with the virus to a group of three 30-year-old junior doctors in the same UK hospital who were diagnosed Sunday and required ventilators.
Over 12,000 people die in Europe as coronavirus infections escalate – The European continent is the epicentre of a pandemic, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) warns is “accelerating” globally. It took 67 days from the first recorded case of COVID-19 to reach the milestone of 100,000 cases globally, 11 days to reach 200,000, four days to reach 300,000 and three days to reach 400,000. By yesterday evening 12,077 people had died of COVID-19 across the continent; another 1,742 perished in the previous 24 hours. With a further 22,715 new cases, this brings total recorded cases in Europe to 218,015. Among the European Union’s 27 countries, total deaths have reached 11,479. In Italy, deaths in the last 24 hours jumped to 743, bringing the total to 6,820. The number of infected climbed by 5,249 to nearly 70,000. Spain saw 514 fatalities, taking its death toll to 2,696. The country’s infection rate has climbed above Italy’s for the first time, with 6,584 more cases in the last day. The horrific events have forced the conversion of the ice rink in Madrid into a makeshift morgue and the Ifema conference centre into a field hospital with 5,500 beds. Another 87 people died in the UK, a rise of 26 percent and the highest daily increase, bringing the total to 422. Of those who died in the last day, 21 perished in a single hospital trust in northwest London. The capital’s ExCeL Centre, normally used for exhibitions and large events, is being turned into a field hospital with a planned 4,000 beds. On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson began a nationwide lockdown to be reviewed in three weeks. France suffered a huge 28 percent increase in fatalities as it became the latest country to reach the grim milestone of 1,000 dead. The total increased from 866 to 1,100. An additional 2,516 people are on life support.
Europe’s COVID-19 death toll reaches over 16,000 – Deaths due to COVID-19 continued to increase throughout Europe yesterday with 2,219 new fatalities across the continent. Total deaths now stand at 16,395, with 15,556 of these within the European Union’s 27 member states. Overall COVID-19 confirmed cases are approaching 300,000 in Europe, with 34,644 new cases, for a total of 283,242. Years of slashing health and social care budgets, together with government inaction in combating the spread of the virus, have taken a grim toll, with health workers forced to make decisions as to who lives and dies. Italy and Spain have the most fatalities in the world. In Italy, a further 622 lives were lost as the toll leapt above 8,100. The total number of cases rose by 8.2 percent to 80,589. The number in intensive care treatment rose to 3,612 from 3,489 in 24 hours. With the 498 deaths recorded in Spain yesterday, more than 4,000 (4,145) have died of the coronavirus. The virus is taking more lives in Spain in a faster period than it did in Italy. In just 19 days Spain went from 10 to 4,089 deaths. In Italy the same leap took 25 days. From 100 cases to 56,000 took four days in Spain compared with 28 days in Italy. Madrid is the epicentre of the pandemic in Spain. Reports attest to the dreadful circumstances facing health workers. Bloomberg noted, “In the emergency room at one of Madrid’s biggest hospitals, [Dr.] Daniel Bernabeu signed the death certificate for one patient and immediately turned to help another who was choking. “People are dying in waiting rooms before they can even be admitted as the coronavirus pandemic overpowers medical staff. With some funeral services halted in the Spanish capital and no space left in the morgues, corpses are being stored at the main ice rink.” In France there were 3,922 new cases and 365 deaths – the largest daily increase so far. Hospitals in the Paris area and in Strasbourg, in the hard-hit Alsace region of eastern France, are overflowing and starting to turn away likely COVID-19 patients.
Nearly 19,000 pandemic deaths in Europe as savaged health care systems are overwhelmed – Coronavirus deaths surged in Europe yesterday, with several countries recording their highest daily totals to date. Throughout continental Europe 34,028 new cases were reported and 2,352 deaths. The total number who have perished in the continent in just six weeks since the first death is approaching 20,000 (18,754). Manchester Royal Infirmary Italy saw 919 fatalities, taking the overall number to 9,134. The number of recorded infections climbed past China to 86,498. There are fears that the poorer southern regions of the country will soon be put under the same pressures suffered by the richer north. Spain also suffered its worst 24-hour death toll of 769 deaths, bringing its total to 4,934. The number of cases increased from 56,188 to 64,059. France saw 299 deaths, with the total now at 1,995. There are currently 32,964 cases of infection and 3,787 people are on life support, meaning nearly half of France’s ventilator beds are occupied. The government has extended a national lockdown by two weeks. The UK recorded an additional 185 deaths, bringing the toll to 759. Recorded cases of infection increased to 14,543, but this number is kept artificially low by a lack of testing. The spread of the disease is indicated by the fact that Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Health Secretary Matt Hancock and the Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty all tested positive yesterday. Prince Charles is already infected. The COVID-19 pandemic is preying on Europe’s 500 million-plus population whose health care services have been decimated by years of government austerity and private sector looting. Johnson tested positive for COVID-19 immediately after taking part – outside the front door of 10 Downing Street – in a national demonstration of support for beleaguered doctors, nurses and support staff in the National Health Service (NHS). Millions left their homes at 8:00 p.m. to cheer and bang pots and pans, after reports of hospitals full to overflowing and exhausted staff working without personal protective equipment and falling ill as a result – scenes already all too familiar in Italy, Spain and elsewhere in Europe.
Virus rebels from France to Florida flout lockdown practices (AP) – Young German adults hold “corona parties” and cough toward older people. A Spanish man leashes a goat to go for a walk to skirt confinement orders. From France to Florida to Australia, kitesurfers, college students and others crowd the beaches. Their defiance of lockdown mandates and scientific advice to fight the coronavirus pandemic has prompted crackdowns by authorities on people trying to escape cabin fever brought on by virus restrictions. In some cases, the virus rebels resist – threatening police as officials express outrage over public gatherings that could spread the virus. “Some consider they’re little heroes when they break the rules,” French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said. “Well, no. You’re an imbecile, and especially a threat to yourself.” After days of noncompliance by people refusing to stay home and venture out only for essential tasks, France on Friday sent security forces into train stations to prevent people from traveling to their vacation homes, potentially carrying the virus to the countryside or beaches where medical facilities are less robust. The popular Paris walkway along the Seine River was closed and a nightly curfew was imposed in the French Mediterranean city of Nice by Mayor Christian Estrosi, who is infected with the virus. Florida officials closed some of the state’s most popular beaches after images of rowdy spring break college crowds appeared on TV for days amid the rising global death toll, which surpassed 13,000 on Sunday. Australia closed Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach after police were outraged at pictures of the crowds.
Russia coronavirus: Why does the country have fewer cases than Luxembourg? – CNN – Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week his country managed to stop the mass spread of coronavirus — and that the situation was “under control,” thanks to early and aggressive measures to keep more people from getting the disease.Does Russia have coronavirus under control? According to information released by Russian officials, Putin’s strategy seems to have worked. The number of confirmed Russian coronavirus cases is surprisingly low, despite Russia sharing a lengthy border with China and recording its first case back in January.The numbers are picking up, but Russia — a country of 146 million people — has fewer confirmed cases than Luxembourg, with just 253 people infected. Luxembourg, by contrast, has a population of just 628,000, according to the CIA World Factbook, and by Saturday had reported 670 coronavirus cases with eight deaths.Russia’s early response measures — such as shutting down its 2,600-mile border with China as early as January 30, and setting up quarantine zones — may have contributed to the delay of a full-blown outbreak, some experts say. “The director-general of WHO said ‘test, test, test,'” Dr. Melita Vujnovic, the World Health Organization’s representative in Russia, told CNN Thursday. “Well, Russia started that literally at the end of January.””Testing and identification of cases, tracing contacts, isolation, these are all measures that WHO proposes and recommends, and they were in place all the time,” she said. “And the social distancing is the second component that really also started relatively early.” Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s state consumer watchdog, said Saturday that it had run more than 156,000 coronavirus tests in total. By comparison, according to CDC figures, the United States only picked up the pace in testing at the beginning of March, while Russia says it has been testing en masse since early February, including in airports, focusing on travelers from Iran, China, and South Korea.
Moscow’s coronavirus outbreak much worse than it looks, Putin ally says – (Reuters) – The mayor of Moscow told President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday that the number of coronavirus cases in the Russian capital far exceeded the official figures, as Putin donned a protective suit and respirator to visit a hospital. The comments by Sergei Sobyanin, a close ally of Putin, were authorities’ strongest indcation yet that they do not have a full grasp of how widely the virus has spread throughout Russia’s vast expanse. Russia has so far reported 495 cases of the virus and one death, far fewer than major western European countries. Putin has previously said the situation is under control, but some doctors have questioned how far official data reflect reality, and the government on Tuesday closed nightclubs, cinemas and children’s entertainment centres to slow the spread of the virus. “A serious situation is unfolding,” Sobyanin told Putin at a meeting, saying the real number of cases was unclear but that they were increasing quickly. Testing for the virus was scarce, he said, and many Muscovites returning from abroad were self-isolating at home or in holiday cottages in the countryside, and not being tested. “In reality, there are significantly more sick people,” Sobyanin said. The government also said it would organise a return of its citizens from countries hit by the coronavirus if they wanted to come.
COVID-19: protecting health-care workers The Lancet – Worldwide, as millions of people stay at home to minimise transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, health-care workers prepare to do the exact opposite. They will go to clinics and hospitals, putting themselves at high risk from COVID-2019. Figures from China’s National Health Commission show that more than 3300 health-care workers have been infected as of early March and, according to local media, by the end of February at least 22 had died. In Italy, 20% of responding health-care workers were infected, and some have died. Reports from medical staff describe physical and mental exhaustion, the torment of difficult triage decisions, and the pain of losing patients and colleagues, all in addition to the infection risk.As the pandemic accelerates, access to personal protective equipment (PPE) for health workers is a key concern. Medical staff are prioritised in many countries, but PPE shortages have been described in the most affected facilities. Some medical staff are waiting for equipment while already seeing patients who may be infected or are supplied with equipment that might not meet requirements. Alongside concerns for their personal safety, health-care workers are anxious about passing the infection to their families. Health-care workers who care for elderly parents or young children will be drastically affected by school closures, social distancing policies, and disruption in the availability of food and other essentials. Health-care systems globally could be operating at more than maximum capacity for many months. But health-care workers, unlike ventilators or wards, cannot be urgently manufactured or run at 100% occupancy for long periods. It is vital that governments see workers not simply as pawns to be deployed, but as human individuals. In the global response, the safety of health-care workers must be ensured. Adequate provision of PPE is just the first step; other practical measures must be considered, including cancelling non-essential events to prioritise resources; provision of food, rest, and family support; and psychological support. Presently, health-care workers are every country’s most valuable resource.
Coronavirus: Why some countries wear face masks and others don’t – BBC – Step outside your door without a face mask in Hong Kong, Seoul or Tokyo these days, and you may well get a disapproving look. Since the start of the coronavirus outbreak some places have fully embraced wearing face masks, and anyone caught without one risks becoming a social pariah.But in many other parts of the world, from the UK and the US to Sydney and Singapore, it’s still perfectly acceptable to walk around bare-faced.Why some countries embrace masks while others shun them is not just about government directives and medical advice – it’s also about culture and history. But as this pandemic worsens, will this change? Since the start of the coronavirus outbreak, the official advice from the World Health Organization has been clear. Only two types of people should wear masks: those who are sick and show symptoms, and those who are caring for people who are suspected to have the coronavirus.Nobody else needs to wear a mask, and there are several reasons for that.One is that a mask is not seen as reliable protection, given that current research shows the virus is spread by droplets and contact with contaminated surfaces. So it could protect you, but only in certain situations such as when you’re in close quarters with others where someone infected might sneeze or cough near your face. This is why experts say frequent hand washing with soap and water is far more effective.Removing a mask requires special attention to avoid hand contamination, and it could also breed a false sense of security. Yet in some parts of Asia everyone now wears a mask by default – it is seen as safer and more considerate.In mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand and Taiwan, the broad assumption is that anyone could be a carrier of the virus, even healthy people. So in the spirit of solidarity, you need to protect others from yourself. Some of these governments are urging everyone to wear a mask, and in some parts of China you could even be arrested and punished for not wearing one.
Hubei relaxes restrictions as China’s new coronavirus infections double – (Reuters) – China’s Hubei province where the coronavirus pandemic originated will lift travel restrictions on people leaving the region as the epidemic there eases, but other regions will tighten controls as new cases double due to imported infections. The Hubei Health Commission announced it would lift curbs on outgoing travellers starting March 25, provided they had a health clearance code. The provincial capital Wuhan, where the virus first appeared and which has been in total lockdown since Jan. 23, will see its travel restrictions lifted on April 8. However, the risk from overseas infections appears to be on the rise, prompting tougher screening and quarantine measures in major cities such as the capital Beijing. China had 78 new cases on Monday, the National Health Commission said, a two-fold increase from Sunday. Of the new cases, 74 were imported infections, up from 39 imported cases a day earlier. The Chinese capital Beijing was the hardest-hit, with a record 31 new imported cases, followed by southern Guangdong province with 14 and the financial hub of Shanghai with nine. The total number of imported cases stood at 427 as of Monday. Only four new cases were local transmissions. One was in Wuhan which had not reported a new infection in five days.
Pandemonium In The Pacific- US Carrier Diverts To Guam As COVID-19 Cases Spike Among Crew – An absolute disaster is fast unfolding aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Western Pacific causing emergency contingency plans to be put in place. By Wednesday eight sailors aboard the carrier tested positive for COVID-19, but clearly the outbreak aboard the ship is nowhere near being contained as on Thursday the US Navy said that number has jumped to 23 sailors confirmed for the virus. Pentagon officials further admitted the ability to conduct widespread testing aboard the ship is limited in a situation so dangerous that the carrier has been diverted from it’s original course, though Acting Navy Secretary Thomas B. Modly sought to stress “the ship is operationally capable and can do it’s mission if required” – no doubt a message ultimately meant for America’s rivals and enemies in the region. The outbreak has sent ship crew and US troops in Guam scrambling, reports The Daily Beast, as it appears a nightmare outbreak among military service-members is unfolding:U.S. Navy and Marine Corps service members in Guam were ordered on Wednesday to break their own quarantine to set up makeshift shelters for U.S. troops coming off a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, where an outbreak of the novel coronavirus is rapidly spreading within the hulls of the ship.Some of the U.S. troops at Naval Base Guam, located on the western side of the U.S. territory at Apra Harbor, were assembled into 100-man working parties to begin transforming some of the base’s facilities into temporary quarantine shelters for some of the 5,000 service members arriving from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, a naval vessel where COVID-19 is spreading. The nature of the emergency is unprecedented, causing one unidentified US service member to tell The Daily Beast, “We’re fucked” – given obvious concerns that base personnel will be potentially exposed to coronavirus via the disembarking USS Roosevelt crew.
‘Help us’: After deaths on coronavirus-hit ship, guests clamor to leave (Reuters) – Four passengers have died on a cruise ship off the Pacific coast of Panama and more than 130 others aboard are suffering from influenza-like symptoms, at least two of whom have the coronavirus, the vessel’s operator said on Friday. Holland America Line said in a statement that the MS Zaandam, previously on a South American cruise, was trying to transit the Panama Canal and make its way to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. But Panama’s government has denied it access to the canal for sanitary reasons, leaving passengers and crew wondering when they will get home. Chris Joiner, 59, a retiree from Ottawa, Ontario, told Reuters the cruise had turned into a “nightmare.” He was worried that he and his wife, Anna, also 59, would be forced to stay aboard for an undetermined time because she had a cough, after cruise operators said they would soon transfer healthy passengers to the Zaandam’s sister ship, the Rotterdam, which is now alongside the vessel in Panamanian waters. “We’re isolated. We’re stuck on this ship. We can’t go anywhere because we’re not healthy, I guess,” said Joiner, who took a selfie in his cabin with a piece of paper on which he had written “HELP US” in a bid for attention from the media and the Canadian government. A ship official told passengers on Friday morning via a public address system that one guest had died several days ago, followed by two deaths on Thursday and another overnight, according to a recording heard by Reuters. The four dead were “older guests,” the operator said.
EU Shrugs Off US Sanctions, Gives Millions In Coronavirus Aid To Iran – The White House has not backed off it’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign on Iran even as the Islamic Republic’s Covid-19 cases and deaths continue to soar, approaching 25,000 confirmed cases Tuesday. Despite even close US ally Britain quietly signalling it’s had enough of Washington’s ill-timed pressures, Secretary of State Pompeo has upped the ante further, on Monday accusing the Iranian regime of everything from hoarding masks and equipment to intentionally spreading the deadly disease to at least five countries.But it appears Europe has finally begun to shirk US demands. On Monday EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell announced 20 million euros in new aid to Iran, and more crucially said the body will support Tehran’s request for IMF assistance. “We’ve not been able to provide a lot of humanitarian help but there is some 20 million euros in the pipeline … that we expect to be delivered over the next weeks,” Borrell said in a video news conference Monday.”We also agree in supporting the request by Iran and also by Venezuela to the International Monetary Fund to have financial support,” he said further but without disclosing details.European officials consider the situation as urgent and see the US pressure campaign as greatly exacerbating the death toll given Iran lacks much of the basic medicines and equipment to treat at-risk patients and mitigate the outbreak. Recently Iranian health officials said shockingly that one person is dying from the virus every 10 minutes.The pressure for some kind of dramatic blanket easing of US sanctions is only set to grow, given that last week Iran’s leaders for the first time in a half-century turned to the IMF. Bloomberg reported of the urgent IMF appeal: Iranians say that their economy is weak and unable to cope with the humanitarian toll because of the U.S. sanctions. Last week, Iran turned to the International Monetary Fund for the first time since the 1960s for aid, though Ali Vaez, the Crisis Group’s Iran project director, said the U.S. may try to block the IMF loan in order to keep up the pressure on the regime. No doubt this will unleash fury out of Pompeo’s office, but at such a crucial juncture with the whole world’s eyes on combating the coronavirus pandemic, Washington will continue to shed allies by keeping up the so-called ‘maximum pressure’.
Saudi Arabia institutes curfew, UAE suspends passenger flights to reduce coronavirus spread – Saudi Arabia reportedly instituted a nationwide curfew Monday in an effort to reduce the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, while the United Arab Emirates has suspended passenger flights. King Salman of Saudi Arabia announced the curfew would last from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. for 21 days, state media reported, according to Reuters. Violators would have to pay 10,000 riyals, amounting to $2,665, while repeat offenders may go to jail for up to 20 days. Security forces will be utilized to ensure residents follow the curfew, but Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Talal Mashoud said at a news conference that “military authorities may be called upon,” according to Reuters. Saudi Arabia’s curfew comes after its number of coronavirus cases increased by more than a quarter to reach 562, the most of the six countries included in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Its neighbor and fellow council member United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced it would stop passenger and transit flights from entering or leaving the country for the next two weeks, state news agency WAM reported. But cargo flights will still be permitted. The UAE reported 45 new cases of COVID-19, putting its total at 198. The state-owned airline Emirates announced Sunday that it would halt most passenger operations this week, besides ones helping travelers go home. Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 378,000 people, killing more than 16,500, with more than 100,000 recoveries, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
New Zealand government warns tens of thousands could die, imposes lockdown – On Monday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a partial lockdown, moving to a complete lockdown of non-essential businesses and services from 11:59pm on Wednesday. Schools will then shut down entirely, after being closed to most students from today. The measures will increase New Zealand’s COVID-19 alert system from level 3 to level 4, the highest level, on Thursday, in an attempt to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus. All workers except those in essential services will be required to self-isolate by staying home, except to go to the supermarket or go for a walk. Currently the lockdown is scheduled to last for four weeks, but this could be extended if the virus continues to spread. As of today, there are 152 confirmed cases, with four thought to be the result of community transmission rather than from overseas. Five people with the virus are in hospital. Announcing the lockdown, Ardern warned: “If community transmission takes off in New Zealand the number of cases will double every five days. If that happens unchecked, our health system will be inundated, and tens of thousands New Zealanders will die.” The prime minister said “we must stop that happening, and we can … we have a window of opportunity to contain the virus, to stop it multiplying and to protect New Zealanders from the worst.” The sudden announcement created confusion and panic buying at supermarkets, despite government assurances that these would remain open. Thousands of workers in tourism, retail and other industries have lost their jobs in recent weeks due to the pandemic-induced economic crisis and will have to survive on poverty-level unemployment benefits during the lockdown.
India’s prime minister orders lockdown of country of 1.3 billion people for 21 days – India will begin the world’s largest lockdown, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in a TV address Tuesday night, warning that anyone going outside risked inviting the coronavirus inside their homes, and pledging $2 billion to bolster the country’s beleaguered health care system. “To save India and every Indian, there will be a total ban on venturing out of your homes,” Modi said, adding that if the country failed to manage the next 21 days, it could be set back by 21 years. India’s stay-at-home order puts nearly one-fifth of the world’s population under lockdown. Indian health officials have reported 469 active cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and 10 deaths. Officials have repeatedly insisted there is no evidence yet of communal spread but have conducted relatively scant testing for the disease. In recent days, India has been gradually expanding stay-at-home orders and has banned international and domestic flights and suspended passenger service on its extensive rail system. Essential service providers, including hospitals, police and media had been exempted from the stay-in-place orders, and many grocery stores and pharmacies remained open. Modi called Tuesday’s order a “total lockdown” and did not address whether any service providers would be exempt, but said that “all steps have been taken by central and state government to ensure supply of essential items.”
Indian doctors evicted over coronavirus transmission fears: medical body – (Reuters) – Some doctors combating India’s coronavirus outbreak have been evicted from their homes by force, a medical association said on Wednesday, due to fears that they may be infected and spread the disease to neighbors. The country went into a 21-day lockdown on Wednesday, and experts have said it faces a tidal wave of infections if rigorous steps are not taken to keep the virus in check. India’s public health care infrastructure is poor and it suffers from an acute shortage of medical staff, who will generally see many patients over a short period. Some doctors in temporary residences had been forcefully evicted by their landlords over infection fears, the Resident Doctor’s Association of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi said. “(They) are now stranded on the roads with all their luggage, nowhere to go, across the country,” the association – which represents 2,500 doctors – said in a letter to the federal home minister on Tuesday, urging the government to intervene. Late on Tuesday India’s Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, himself a doctor, said on Twitter he was “deeply anguished” to see reports of doctors being ostracized in residential complexes, adding that precautions were being taken to ensure health care workers were not carriers of the infection.
India Is The Asian Blindspot In The Coronavirus Pandemic – India, due to its size and overcrowded urban centers, risks being a few super spreaders away from China-like infection rates of 80,000. So far, India looks pretty mild compared to the rest of the world. It only has 606 cases of the new SARS-CoV-2 virus, of which 42 people have already recovered from it and 10 have died. That’s only a 1.6% mortality rate, which is better than China’s, way better than Italy’s off-the-chart death rate, and a bit worse than the U.S. But if virologists are right, and the disease spreads asymptomatically, then India of course has way more than 606. It was under 200 confirmed cases last week at this time. In cities where shoulder-to-shoulder crowds are an everyday occurrence, the question is how long can Indians abide by social distancing orders. Moreover, can the country handle the roughly 20% rate of infected persons who will need hospitalization? Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 21-day nationwide lockdown effective today with potentially devastating effects for an economy that was already showing signs of a slowdown. Passenger rail and metro services had earlier been suspended, as had international and domestic passenger flights. Many states sealed their borders to prevent large-scale relocations of people as businesses closed. India is poorer than China. Its healthcare resources are not as good either. India has an estimated 0.7 hospital beds per 1,000 people – a ratio that is one of the lowest in Asia, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Wild estimates abound. As we have heard out of Germany and even here in the U.S., some predict that India could have five million infected persons by May. Of course that all depends on testing capacity, and that doesn’t mean that they require hospitalization. But if just 20% of them did, as seems to be close to average hospitalization rates for those stricken with the disease, then that’s about 1 million people in a worst case scenario.
Warnings that hundreds of thousands of Indonesians may already have COVID-19 – Over the past week, as the coronavirus has begun to spread rapidly in historically oppressed regions of the world, including South America, Africa and Asia, medical experts have warned of a potential mass outbreak in Indonesia, South-East Asia’s most populous country. After weeks of the Indonesian government downplaying the threat, its spokesman on COVID-19, Achmad Yurianto, admitted on Friday that, according to official estimates, between 600,000 and 700,000 people have likely come into contact with individuals infected by the virus. Indicating that the government has no idea of the true extent of infections, Yurianto said that this “high risk” population was scattered across the archipelago. Since the beginning of the week, new cases have been reported in South Sumatra and West Nusa Tenggara, along with North Maluku, Jambi and Papua, on top of infections in Jakarta and Bali. In comments cited by the Australian yesterday, Achmad Yurianto, an Essex University professor of applied mathematics, stated that, on current trends, half the Indonesian population, or some 135 million people, will be infected by mid-May. The projection, however, is based on the government carrying out a lockdown of Jakarta, the capital and apparent epicentre of the pandemic. No lockdown has yet been ordered. The warnings indicate that millions could die. Already Indonesia has one of the highest mortality rates per confirmed case of any country in the world. As of yesterday, 55 people had died as a result of the virus, under conditions in which just 686 infections have been identified through testing. This means that over eight percent of confirmed cases have resulted in deaths, approaching the level of Italy, which is thus far the country that has been hardest hit by the global pandemic. In Indonesia, fewer than 3,000 tests have been carried out. The high mortality rate among confirmed cases likely means that only those who are severely affected by the disease and who are approaching a critical medical condition are being treated. In other words, thousands of others are likely carrying the virus without any prospect of being examined. Over the past week, horrific videos have circulated widely on social media of people collapsing and dying in public streets with symptoms consistent with COVID-19. The reality was demonstrated by the death of 72-year-old French tourist Gerard Philippe Follet in Bali on March 15. Follet was found slumped over his motorcycle in Denpasar and unresponsive. In front of dozens of tourists and locals, he briefly appeared to regain consciousness before dying suddenly.
Africa threatened by sudden surge in coronavirus cases – Coronavirus spread rapidly this weekend in Africa, jumping to over 1,300 detected cases, while there are over 335,000 confirmed cases and 14,000 deaths worldwide. At least 33 of the continent’s 54 countries are affected, though it is certain that many undetected cases or asymptomatic coronavirus carriers are circulating in Africa.The continent’s entire population is at risk of becoming infected, a development which would rapidly swamp its inadequate and underfunded health systems. A horrific death toll would result if the virus spreads in the countryside, densely packed slums and working-class areas of the continent’s massive cities. A coordinated, international struggle to halt the spread of coronavirus in Africa is now an urgent necessity.Africa must “prepare for the worst” as community spread of the virus has already begun, World Health Organization director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned last Wednesday. Most African countries have now closed their borders to people arriving from countries hard hit by coronavirus, including the United States and the European countriesIn North Africa, Egypt – the continent’s hardest-hit country, where Africa’s first case was recorded on February 14 – has at least 294 cases and 6 dead. The military regime of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is contemplating a curfew and generalized stay-at-home orders for the population to try to halt the pandemic’s spread. Egypt is followed by Algeria (201 sick, 17 dead), Morocco (109 cases, 3 dead) and Tunisia (75 sick, 3 dead). The number of cases in Libya, a country devastated by the ongoing civil war provoked by the 2011 NATO war nearly a decade ago, is unknown. Many West African countries are also hard hit. Senegal has confirmed 56 cases of COVID-19, and authorities are considering outlawing the sale of bread in neighborhood groceries in an attempt to halt the spread. They have also banned all public demonstrations on Senegal’s entire territory for 30 days. Senegal has confirmed 56 cases of COVID-19, and authorities are considering outlawing the sale of bread in neighborhood groceries in an attempt to halt the spread. They have also banned all public demonstrations on Senegal’s entire territory for 30 days. Burkina Faso, a country destabilized by French imperialism’s war in Mali, has seen 75 cases including four dead, the first in sub-Saharan Africa. Ghana has 21 cases and Nigeria – Africa’s most populous country, with over 200 million inhabitants – has 30 confirmed infections.
Coronavirus: Global infections top 500,000 – Italy has reported 6,153 new coronavirus infections, pushing the global total over half a million, based on a count kept by Johns Hopkins University. Italy now has 80,539 cases, almost as many as China. Italy’s Civil Protection Agency reported 662 deaths on Thursday, bringing the country’s death toll to 8,165, which is the highest in the world. The number of coronavirus infections closed in on a half-million worldwide Thursday, with both Italy and the U.S. on track to surpass China, and a record-shattering 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits in a single week in a stark demonstration of the damage to the world’s biggest economy. Health care systems in Europe and New York buckled under the strain, with Spain’s death toll climbing to more than 4,000. At least 2.8 billion people, or more than one-third of the Earth’s population, are under severe travel restrictions. But the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, scolded world leaders for wasting precious time in the fight against the virus that has already killed more than 22,000 people and infected over 480,000, thrown millions out of work and ravaged the world economy. “The time to act was actually more than a month ago or two months ago,” he said Wednesday. “We squandered the first window of opportunity. … This is a second opportunity, which we should not squander and do everything to suppress and control this virus.”
Global cases of coronavirus exceed 650,000: Johns Hopkins – The COVID-19 outbreak was first reported in the city of Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province, in December 2019. Confirmed cases now exceed 650,000 globally with the death toll reaching 30,000. Here is what we know so far:
- The U.S. now leads the world in known COVID-19 cases, with over 121,000 infections and more than 2,000 deaths. New York state’s cases topped 52,000.
- Chinese mainland’s total cases have reached 82,213, including 649 cases originating abroad. The death toll in the country now stands at 3,301.
- Wuhan will lift outbound travel restrictions starting April 8 after over two months of lockdown. China temporarily suspended entry of foreigners with valid visas and residence permits, from March 28.
- UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Health Secretary Matt Hancock are the latest political figures to test positive for the coronavirus.
- 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games have been postponed to 2021 because of the pandemic.
“No Country Has An Exit Strategy” – Experts Warn Virus Disruptions Could Last Months, Years – Michael Levitt, a Nobel laureate and Stanford biophysicist, said earlier this week that the COVID-19 pandemic could be nearing an end as he cited China’s curve flattening to support his hypothesis. Other experts have said there is no clear endpoint, and the virus crisis could be around for months, or even years. So, the trillion-dollar question: Who should we believe?! One positive step in slowing down the spread is the shutdown of the global economy. Strict social distancing measures, mass quarantines, and travel bans across the world has flattened the curve in China, with decelerating cases and deaths seen in Italy, Iran, and South Korea. Then the rest of Europe, with Spain, Germany, France, the UK, are all experiencing accelerating cases that will likely get worse in the weeks ahead. And, the bad news: both the US and India are at the very start of the curve and things will deteriorate in the weeks ahead before they get better.So clearly, the pandemic will be sticking around for the next several months. Prime Minister Boris Johnson believes the UK, which is in the early part of the acceleration phase, could see the outbreak peak within the next 12 weeks. BBC News notes that it could “take a long time for the tide to go out,” referencing that the virus crisis in the UK could be around for quite some time: It is clear the current strategy of shutting down large parts of society is not sustainable in the long-term. The social and economic damage would be catastrophic.What countries need is an “exit strategy” – a way of lifting the restrictions and getting back to normal.But the coronavirus is not going to disappear.If you lift the restrictions that are holding the virus back, then cases will inevitably soar.Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, said there’s no clear “exit strategy” for how countries eradicate COVID-19. “It’s not just the UK, no country has an exit strategy,” Woolhouse said. To fully eradicate the fast-spreading virus from a country, there needs to be a vaccine, and with one 12-18 months away, this suggests that lockdowns could become the norm this year, and maybe into next.
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