Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666
The news posted last week for the coronavirus 2019-nCoV (aka SARS-CoV-2), which produces COVID-19 disease, has been surveyed and some important articles are summarized here. The articles are more or less organized with general virus news and anecdotes first, then stories from around the US, followed by an increased number of items from other countries around the globe. New US cases appear to be nearly flat for the 7th week in a row. US deaths continued a slow decline. Elsewhere, new cases are rising again in Europe and India is the new global hotspot. Economic news related to COVID-19 is found here.
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Summary:
The number of US deaths continues to fall slowly, ie ~5%, week over week. Global cases were down slightly week over week, but still higher than any week prior to the week before last. Global deaths topped a million, if benchmarks like that are important. I’m including the news about Trump and half of Washington getting infected in the “economic” news article.
Calculated Risk is tracking the daily testing rate and results. The 03 October graphic:
Another source of regularly updated data is the Johns Hopkins’ web site. Below is a graphic for Johns Hopkins for the daily global new cases since the start of the pandemic.
Of course, Steven Hansen summarizes and links the latest news related to the pandemic every day, 7 days a week, plus displays over a dozen important graphics updated at least daily. The most recent article at the time this is published: 03 October 2020 Coronavirus Charts and News: More On President Trump’s COVID-19. White House Rapid Testing Product Known To Deliver Incorrect Results.
This article leads the daily newsletter from Global Economic Intersection every day. Newsletter subscription is free.
Here are the rest of the articles for the past week reviewed and summarized:
Adolescents twice as likely as young children to test positive for COVID-19 Adolescents are twice as likely as young children to test positive for COVID-19, according to a new analysis released Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Between March 1 and Sept. 19, more than 277,000 children tested positive for COVID-19; 63 percent were between the ages of 12 and 17 while 37 percent were between the ages of 5 and 11. “Incidence among adolescents was approximately double that among younger children throughout the reporting period,” the authors wrote in the analysis. From May to September, the average weekly incidence among adolescents was 37.4 cases per 100,000 compared to 19 cases per 100,000 for younger children, the report reads. Hispanic and Black children were disproportionately more likely to test positive for COVID-19 than their white peers. Hispanic and Latino children in both age groups made up nearly 42 percent of positive cases, while Black children represented 17 percent of positive cases, despite making up about 26 percent and 14 percent of the population, respectively. About 3 percent of adolescents and 2 percent of younger children who tested positive had at least one underlying health condition, but those who experienced serious COVID-19 illness were more likely to have one. Lung disease, including asthma, was most commonly reported. Only 3,240 children who tested positive for COVID-19 were hospitalized, and 16 percent had at least one underlying condition. Of the more than 400 children who were admitted to the intensive care unit, 27 percent had at least one underlying health condition. Of the 51 children who died, 28 percent had an underlying health condition, according to the report. There were also racial disparities in COVID-19 hospitalizations and among children, the authors wrote. “Although mortality and hospitalization in school-aged children was low, Hispanic ethnicity, Black race, and underlying conditions were more commonly reported among children who were hospitalized or admitted to an ICU, providing additional evidence that some children might be at increased risk for severe illness associated with COVID-19,” the authors wrote. Schools across the country have resumed in-person instruction, raising questions about how many kids are getting COVID-19. Experts think most kids who get COVID-19 will show no symptoms, but it is likely they are spreading the virus to some adults. However, it appears to be the 20-29 age group that is playing the largest role in the spread of COVID-19, the authors wrote.
How Children Fend Off Corona Virus – Why the coronavirus affects children much less severely than adults has become an enduring mystery of the pandemic. The vast majority of children do not get sick; when they do, they usually recover.The first study to compare the immune response in children with that in adults suggests a reason for children’s relative good fortune. In children, a branch of the immune system that evolved to protect against unfamiliar pathogens rapidly destroys the coronavirus before it wreaks damage on their bodies, according to the research, published this week in Science Translational Medicine.”The bottom line is, yes, children do respond differently immunologically to this virus, and it seems to be protecting the kids,” said Dr. Betsy Herold, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Albert Einstein College of Medicine who led the study.In adults, the immune response is much more muted, she and her colleagues found.When the body encounters an unfamiliar pathogen, it responds within hours with a flurry of immune activity, called an innate immune response. The body’s defenders are quickly recruited to the fight and begin releasing signals calling for backup.Children more often encounter pathogens that are new to their immune systems. Their innate defense is fast and overwhelming.Over time, as the immune system encounters pathogen after pathogen, it builds up a repertoire of known villains. By the time the body reaches adulthood, it relies on a more sophisticated and specialized system adapted to remembering and fighting specific threats.The adaptive system makes sense biologically because adults rarely encounter a virus for the first time, said Dr. Michael Mina, a pediatric immunologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Epidemiology in Boston.But the coronavirus is new to everyone, and the innate system fades as adults grow older, leaving them more vulnerable. In the time it takes for an adult body to get the specialized adaptive system up and running, the virus has had time to do harm, Dr. Herold’s research suggests.
A ‘super healthy’ 19-year-old college student has died from coronavirus complications – Chad Dorrill, a 19-year-old student at Appalachian State University, died Monday from complications related to COVID-19, the university reported. Dorrill, who was a “super healthy” star basketball player in high school, according to his mom and former coach, is the first reported coronavirus death in the University of North Carolina school system, which includes 16 colleges and universities. The death comes soon after some UNC campuses closed in-person classes due to increasing COVID rates, and as the proportion of young people infected nationally continues to climb. “The doctors said that Chad is the rarest 1 in 10,000,000 case,” Dorrill’s mom, Susan Dorrill, said through her son’s former travel basketball team, according to WFMY. “But if it can happen to a super healthy 19-year-old boy who doesn’t smoke, vape or do drugs, it can happen to anyone.” According to a statement from the school system’s chancellor, Peter Hans, Dorill lived off-campus and attended classes online. He started feeling sick in early September, and returned home near Thomasville, North Carolina, where he tested positive for COVID. After following isolation procedures and getting cleared by his doctor, he returned to Boone, where Appalachian State is located. He then experienced more complications, the statement says, and his family picked him up and took him to the hospital.
Covid-19: Social distancing is more effective than travel bans – Forecasting the spreading of a pandemic is paramount in helping governments to enforce a number of social and economic measures, apt at curbing the pandemic and dealing with its aftermath.Now researchers present an efficient model to study and forecast the spreading dynamics and containment across different regions of the world.
- We discover that social distancing measures are more effective than travel limitations across borders in delaying the epidemic peak, says Professor of theoretical physics, Francesco Sannino, University of Southern Denmark and Danish Institute of Advanced Science, continuing:
- The results corroborate our finding that the travel across regions sparks the epidemic diffusion, which then develops in each region independently.
Virus-induced pandemics like Covid-19 are a threat to humans not only because of the number of human lives taken but also because of the profound and long-lasting impact on the economy and social dynamics.While different empirical models already exist to describe the epidemic dynamics locally and globally, a coherent framework is missing. Using a powerful language and methodology borrowed from high energy physics, Professor Sannino and his colleague Giacomo Cacciapaglia from University of Lyon, can now study and forecast the spreading dynamics and containment across different regions of the world. – We plan on embarking on a world-wide monitoring to make global projections that will help governments and industries make containment plans and strategize about reopening society and how to best implement border control, says Professor Sannino.
Hydroxychloroquine no more effective than placebo in preventing COVID-19 – In a clinical trial testing whether a daily regimen of hydroxychloroquine could protect those most likely to be exposed to COVID-19, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found there was no difference in infection rates among health care workers who took the drug versus those taking a placebo. While the researchers observed a lack of effect associated with hydroxychloroquine, infection levels were low among the participants, which the researchers believe points to the effectiveness of other prevention measures in the health system: social distancing, use of personal protective equipment, and proper hand hygiene. The study was published today in JAMA Internal Medicine. The researchers were able to analyze a pool of 125 physicians, nurses, certified nursing assistants, emergency technicians, and respiratory therapists that they recruited for the study. This population worked in several different areas of the two University hospitals, including the emergency departments and COVID-19 units. Roughly half of the participants in the study took hydroxychloroquine while the other half took a matching placebo (a cellulose pill). The study was double-blinded, meaning neither the researchers, nor the participants knew which drug they were assigned. Extensive testing was used to rigorously prove who did or did not contract the virus. Each person received swab and antibody testing for COVID-19 at the start of their participation in the study, halfway through, and at the end–an eight-week span during the study period that began April 9 and ended July 14, 2020. Participants also had electrocardiogram (ECG) tests because of concerns about hydroxychloroquine causing heart rhythm problems in severe cases of COVID-19. “To really test the potential of HCQ as a prevention drug, we felt it was key to recruit health care workers with many hours of direct physical exposure to COVID-19 patients, then randomize them in a double-blind manner between hydroxychloroquine or a matching placebo, and treat them for a long period of time,” said Amaravadi. “Through that whole time, we monitored participants closely for their safety.” At the end of the study, 6.3 percent of those who took the hydroxychloroquine had tested positive for COVID-19 while 6.6 percent of those who took the placebos were positive. None required hospitalization. Additionally, there was no difference detected in the heart rhythms between those in either arm of the study, which showed that while the drug had no preventive effect, it was also not detrimental, outside of some temporary side effects like diarrhea for some.
Cloth Masks to reduce COVID19 transmission – For discussion of virus transmission, we tend to differentiate between aerosols and droplets. Aerosols are particles that stay in the air a long time and are smaller than about 100 m. Droplets drop to the ground in a short amount of time, and a small distance, and are larger than about 100 m. Viruses themselves are only about 0.1 m in size, smaller than any of the particles in your breath. They are not present in your breath on their own, they will always be attached to an aerosol or a droplet. Airborne transmission of COVID19 via aerosols and droplets in our breath has been established by a number of scientific papers, effectively summarized in a concise and easy to read commentary in Clinical Infectious Diseases, “It Is Time to Address Airborne Transmission of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)“, published in July 2020 by Morawska and Milton, supported by 237 clinicians, infectious-disease physicians, epidemiologists, engineers and aerosol scientists. Prof Linsey Marr (Engineering Professor at Virginia Tech with expertise in airborne transmission of viruses) also summarize the science behind this in an op-ed in the New York Times, and Prof Jose Jimenez (Chemistry Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder with expertise in aerosols) did likewise in Time Magazine. Aerosols (the smaller particles in our breath) and droplets (the larger particles in our breath) behave differently in the air. All particles in the air are affected by gravity, which makes them fall to the ground. Smaller particles are also affected by Brownian Motion, which is when they are bumped around by hitting into gas molecules in the air. The combination of gravity and brownian motion means that smaller particles take a lot longer to fall to the ground than big particles. An aerosol of 0.2 m diameter would take about 10 days to fall from of a person’s mouth above the ground. A droplet of 200 m would do it in just 3 seconds. The speed of exhaled aerosols and droplets can vary a lot, but we can take around 1 m/s as a rough guide for breathing, and around 5 m/s for sneezing, using measurements in this paper from Tang et al. Therefore, you can avoid a lot of the large droplets (bigger than about 100 m) coming out of someone’s nose or mouth simply by standing a few meters away from them, but this DOES NOT WORK for aerosols. Outside (or in a well-ventilated, uncrowded indoor space) aerosols will become more dilute the further away from the person emitting them you are. This makes distancing helpful, but not fully protective. The size of a particle also affects the direction they travel in. Large droplets have a lot of inertia, and so tend to travel in straight lines. Small particles have very little inertia and so tend to follow the direction of the air flow, even as it bends around corners. This has important implications of mask fit, which I will talk about later.
Why Hospitals Can’t Handle Covid Surges: They’re Flying Blind – WSJ — El Centro Regional Medical Center was overrun with dozens of Covid-19 patients in May, with nowhere to send the critically ill. The only other hospital in Imperial County, Calif., also was swamped. Chief Executive Adolphe Edward called the state’s emergency medical services director, asking him to intervene. “Please, please help us,” he pleaded. Doctors and nurses at El Centro swapped text messages and made phone calls, blindly searching for openings at other hospitals. In the emergency room, coronavirus patient Jose Manuel Abundis Gomez waited. It took 20 hours to find another hospital with a bed for the 71-year-old retired state administrator, said Alidad Zadeh, his primary care physician. By the time Mr. Abundis was finally transferred, his oxygen levels had dropped. He later died. During a pandemic, hospitals and local, state and federal agencies rely on a range of real-time metrics to respond to emergencies quickly. They need to know how many beds are available at each facility, whether hospitals need more nurses and the available number of ventilators and other critical supplies. That way, patients can get transferred quickly and medicine distributed to those in most need. The U.S. has tried – and failed – over the past 15 years to build a system to share such information in a crisis. When the pandemic started, nothing like it existed. The limited and inconsistent access to data has been a major impediment to providing hospital care during the pandemic, according to interviews with industry and government officials and thousands of internal documents and emails. Weeks after the coronavirus surfaced, administration officials began putting together a solution. It was riddled with mistakes and slowed by competing agency attempts to solve the problem, the interviews and documents show. Today, with some U.S. cities bracing for more cases, there is still no viable way to broadly track what’s happening inside hospitals. “It’s staggering to most people how little visibility there is outside of a particular health system,” said Gregg Margolis, a former U.S. Department of Health and Human Services emergency health planning official. “Every time these things happen everybody throws their hands up and says, ‘I can’t believe these things don’t work more closely together.’ “
Thousands of excess deaths from cardiovascular disease during the COVID-19 pandemic in England and Wales — A major new study has identified 2085 excess deaths in England and Wales due to heart disease and stroke during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. On average, that is 17 deaths each day over four months that probably could have been prevented.Excess deaths are the number of deaths above what is normally expected – and the figure relates to the period from 2 March to 30 June, 2020. The scientists believe the excess deaths were caused by people not seeking emergency hospital treatment for a heart attack or other acute cardiovascular illness requiring urgent medical attention, either because they were afraid of contracting COVID-19 or were not referred for treatment. Over the same period, there was a sharp rise in the proportion of people who died at home or in a care home from acute cardiovascular diseases. “It is entirely plausible that a number of deaths could have been prevented if people had attended hospital quickly when they began to experience their heart attack or stroke. The sad irony is that previous research we have undertaken showed that nationwide heart attack services remained fully operational and continued to deliver high quality care during the peak of the pandemic.” The findings, based on an analysis of the information contained on death certificates, have ben published in the journal Heart.The investigation was carried out by a team of data scientists and clinicians, led by academics at the University of Leeds. The other collaborators were from Keele University, NHS Digital, the Office for National Statistics, Barts Health NHS Trust, and University College London. This is the third major study from academics investigating how the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic affected emergency cardiovascular services. “This study is the first to give a detailed and comprehensive picture of what was happening to people who were acutely ill with cardiovascular disease cross England and Wales. “It reveals a large number of excess deaths. The findings will help Government and the NHS to develop messages that ensure people who are very ill do seek help.”
A potentially overlooked factor in Sweden’s coronavirus strategy: more than half of households consist of just 1 person – Four generations of the Garg family live in a four-story building in Delhi, India. In May, Mukul Garg wrote in a blog post that his 57-year-old uncle had gotten the coronavirus, probably after exposure during a routine grocery run. From there, he told the BBC, 10 other family members caught it too, turning his home into a sick ward overnight. Research shows, unsurprisingly, that household outbreaks like this fuel coronavirus transmission within communities.”The role of households in overall societal transmission is quite significant,” Yang Yang, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, told Business Insider.It follows, then, that disparities in household sizes between countries could partially explain their differing outcomes.Take Sweden, where more than half of households consist of just one person. Roughly one-third of Sweden’s elderly population lives alone, compared to one-fifth of elderly residents in Greece or Spain. Sweden also has a lower proportion of multigenerational households than most other European countries, and one of thesmallest average household sizes in Europe: about 2.2 people per home. Sweden drew attention and condemnation for its decision to keep primary schools, restaurants, bars, and gyms open throughout the pandemic. But its small households may give the virus fewer opportunities to spread there – which can slow transmission.Indeed, experts say these demographic factors likely contributed tothe stark decline in Sweden’s coronavirus deaths since June.
A guide to how – and when – a Covid-19 vaccine could be cleared – In a U.S. pandemic response dominated by missteps, the effort to develop vaccines to prevent Covid-19 has so far been a triumph. Vaccines against the coronavirus that causes the disease are now racing through giant clinical trials as a result.It’s a terrible irony, then, that the Trump administration’s statements have resulted in an erosion of public trust, with the percent of Americans who tell pollsters they would take a Covid-19 vaccine dropping and experts worrying the president could compel the Food and Drug Administration to approve a vaccine before one is ready. (Spoiler: No vaccine will likely be ready by Election Day.) “When the the president comes out and says, ‘by a very special day, we might have a vaccine,’ the whole thing blows up,” Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown School of Public Health, said at a session focused on Covid-19 at the STAT Health Tech Summit. “In some ways, we’ve got to get the politicians to shut up and let the scientists talk about this and drive this process.”The process of deciding when a vaccine appears to be safe and effective isn’t as straightforward as the general public might believe. But it’s important to understand it if we are to have confidence in these critical tools for helping to curb the pandemic. Here, then, is a rundown of the science that goes into the decision-making process, what it tells us about when results could realistically be available, and when vaccines could start to be administered. This story is based on interviews as well as on documents the drug makers have released detailing their clinical trial plans.
Covid-19: Do many people have pre-existing immunity? -British Medical Journal – It seemed a truth universally acknowledged that the human population had no pre-existing immunity to SARS-CoV-2, but is that actually the case? Peter Doshi explores the emerging research on immunological responses. Even in local areas that have experienced some of the greatest rises in excess deaths during the covid-19 pandemic, serological surveys since the peak indicate that at most only around a fifth of people have antibodies to SARS-CoV-2: 23% in New York, 18% in London, 11% in Madrid.123 Among the general population the numbers are substantially lower, with many national surveys reporting in single digits.With public health responses around the world predicated on the assumption that the virus entered the human population with no pre-existing immunity before the pandemic,4 serosurvey data are leading many to conclude that the virus has, as Mike Ryan, WHO’s head of emergencies, put it, “a long way to burn.”Yet a stream of studies that have documented SARS-CoV-2 reactive T cells in people without exposure to the virus are raising questions about just how new the pandemic virus really is, with many implications.At least six studies have reported T cell reactivity against SARS-CoV-2 in 20% to 50% of people with no known exposure to the virus.5678910In a study of donor blood specimens obtained in the US between 2015 and 2018, 50% displayed various forms of T cell reactivity to SARS-CoV-2.511 A similar study that used specimens from the Netherlands reported T cell reactivity in two of 10 people who had not been exposed to the virus.7 In Germany reactive T cells were detected in a third of SARS-CoV-2 seronegative healthy donors (23 of 68). In Singapore a team analysed specimens taken from people with no contact or personal history of SARS or covid-19; 12 of 26 specimens taken before July 2019 showed reactivity to SARS-CoV-2, as did seven of 11 from people who were seronegative against the virus.8 Reactivity was also discovered in the UK and Sweden.6910
Charting the pandemic over the next 12 months – and beyond – STAT – Throughout the pandemic, what’s maddened U.S. public health experts has been the nation’s inability and unwillingness to take the steps that could reduce illness and death, steps that other countries have used with success. Instead, we’re trying to force the activities – commerce, schools, and festivities – that controlling the virus in the first place would enable but that, in our case, are contributing to infection counts.”There’s this attitude that public health measures are getting in the way of opening up the country,” Fauci, the country’s most prominent infectious disease expert, told STAT. “It’s exactly the opposite. In a prudent way, the public health measures are the gateway, the vehicle, the pathway to opening the country. That’s the point that gets lost in this that’s so frustrating.” Overstretched ambulance crews. Overflowing hospitals. Overstuffed morgues. The grimmest images from the spring and summer peaks could appear again this fall and winter if the country doesn’t drive its case count down urgently.”If we’re not going into the fall with a huge running start in terms of having cases at very, very low levels … we run the risk of having uncontrollable outbreaks,” said Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. People are returning to offices or schools and interacting with others more. Residents of the northern half of the country, who embraced al-fresco summers, will move indoors. States and cities are inclined to keep easing restrictions. Then there’s the virus itself.While this is our first fall with SARS-2, experts believe that its activity could accelerate as temperatures drop, as is the case with other viruses, including the four coronaviruses that cause common colds. These viruses survive longer in cold, dry settings, tied to a measure called absolute humidity. But the virus spread like gossip this summer in the South. Was the heat really slowing it down? To an extent, experts think. But whatever advantage summer provided was overtaken by the fact that none of us was protected against the virus, and that restrictions like closing bars were lifted. “The summer epidemic probably would have been worse if it had been winter,” said disease ecologist Marta Shocket of UCLA.
September 28 COVID-19 Test Results -The US is now mostly reporting over 700,000 tests per day. Based on the experience of other countries, the percent positive needs to be well under 5% to really push down new infections, so the US still needs to increase the number of tests per day significantly (or take actions to push down the number of new infections). There were 960,631 test results reported over the last 24 hours.There were 36,741 positive tests.Over 21,000 Americans have died from COVID so far in September. See the graph on US Daily Deaths here. This data is from the COVID Tracking Project.The percent positive over the last 24 hours was 3.8% (red line is 7 day average).For the status of contact tracing by state, check out testandtrace.com.And check out COVID Exit Strategy to see how each state is doing. The second graph shows the 7 day average of positive tests reported. The dashed line is the June low.Note that there were very few tests available in March and April, and many cases were missed (the percent positive was very high – see first graph). By June, the percent positive had dropped below 5%.If people stay vigilant, the number of cases might drop to the June low some time in October (that would still be a large number of new cases, but progress).
New York City Under Pressure; CDC Funds Stalled: Virus Update – New York faced pressure as middle and high schools reopened, infection rates in virus hot spots rose further and the city’s bond rating was cut by Moody’s. A $1 billion funding package to help the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fight Covid-19 has remained mostly unspent, people familiar with the matter said. Pfizer Inc. Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said he’s disappointed that vaccine plans were discussed during this week’s U.S. presidential debate “in political terms rather than scientific facts.” President Donald Trump’s campaign moved a weekend re-election rally in Wisconsin after complaints by local officials. In Europe, Paris may close bars and restaurants again and additional restrictions on movement were imposed in Madrid. Ireland’s cases are at the highest level since its lockdown eased. Key Developments:
- Global Tracker: Cases pass 34 million; deaths exceed 1 million
- Pelosi says major differences to be bridged in stimulus negotiations
- New York, San Francisco rents plunge in work-at-home shift
- Covid-19 surge in Wisconsin started with back-to-school college kids
- New York City downgraded by Moody’s due to pandemic fallout
- Pandemics overtake climate change as biggest worry for insurers
- English soccer could be next in line for a coronavirus bailout
- Remote work is letting people take epic road trips during Covid
- Rapid Covid tests could give America a bit of life back
- Gilead will take charge of distributing its Covid-19 treatment
Coronavirus dashboard for September 30: a portrait of dismal societal failure (see graphics) A number of weeks back, I looked at how each US State was doing by way of a color coding system based on the global history of the pandemic. Here’s the system:
- Deep Red (general alarm out-of-control fire): 200+ infections per million, 5+ deaths per million.
- Red (3 alarm fire): 100-200 infections, 2-5 deaths
- Orange (2 alarm fire): 60-100 infections, 1-2 deaths
- Yellow (1 alarm fire):40-60 infections, 0.5-1 deaths
- Blue (smoldering/1 alarm fire): 20-40 infections, 0.2-0.5 deaths
- Green (embers): 0-20 infections, 0-0.2 deaths
Here’s how all 50 States, plus DC and Puerto Rico, fit into that paradigm, for infections only. Deep Red (general alarm out-of-control fire): 200+ infections per million: 14 States (ND, SD, WI, UT, IA, AR, MT, OK, ID, NE, MO, KS, AL)+ Puerto Rico (up from 5 five weeks ago). Red (3 alarm fire): 100-200 infections per million: 17 States: (WY, TN, SC, NC, MN, MS, KY, IL, NV, AK, IN, TX, DE, FL, GA, LA, WV), (down from 19 five weeks ago) Orange (2 alarm fire): 60-100 infections per million: 15 States: (CO, NM. MI, VA, RI, OH, CA, MD, HI, PA, MA, WA, OR, AZ, NJ) (up from 10 five weeks ago) Yellow (1 alarm fire):40-60 infections per million: 2 States: (NY, CT) plus DC (down from 6 five weeks ago) B lue (smoldering/1 alarm fire): 20-40 infections per million: 2 States: (NH, ME) (down from 3 five weeks ago) Green (embers): 0- 20 infections per million 1 State (VT) ( down from 3 five weeks ago) In case it isn’t already clear, there are 31 jurisdictions that are Red or Deep Red now, vs. 24 five weeks ago. On the other hand, there are only 5 jurisdictions that are Yellow, Blue, or Green now vs. 12 five weeks ago. This is the portrait of dismal societal failure. About the only good news is that a number of States that were previously out of control about a month ago panicked enough to take effective steps to rein in the pandemic at least somewhat.
September 30 COVID-19 Test Results – The US is now mostly reporting 700 thousand to 1 million tests per day. Based on the experience of other countries, the percent positive needs to be well under 5% to really push down new infections (probably close to 1%), so the US still needs to increase the number of tests per day significantly (or take actions to push down the number of new infections).There were 715,182 test results reported over the last 24 hours. There were 44,391 positive tests.Over 23,000 Americans died from COVID in September. See the graph on US Daily Deaths here. This data is from the COVID Tracking Project. The percent positive over the last 24 hours was 6.2% (red line is 7 day average).For the status of contact tracing by state, check out testandtrace.com. And check out COVID Exit Strategy to see how each state is doing. The second graph shows the 7 day average of positive tests reported.The dashed line is the June low.Note that there were very few tests available in March and April, and many cases were missed (the percent positive was very high – see first graph). By June, the percent positive had dropped below 5%. If people stay vigilant, the number of cases might drop to the June low towards the end of October (that would still be a large number of new cases, but progress).
Trump to Self-Quarantine After Aide Tests Positive: Virus Update – U.S. President Donald Trump said he would begin self-quarantine while waiting for coronavirus test results after Hope Hicks, one of his closest aides, tested positive for Covid-19. Hicks traveled with Trump aboard Air Force One to and from the presidential debate in Cleveland on Tuesday. Amazon.com Inc. said close to 20,000 of its employees had tested positive for the virus during the pandemic. A $1 billion funding package to help the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fight Covid-19 has remained mostly unspent, people familiar with the matter said. Key Developments:
- Global Tracker: Cases pass 34.1 million; deaths exceed 1 million
- How Russia Shortened the Covid Vaccine Race to Declare Victory
- Pelosi says major differences to be bridged in stimulus negotiations
- New York, San Francisco rents plunge in work-at-home shift
- Covid-19 surge in Wisconsin started with back-to-school college kids
- English soccer could be next in line for a coronavirus bailout
NY Suffers Another 1,500+ New COVID-19 Cases As Cuomo Threatens To Fine “Non-Compliant” Communities: Live Updates -New York reported more than 1,500 new cases again on Friday, one of the biggest daily increases the city has seen since ending its lockdown.Today’s update on the numbers: Of the 119,493 tests reported yesterday, 1,598 were positive (1.34% of total). Total hospitalizations are at 648.Sadly, there were 7 COVID fatalities yesterday. pic.twitter.com/IM3j0O7uMI – Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) October 2, 2020New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo delivered a warning Friday to the state’s mayors and local governments that could also be interpreted as a jab at de Blasio: either enforce coronavirus-related mask and social gathering laws, or your community could be fined as much as $10,000 for each day of noncompliance.20 zip codes have been identified as “hot spots”, with most of them in the outer boroughs of NYC, or in Rockland, or Orange counties, two NY counties that are in the southern part of the state.Of the tests conducted in the hotspot ZIP codes, 6.4% were positive. Cuomo said he would be sending a note to local officials saying they “have to step up the compliance,” Cuomo said. “If the local governments don’t step up the compliance, they will actually be in violation of the law and they can be fined.” The biggest COVID-19-related news overnight between Thursday and Friday was unquestionably the news that President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus. Top administration officials are scrambling to get tested, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has decided to cancel a trip to Asia scheduled for later this week out of an “”abundance of caution”, despite testing negative. No decision has been made yet, Pompeo told a group of journalists on the flight from Rome to Dubrovnik in Croatia. “I spoke with the Vice President’s office this morning as well,” Pompeo said. “We’re taking this obviously very seriously.” Nancy Pelosi said earlier that she hoped Trump’s experience with the virus might prompt him to take the threat more seriously. With Russia’s COVID-19 outbreak still ravaging Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered “sincere support” to President Trump and the First Lady. The Kremlin says Putin sent Trump a telegram saying “I hope that your inherent vitality, good spirits and optimism will help you cope with the dangerous virus.” It comes as Russia reports 9,412 new infections, its highest daily tally since May 23, pushing the national total to 1,194,643 cases, while Moscow, the epicenter of the Russian outbreak, reported 2,704 cases alone. 186 people had died nationwide in the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 21,077, though some claim that death toll probably underestimates the true tally.
New York Spikes Again; WHO Faults U.S. Response: Virus Update – A top World Health Organization official said the outbreak at the White House constituted a “cluster,” suggesting that the U.S. had yet to “get this disease under control.” President Donald Trump went to Walter Reed hospital for a “few days” after he was treated with an “antibody cocktail.”Democratic nominee Joe Biden tested negative for the virus, as did several senior administration officials including Vice President Mike Pence. New York reported its highest cases since June as infections continued to surge in hot-spot neighborhoods in the city.U.S. cases rose 0.7%, above the average 0.6% daily increase of the last week. Women, especially those in the age group most likely to have young children, are dropping out of the job market at the fastest pace since the height of the pandemic. Key Developments:
- Global Tracker: Cases pass 34.4 million; deaths exceed 1.02 million
- Trump‘s age and weight make Covid particularly dangerous
- Trump’s campaign events will go virtual or will be delayed
- How Russia shortened the Covid vaccine race to declare victory
- Europe’s banks lead the way in global jobs cull this year
Covid-19 Surge That’s Pounding Wisconsin Began at Colleges – The Covid-19 surge sweeping Wisconsin started among people from 18 to 24 just as college opened for the academic year. Now, it’s reaching every corner of the population. The state, where President Donald Trump has been planning campaign rallies Saturday, now finds itself with one of the highest per-capita case rates in the U.S. Experts say the return to college was among a dangerous confluence of factors that contributed. Indeed, the state’s data show that cases spiked first among the college-aged population; other age groups followed days and weeks later. Nationwide, Covid-19 cases have ebbed after the Sun Belt surge of July, and no state has seen the carnage that New York suffered at the start of the pandemic. But previously little-affected parts of the Midwest have become new hot spots, and parts of New York and Massachusetts are watching slight resurgences. Across the country, the return to university campuses has been fiercely debated, and schools have had varying experiences with in-person instruction. But in Wisconsin, students returned to a state that had had low rates of the virus earlier in the pandemic and probably had less built-up immunity. They moved from across the U.S. into dormitories and other group housing, their arrival coinciding with community-wide “pandemic fatigue,” which has hurt mask usage and social distancing, according to Laura Cassidy, an epidemiologist with the Medical College of Wisconsin. “Universities can do everything they can, but students will be students,” Cassidy said. University of Wisconsin System President Tommy Thompson said in a Thursday interview that the campuses were among the safest places in the state, with extensive testing, tracking and quarantine programs. But he acknowledged there was “some connection” between returning students and the viral wave. “We have been a part of the problem at the beginning, not the total problem,” he said.The Madison campus paused in-person classes shortly after the school year started, and is now undertaking a gradual restart after cases and positivity rates dropped dramatically. But Thompson, a former Republican governor, said the campuses chose the best path for their more than 170,000 students. He said he was unaware of any student cases directly tied through contact tracing to outbreaks in the broader community. “If we don’t educate them, they’re going to stay and party,” said Thompson, who served as secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush. “And what would you rather have?”
SD reaches record high coronavirus death toll – South Dakota recorded a record high COVID-19 death toll Thursday with 13 fatalities and 747 new positive virus cases.According to state epidemiologist Josh Clayton, cities and rural zones are reporting significant clusters of the virus in recent days, the Associated Press reported.He noted that 245 of the infections reported were backlogged from previous days after a reporting error.One large outbreak stemmed from a women’s prison in Pierre, with testing showing positive results for 29 women in one housing unit.The prison recorded a total of 197 prisoners and staff have tested positive while 110 have recovered. According to Johns Hopkins University, as of Tuesday, the state’s seven-day average testing positivity rate was 26 percent – the highest in the country.The record numbers of new cases come as Gov. Kristi Noem (R) tweetedlate last month, “South Dakota’s #COVID19 spread peaked the latest of just about any state.”Other states in the Midwest are also reporting record COVID-19 numbers, including Minnesota, Wisconsin and Kansas.
The US Excess Mortality Rate from COVID-19 Is Substantially Worse than Europe’s – The US has 4% of the world’s population but 21% of the global COVID-19-attributed infections and deaths. This column shows that when comparing excess mortality rates, a more robust way of reporting on pandemic deaths, Europe’s cumulative excess mortality rate from March to July is 28% lower than the US rate, contradicting the Trump administration’s claim that Europe’s rate is 33% higher. The US Northeast – the region most comparable with individual European countries – has experienced substantially worse excess mortality than Europe’s worst-affected countries. Had the US kept its excess mortality rate down to the level in Europe, around 57,800 American lives would have been saved.The US has the highest COVID-19-attributed infections and deaths, accounting for 21% of global deaths. Defenders of the US’s pandemic policy record assert that such figures are misleading since reported COVID-19 cases depend on the testing regime and many countries under-count COVID-19-related deaths. Using excess mortality data is a more rigorous way to compare the pandemic’s death toll. Excess mortality counts deaths from all causes relative to what would normally have been expected. This avoids miscounting deaths due to the under-reporting of COVID-19-related deaths and other health conditions left untreated, or potentially misattributing deaths to COVID-19 that had other causes. Measures taken by governments and individuals may influence death rates – for example, deaths from traffic accidents may decline but suicide rates may rise. Excess mortality captures the net outcome of all these factors. We show that the P-score – a measure of the rate of excess deaths (actual deaths minus ‘normal’ deaths) relative to normal deaths – is preferable to measuring excess deaths relative to population.
Outside the US, complacency leads to the virus roaring back – The United States is not the only place where human behavior, alternating between panic and complacency, traces out the path of the pandemic. Below are the per capita 7 day averages over the past 3 months for new infections and deaths for the EU, with France, Spain, and Italy highlighted, plus the UK and Canada, in addition to the US. First, here are deaths: To see where deaths will be in several weeks, here are new infections: Three months ago, the EU had the coronavirus beat, to the utter shame of the US. Then they let down their guard, and the virus has come roaring back. Spain’s death rate has already exceeded that of the US. But as the rate of new infections shows, France is likely to join that sorry club in a couple of weeks, with the UK close behind if behavior doesn’t change immediately. Even Canada is showing is significant if much less concerning increase. Only Germany (not highlighted) down near the bottom has retained its vigilant policies and behavior. Given human behavior, it is simply extremely unlikely that society can really get back to normal until there is an effective vaccine.
Global COVID-19 Deaths On Track To Top 1 Million, UK Prepares New ‘Localized Lockdown’ Measures: Live Updates – Once again, a handful of western European countries saw the biggest weekly acceleration in new caes (on a percentage basis) while India’s outbreak slowed from its peak. Spain, France and Belgium led the pack with the biggest weekly increase (per 10k residents). With COVID-19-linked deaths in the US accelerating to roughly 1,000 per day for the first time since before the Sun Belt outbreaks peaked over the summer, the US surpassed 200,000 deaths last week, and now the world is on track to surpass 1 million deaths within the next 24 hours, according to the Associated Press.Globally, the number of deaths reported on Sunday fell by roughly 50% from the more than 5,000 reported on Saturday. Just 2,552 deaths were reported on Sunday, bringing the global total to 998,145 as of Monday morning, within 2,000 deaths of 1 million. Unless the pace of fatalities slows remarkably on Monday, we will top 1 million before midnight – and possibly before the close of the US market day. Some experts, however, believe the true death tally might actually be twice the official number, as underreporting has largely gone unchallenged in China and elsewhere. On the vaccine front, Inovio, a US biotech company, said its Phase 2/3 trials for a COVID-19 vaccine candidate had been put on hold as the company answers more questions from the FDA. Its shares slid 35% on the news, but news of the delay didn’t have any broader impact on markets.The pace of new COVID-19 cases slowed again on Sunday to 155,542 new cases, but the 7-day average remained firmly in expansionary territory as outbreaks in the US and Europe, along with a handful of other regions, intensify. Many experts fear a quickening in the pace of deaths weeks after cases rise, though others argue that advances in the treatment procedures have helped to lower the mortality rate significantly. Sunday’s numbers pushed the global total past 33 million, to 33,130,914.As Russia strikes deals around the world to hold Phase 3 trials for “Sputnik 5”, the COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Gameleya Institute and funded by a Russian sovereign wealth fund, an outbreak in Moscow has continued to drive the largest surge in infections since June. New cases in Russia have risen to the highest level since June 16, as authorities confirmed 8,135 new infections in the past 24 hours, pushing the total to 1,159,573. Another 61 people have died, taking the official death toll to 20,385. But aside from the global figures, the biggest story overnight is India’s total coronavirus infections, which exceeded 6 million as the country reported 82,170 new cases in the last 24 hours, while its death toll jumped by 1,039 to 95,542. The new cases pushed India’s total to north of 6 million cases, leaving it within striking distance of the US total. Though the pace of new infections has slowed since India’s peak a couple of weeks ago, many still expect India to become the world’s biggest outbreak – surpassing the US – within the next 2-3 weeks. India is currently reporting new cases faster than any other country. Of the total 6.07 million cases, 15.85% of patients are currently active while 82.58% have recovered, according to official data. The coronavirus mortality rate in the country stands at 1.57%, according to the latest update from the health ministry.
World Coronavirus Deaths Pass One Million, U.S. Accounts for 20 Percent – The Johns Hopkins University tracker for worldwide coronavirus cases showed that the world passed a grim milestone early Tuesday morning, as more than 1 million have died from the virus and the infection it causes, COVID-19. That’s equivalent to almost the entire population of San Jose, California. It’s a larger number than the population of Boston, Seattle, Portland and nearly twice the population of Atlanta. In comparison to diseases, COVID-19 in just nine months has killed more people than HIV and dysentery, as The New York Timesreported. It has also killed more than cholera, flu, measles and malaria combined. It’s reached every corner of the globe, affecting every country in the world.”This is a very serious global event, and a lot of people were going to get sick and many of them were going to die, but it did not need to be nearly this bad,” said Tom Inglesby, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, as The New York Times reported.In addition to the 1 million global deaths, the virus has infected nearly 33.5 million people. Many of the survivors never fully recover and end up with lingering effects that affect their lungs, joints, muscles and mental acuity. Those continued symptoms hamper their ability to return to normal life, according to another report in The New York Times.The U.S. accounts for 20 percent of the global deaths, by far the largest number of deaths, with more than 205,000 COVID-19 fatalities. The Johns Hopkins data shows that just four countries – the U.S., Brazil, India and Mexico – make up more than half the total of worldwide deaths, according to CNN. India is quickly catching up to the U.S. as the virus’s transmission is accelerating there. As for the U.S., the numbers are continuing to climb as only 19 states are holding steady. CNN reported that 21 states recorded a higher number of cases in the past week compared to the previous week. “It’s not only that the number of infections keeps on going up. It’s also that the test positivity rates are trending in the wrong direction,” said emergency medicine physician Dr. Leana Wen to CNN.”We’re seeing more than a dozen states with a test positivity … over 10%. And there are two states – Idaho and South Dakota – where the test positivity is over 20 percent,” she added. “That means that not only do we have increasing infections in these states, we also don’t have nearly enough testing.” For context, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended that an area that wants to reopen businesses should have the number of positive cases at 5 percent or lower for 14 consecutive days, according to Johns Hopkins.
The world has reached the grim milestone of one million COVID-19 deaths According to the Worldometer coronavirus dashboard, the number of COVID-19 deaths globally surpassed 1 million on Sunday morning, US Eastern Time. The Johns Hopkins dashboard, more commonly cited in the American media, puts the figure over 995,000, and by all accounts, will register one million deaths today. This massive tragedy is an indictment of the ruling classes which have allowed such misery to rain on the working class populations who have suffered the brunt of this pandemic. The United States, with 209,361 deaths, leads every other nation in this horrific category. Brazil takes second place with 141,503 deaths, followed by India, with 95,162 deaths, and Mexico, with 76,243 deaths. Right-wing authoritarian rulers in the first three countries, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Narendra Modi, and the “left” populist demagogue Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, in the fourth, have embraced identical policies of letting the infection rip through the population without serious resistance. These four horsemen of death account for half the world’s total. Mexico has consistently averaged close to 500 deaths daily, and by all experts, the official reports have been gross underestimates. Earlier this month, the government shamefully announced they had run out of death certificates. By Aug. 1, the official death count was 69,095 though the government had announced excess deaths at 122,765. As Figure 1 demonstrates, daily global deaths have remained nearly stable since peaking in April. The column for September marked in yellow is a projection that the last four days will see, on average, about 5,300 deaths per day using the latest seven-day average estimate. By all accounts, the limited response and measures that have been employed throughout the pandemic have only stabilized the impact of the virus around the world. However, as winter approaches for the far more populous northern hemisphere, case numbers and deaths are expected to begin climbing again. To the figure of one million officially killed by COVID-19 must be added hundreds of thousands who have perished with the cause of death signed off by the medical examiners or health authorities as unknown, or cardiopulmonary or organ failure, concealing the true impact of the pandemic from family members and the public at large.
Coronavirus Super-Spreaders Drove Explosive Outbreak in India – Coronavirus super-spreaders were behind the explosion of Covid-19 in India, the country with the most cases after the U.S., researchers said. A group of patients that included about 8% of India’s confirmed cases later led to almost two-thirds of its total infections, scientists said Wednesday in a study published in the journal Science. The research, based on tracing more than 3 million contacts in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu through Aug. 1, is the first major study of transmission in a developing country. While most research on the pandemic has come from China, Europe and North America, cases are now burgeoning in India and other developing countries, according to researchers led by Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy who wrote the study. Barriers to health care are greater in these nations, and the risk of getting severely ill and dying from Covid is higher, they said. “We’ve never had this degree of information to say, hey, some people are really transmitting the virus in a massive way,” Laxminarayan said in an interview. In contrast with the super-spreader minority, 71% of confirmed cases whose contacts were traced weren’t found to have spread the virus to anyone. A nationwide serological survey showed that one in 15 Indians have been exposed to the coronavirus. Hospitals in several states are now struggling to secure medical oxygen, needed to assist patients with trouble breathing on their own. Data for the Science study were gathered by thousands of contact-tracers during India’s lockdown, when mass gatherings were banned, schools were closed and people were ordered to wear face masks in public. Almost 130 million people live in the two Indian states, accounting for about 10% of the country’s population. India has recorded more than 6.2 million Covid-19 cases. Both states reported their first SARS-CoV-2 infections on March 5. Health workers traced as many as 80 contacts per confirmed case, using skills and resources honed from routinely tracking potential transmitters of HIV and tuberculosis, Laxminarayan said. Prolific SARS-CoV-2 transmitters tended to spread the virus during prolonged close contact on buses and other forms of transportation, according to the researchers, who were also from Princeton University, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Indian state governments. In such settings, there was a 79% chance of an infection occurring. That compares with only a 1 in 40 chance of catching the virus from someone in the community who wasn’t a household member, Laxminarayan said. Children under 14, though, were found to be frequent “silent” spreaders of the virus, especially to their parents and peers.
What’s driving India’s 100,000 Covid-19 deaths? – India has confirmed more than 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus – a grim toll that ranks it third in the world behind only the US and Brazil. September was the nation’s worst month on record: on average 1,100 Indians died every day from the virus. Regional anomalies continue as some states report far higher deaths than others – a sign, experts say, that the pandemic is still working its way through the country. Here’s some of what we know about where India is worst affected by Covid-19 and why. Maharashtra, one of India’s largest and richest states, has both the highest caseload – 1.3 million and counting – and death toll – more than 36,000. The pandemic struck early in Maharashtra, spread quickly and barely let up. The number of daily reported deaths in September ranged between 300 and 500 – significantly higher than other badly-hit states which reported fewer than 100 deaths a day through the month. And it is no longer Mumbai, the crowded financial hub, that is worrying pandemic watchers. Mumbai is still the district with the highest fatalities, but quiet, suburban Pune district has raced to second place with more than 5,800 deaths. Five of the 10 districts with the highest Covid-19 fatalities – Mumbai and Pune included – are now in Maharashtra. Mumbai was the virus’ gateway to Maharashtra, said Dr Aurnab Ghose, who was part of a team which carried out a random antibody sampling of Pune residents. The government survey found that, in some parts of the city, half the people had developed Covid-19 antibodies. Dr Ghose said that while Mumbai was more self-contained, the greater movement between urban and rural parts of Pune district, as well between Pune and surrounding districts, had spread the virus further in these parts. And given the high prevalence, health systems too have been overwhelmed, driving up deaths in some instances. Pune’s ‘jumbo’ Covid centre made headlines recently over allegations of a negligent death. The northern state has been reporting a case fatality ratio of 3%. That’s a measure of how many Covid positive patients die from the virus and Punjab’s figure is double that of India’s national average. In absolute numbers, the state ranks ninth for deaths. But many of its districts are also reporting high case fatality rates – 4% and above. “Punjab is a cause for concern,” said Dr Shamika Ravi, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who is tracking the pandemic. “Its case fatality rate is not only the highest in the country but it’s also rising,” she said. That is alarming, Dr Ravi said, because it is contrary to what’s happening all over the world and in India as a whole – widespread testing and improved knowledge of treatment options is bringing down case fatality rates. Dr Ravi said she believed Maharashtra and Punjab were both showing symptoms of a bigger malaise – limited testing, leading to higher positive rates. Lower testing could leader to a rise in death rates, she said, because authorities catch the infection only when it’s too late.
Putin To Be Among First To Receive ‘Controversial’ Sputnik Vaccine Ahead Of S.Korea Visit – After previously touting that his own daughter was among the first to take the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, standing in as a prominent early ‘guinea pig’ of sorts vouching for its safety, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he plans to receive it soon, according to a story in Newsweek on Monday.Without specifying precisely when he would receive the vaccine, which was met with approval by government regulators in August, Putin reportedly indicated it would come before his next trip to South Korea. “Putin has not yet committed publicly to receiving the vaccine – the development of which has been financed by the state Russian Direct Investment Fund – but told South Korean President Moon Jae-in by phone Monday that he would have the shot before a planned visit to Seoul, Newsweek reports.Moon personally invited Putin to come to South Korea during a call upon the occasion of the 30th anniversary of establishment of the Russian-South Korean diplomatic relations.According to a summary of the call, Russian media sources indicate that Putin told Moon:“I will come to South Korea… I will personally take the Russian vaccine and go.”Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine was developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya research institute with help from the Russian defense ministry. It was tested at Moscow’s state medical university.Initially met with broad global skepticism, Russia’s health ministry last month announced it expects to begin mass anti-coronavirus vaccinations by October, with the first rounds to be administered to front line medical workers as well as teachers.Global critics have charged Russia appears to be ‘rushing’ out a vaccine amid the international race to come up with a preventative ‘cure’ for countries’ populations. And apparently Putin plans to be among these front line early recipients of the Russian vaccine as well, given his international travel schedule.
Explosive outbreak of COVID-19 at British universities – The return of two million students to Britain’s universities has produced a massive rise in Covid-19 cases. As of Tuesday outbreaks had taken place in at least 45 universities around the UK from a total of approximately 130, according to research by Sky News. This represents a more than doubling of the 20 universities reporting outbreaks at the weekend. With around 2 million students in higher education (HE), cases will only grow. Almost a third of universities have had Covid cases already with the new term just getting underway, and with more students still returning. By September 29, at least 865 Covid-19 cases have been identified among students and staff since HE reopened, according to Sky News. Thousands of students are self-isolating as the new term begins. At Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) approximately 1,700 students were told to isolate for 14 days after 127 tested positive for the virus; at Glasgow University 600 are students isolating after 172 tested positive and at Queen’s University Belfast another 100 are isolating after 30 tested positive for the virus. A statement from Labour Party-run Manchester City Council last Friday said a decision had been taken with the university and Public Health England to “implement a local lockdown for student accommodation at [MMU’s] Birley campus and Cambridge Halls” to “stop the transmission of the virus among students and prevent it getting into the wider community.” Students living in two main dorms were told via email to self-isolate in their residences for 14 days, regardless of whether they have symptoms. Further testing revealed that 140 students have tested positive for the virus. Students are being kept under conditions that will facilitate the uncontrolled spread of the virus. They are stuck in a confined space, having to share communal areas including kitchens. Other students now find themselves living under curfews and banned from the local pubs.
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