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. Data is quite eratic this week because of the holiday and the same will be true for the coming week. Economic news related to COVID-19 is found here.
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Summary:
Christmas, and New Years next week, are going to make it difficult to get a handle on the trajectory of this disease, because around 20 states didn’t report totals on Friday and it appears that other states reported partial totals (ie, much lower than their trend of previous days) at the same time, rendering current data meaningless. For a while I thought it was just the part time holiday journalists at local newspapers who were reporting a big drop in cases and deaths on Christmas as if it were progress, but now I see that the Wall Street Journal is running that story too.
Looking at the historical graphs of new cases and deaths, my sense is that a number of those that were missed over the Thanksgiving weekend were never reported; ie, the graphs pick up the same trend lines in the week after Thanksgiving as they were on before it, without much of a spike to indicate that the counts missed during the Thanksgiving dip were counted. If that underreporting holds over Christmas and New Years, they’ll be no telling where we stand.
That said, this week we can compare the totals for the week ending this Wednesday to the week ending the prior Wednesday to get an idea where we were at before some of the data went missing on Dec 24th. That shows that new US Covid infections had already fallen more than 2.0% this week compared to last, but that new Covid deaths were still rising 5.0% week over week in the US. Globally, new Covid cases were virtually unchanged week over week as of Wednesday, and global deaths were up about 2%.
The major news this week was the spread of at least one coronavirus mutation that is around 70% more infectious than the one we have been dealing with (or should I say not dealing with effectively). Although at least 40 countries are imposing travel restrictions from the UK, the mutant strain has been circulating there since at least September, so we have to figure the genie is already out of the bottle and that mutant strain is circulating worldwide. That suggests the new year will bring a race to vaccinate against the rapidly spreading new strain, if the vaccinations are indeed as effective again that strain as they are against the parent strain they were designed to inhibit.
I watch the interactive graphs on Johns Hopkins’s dashboard for the global trends and that crazy spike to nearly 1.5 million new cases last Wednesday is still there. (See chart below.) Take that odd spike out, and the growth rate of new cases globally has settled in below 2% weekly for the past several weeks. Meanwhile, the global death rate has been rising at a rate approaching 5% over the same period. If the death rate does not slow soon, that would suggest that an increasing number of cases are going undiagnosed.
The chart below from WorldoMeter shows the daily number of new cases for the US, updated through 19 December.
New cases globally continued to increase. (See Johns Hopkins graph below.) The growth rate has visibly slowed since the rapid acceleration in October. Of course the unreliability of current data reporting due to the holiday season is a concern, as discussed earlier.
Also, Johns Hopkins has a graph for global deaths (below) that I mentioned above. Deaths globally were up about 5% week-over-week. It appears that the death rate that had been accelerating since early November, corresponding to the accelerating pattern for new cases in October, has now decelerated from the previous 10% weekly growth.
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Calculated Risk tracks the daily testing rate and results. The 26 December graphic:
The count of testing has been quite eratic over the past several weeks, and the percent positive has again turned down. Calculated Risk offers the same caution about holiday numbers that we have above..
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: 26 December 2020 Coronavirus Charts and News: Are Concerns Justified That The New Coronavirus Variant in South Africa Could Overwhelm The Health Care System?
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:
CDC panel recommends people 75 and older, certain front-line essential workers be next in line for vaccine -A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory panel recommended on Sunday that people 75 and older and certain front-line essential workers be next in line for COVID-19 vaccines. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted 13-1 to advise the CDC to include those 75 and older and specific front-line essential workers, including emergency responders and teachers, in the next phase of coronavirus vaccinations, several news outlets reported Sunday. These recommendations would apply to phase 1b of the vaccination process, after the committee and the CDC advised that health care workers and residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities get the first vaccinations in the country. Phase 1b will aim to vaccinate about 50 million people before the end of February, according to The New York Times. The ACIP also decided that the groups that should be prioritized in phase 1c are adults aged 65 to 74 and those aged 16 to 64 who have underlying medical conditions. The phase will also involve other essential workers such as corrections officers, postal workers, public transit workers and food supply workers, who were not included in the first two phases. The advisory panel said it decided the prioritized groups based on information from scientists, ethicists, vaccination experts and the general public, NBC News reported. Jose Romero, chairman of the ACIP and secretary of the Arkansas Department of Health, said the groups were selected “to address the current lack of vaccine supply and address those individuals with the highest risk for disease,” CNN reported. CDC Director Robert Redfield will review the ACIP’s recommendations and determine if the agency adopts it as official guidance. During the meeting, the ACIP noted that its advice was nonbinding, as each state could adjust the recommendations for its own population, according to the Times. Public health experts initially indicated they would allow a larger group of essential workers to receive the vaccine ahead of older adults. But ACIP member Kathleen Dooling noted that those 75 and older have made up 25 percent of COVID-19-related hospitalizations even though they account for 8 percent of the population, according to NBC News. Surgeon general: Immigration status should not be bar
Covid-19 Vaccine Makers Tap Contractors to Produce Billions of Doses – High-profile drug companies have turned to a quickly assembled network of smaller, lesser-known manufacturers to mount an unprecedented effort to produce Covid-19 vaccines. The companies have been forced to rely on outside manufacturers world-wide because their new vaccine technology has never been used at industrial scale. Even drugmakers using more conventional technology are getting outside help because of the speed at which they need to ramp up production to meet orders for more than a billion vaccine doses next year. “We’re working harder and faster than we ever have,” said Ger Brophy, executive vice president of biopharma production at Avantor Inc., one of dozens of third-party manufacturers that have been mobilized to make vaccine ingredients, combine them into finished products and fill them into vials. Dr. Brophy says the company’s plants have added workers and night shifts to keep up with demand. Moderna Inc.’s vaccine, which received emergency authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday, and another from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE rely on a new messenger RNA technology, named after the molecular couriers that deliver genetic instructions to a patient’s immune system to fight Covid-19. That makes industrialization easier than for traditional vaccines, pharmaceutical experts say, because manufacturers don’t have to work with live pathogens.But to produce hundreds of millions of doses, manufacturers stitched together supply chains in a matter of months – a process that usually takes years – before clinical trials were even completed. Some in the industry liken that endeavor to building an airplane while flying it. “Many of these airplanes have never been made before,” said Dr. Brophy. Avantor, based in Radnor, Pa., makes lipids that are formed into nanoparticles to carry fragile mRNA into human cells. Lipids have traditionally been sourced from animals, but the process isn’t efficient for making hundreds of millions of doses, so the company has had to quickly increase its capacity for producing the substances synthetically from plants, says Dr. Brophy. The rush to ramp up production meant that Recipharm AB, a Swedish company hired to help produce Moderna’s vaccine, began instituting Moderna’s directives for vaccine production without a final contract between the companies, jumping ahead of the usual legal formalities.
Covid-19 Vaccines Are Slow to Reach Rural America -Five days after Covid-19 vaccines started rolling out across the U.S., rural hospital executives like Cory Edmondson are still waiting, and hoping, that they will receive some doses soon. “How do you tell your staff, your nurses, your doctors, ‘Hey, we’re not going to get the vaccine [yet]?'” said Mr. Edmondson, chief executive of Peterson Health in Kerrville, a town of about 24,000 in the Texas Hill Country. “They’re going to feel like ‘Whoa, we’re not as important or valuable, just because we’re in rural Texas.'” The push to swiftly immunize most of the American population against the coronavirus is already one of the most ambitious public-health efforts the nation has ever undertaken. Reaching rural communities and small towns that are grappling with some of the highest infection rates and often have weaker health-care infrastructure is among the most formidable challenges, according to health experts. “These small towns are where those who are in the most need of health-care services and have the fewest available options live,” said Alan Morgan, chief executive of the National Rural Health Association. “You’ve got a population that has been hit hard by Covid and has a very fragile safety net when it comes to providers.” While the pandemic initially wrought havoc in major cities like New York last spring, it later spread to less populated areas. All of the 25 counties with the highest rates of reported cases per capita over the past two weeks had populations of fewer than 50,000 people, and 18 had fewer than 10,000, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. Large metro areas reported more Covid-19cases earlier in the year, but now small townsand rural areas are hardest hit. The challenges of inoculating people who live in smaller towns far from population centers include storing vaccines safely at cold temperatures, having enough healthy hospital staff on hand, and reaching people and clinics far from hospitals. Some states like New Mexico are using their health departments and National Guard to break down bulk shipments of 975 doses of a vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE and ship them to rural hospitals that can’t store that many at the required range of -76 to -112 degrees Fahrenheit. After thawing, the vaccine can be refrigerated for up to five days.
Rolling Out the Vaccine – Peter Dorman – This morning’s New York Times offers a panel discussion on the question of who should get vaccinated against Covid first. Broadly speaking, they take a utilitarian position: it’s interesting that none disagreed with the positions taken by panelist Peter Singer, the world’s most prominent utilitarian philosopher. And I wouldn’t either, except for one thing. The vaccines approved by the FDA, along with those approved by other countries like China and Russia, have gone through the fastest possible testing. Tens of thousands of individuals have been placed in control and treatment groups in order to determine two things: to what extent do the vaccines reduce the likelihood of getting infected (efficiency) and how common and severe are the side effects (safety)? Meeting both criteria is sufficient for approval, which is how it should be. But there is another crucial question, to what extent do the vaccines reduce transmission of the virus to others? The answer does not affect whether these vaccines should be employed, but they do have large consequences for other policies during this phase of the pandemic, such as rules for separation and masking, restrictions on activities and events, resumption of in-person schooling, and how much should be spent on interventions like ventilation overhauls. To the extent that vaccination reduces transmission, other restrictions and investments can be modified as the vaccinated portion of the population increases. Unfortunately, our knowledge of this issue is minimal. We don’t have any published lab results at all, and we are at least months away from meaningful epidemiological data. A rollout that prioritizes crucial learning could change this. Some substantial portion of the early vaccines could be reserved for community trials. A number of communities could be given treatments in which a designated proportion of the population is vaccinated as soon as possible; this portion could be varied (30%, 50%, 70%) so that a variety of treatments could be tested. Others matched to them by relevant demographic, economic and other variables would be controls and would not receive any vaccines during the trial period. Everyone living in these communities would be tested regularly. We could then observe differences between community infection rates corresponding to treatment and infer transmission probabilities under real world conditions. It might also be possible to learn how transmission varies across the different viral strains that have emerged. The entire operation could be accomplished within the space of a month or less. What is disheartening is that not a single expert on the Times panel broached this possibility. They are entirely preoccupied with the health significance of vaccination at the individual level and consider communities only in social and economic terms. To the extent they consider the need for learning at all it is in the context of individual response to vaccines, such as comorbidities and interactions with other drugs people may be taking.
Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine causes allergic reactions at rate higher than other vaccines, doctor says –Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine may result in more allergic reactions than expected when compared to other vaccines, although it’s still rare, Operation Warp Speed’s chief scientific adviser Dr. Moncef Slaoui said during a recent interview. The doctor told CNN Wednesday that the allergic reaction frequency “is superior to what one would expect with other vaccines,” although he was aware of only six cases as of Tuesday, out of more than a million inoculations given. Other experts say the vaccine is safe for most people, even those who have mild allergies. “You’ve seen a lot of publicity over a couple of severe allergy cases,” Fox News medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel told “Fox & Friends” on Monday. “For the vast majority of people, and I mean millions, there’s no concern whatsoever.” The Food and Drug Administration said last week it was investigating at least five cases in which recipients reacted adversely to the vaccine, Reuters reported Friday. Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said it could be linked to the chemical polyethylene glycol, which is an ingredient used in both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says most Americans with allergies should receive the vaccine – unless they have had previous severe reactions to other vaccines or ingredients used in the COVID-19 inoculations.
Adverse Reactions to Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine – Now that governments around the world are rolling out the “only solution” to the most deadly pathogen ever to plague the human race (other than politicians), recent guidelines by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are most pertinent. On Saturday December 19th, 2020, Thomas Clark MD, MPH, the Deputy Director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Division of Viral Diseases at the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases made the following presentation to the ACIP COVID-19 Vaccines Work Group: [link] During that presentation, he noted the following reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine currently being administered in the United Kingdom: [link] He also noted the following occurrences in the United States after the administration of 112,807 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine (to December 19, 2020): [link]. It was recommended that persons with anaphylactic responses to the first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine should not receive additional doses of the vaccine, a particularly important recommendation given by Pfizer that this vaccine requires a second vaccination after three weeks to be effective as shown here: While the number of anaphylactic reactions is not terribly alarming (unless you happen to be one of the victims, here are the full statistics showing the report of adverse reactions to the Pfizer vaccine after 112,807 doses were administered: [link]. In total, up to December 18, 2020, 3,150 registrants or 2.8 percent of all persons vaccinated had what can only be described as a significant reaction to the vaccine or what the CDC terms a “health impact event” which it defines as:
- 1.) inability to perform normal daily activities
- 2.) unable to work
- 3.) required care from a doctor or other health care professional
As well, it is important to note that a total of 514 pregnant women had been vaccinated. This is rather surprising given that the vaccine has not been tested on pregnant women and that the FDA clearly stated in its Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine that the company must undertake a large scale study of adverse events of special interest along with deaths and hospitalizations for pregnant women as shown here: Given that Pfizer’s own research showed that the number of adverse reactions to the vaccine increases after the second vaccination, it will be interesting to see how many “health impact events” occur over the coming months once more of the world is vaccinated for the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
A Document Maven Looks at the Pfizer Vaccine Paper in the New England Journal of Medicine – Lambert Strether – IM Doc, in “An Internal Medicine Doctor and His Peers Read the Pfizer Vaccine Study and See Red Flags [Updated]” wrote:First, a critical issue for any clinician is “exclusion criteria” … . From my reading of this paper, and the accompanying editorial, one would assume there were no exclusion criteria.The “exclusion criteria” are to be found through another document element called a Protocol about which more in a moment.They certainly are never mentioned … . And now we know there were exclusion criteria, not because of anything Pfizer, the investigators, or the NEJM did but because of stunning news out of the UK. I need to disentangle this a bit, because I think IM Doc is generously taking on a bit more responsibility than he or needed to. First, we need to consider what is meant by “the article.” As we know, there are at least three versions of “Safety and Efficacy”: The online version, the PDF version, and the printed version. Which one was IM Doc reading? Certainly the PDF version (assuming the printed version had not yet arrived in the mail[3]). We know that from IM Doc’s text, because he tells us so himself: He cites to “page 5, in Table 1,” to “tables on pages 6 and 7,” and “to tables on page 7.” The online version has no pages. And IM Doc describes the meeting:we had an ad hoc meeting of our Journal Club to discuss the NEJM article It is extremely difficult for me to imagine that each member of the Journal Club, whether on Zoom or in person, was reading the online version on a device (one person an Android phone, another on an iPhone, the fourth and fifth on two iPads of different sizes, the sixth on a laptop, and so on). It’s far more likely they were reading the PDF, and most likely printed out, because that way, when one reader says “flip to Table 1 on page 5,” all the readers can easily do that simultaneously (rather than swiping, tapping, scrolling, and so on).So now we come to the first extremely simple reason why IM Doc and his study group, working from the PDF, could not find the Protocol which contained the exclusion criteria. They could not find the Protocol element in the PDF because it was not there.NEJM’s document structure treats protocols as separate, external documents[4], and puts a link to them, called Protocol, within an element called Supplementary Material[5], which is placed at or near the end of the article in the online version only. Here is the online version, which contains the Supplementary Material: And here is the PDF version, which does not: There’s no formatting in the PDF to indicate what “the protocol” is, and no indication of where it is to be found. All the other mentions of “protocol” are like that. So no wonder – in the trackless wilderness of NEJM’s house style – the Protocol was difficult to find.
Boston doctor with history of allergies has severe reaction to Moderna vaccine – A doctor in Boston with a history of allergies had a severe allergic reaction to Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine. Hossein Sadrzadeh told CNN that after he was vaccinated at Boston Medical Center on Thursday, he felt his heart rate spike to 150 beats per minute. Sadrzadeh also told the news outlet that within minutes he “felt in my tongue and also my throat having, like, some weird sensation of tingling and numbness, the same reaction that I had before to my shellfish allergy.” He also said his blood pressure dropped so low a monitor couldn’t detect it. Sadrzadeh used his EpiPen and was rushed to the emergency room where he was given medications, according to The New York Times. He was released from care four hours later, and told the newspaper that he felt fully recovered as of Friday.The Hill has reached out to Boston Medical Center, Moderna, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for comment.The incident is the first of its kind reported after Moderna’s vaccine was approved by federal health agencies and distributed and comes as the FDA investigated several reports of allergic reactions into Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine. Peter Marks, who leads the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said last weekend a chemical called polyethylene glycol, which is present in both vaccines, “could be the culprit.”At the time, the agency advised those who’ve had severe reactions to any component of Moderna’s vaccine in the past not to get that shot. In light of the allergic reactions, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued guidance advising those who have severe responses after the first dose not to get a second shot. The agency also says people who are allergic to vaccines or injectable therapies should consult their doctors before getting vaccinated.
Moderna COVID vaccine may cause side effects for those with facial fillers — People with cosmetic facial fillers could experience swelling and inflammation with one of the coronavirus vaccines, the FDA advisory committee noted. According to the committee, several trial participants with fillers have already experienced side effects. A California-based dermatologist said the reaction was immunological, ABC7 reported on Thursday. “Your immune system which causes inflammation is revved up when you get a vaccine, that’s how it’s supposed to work,” said Dr. Shirley Chi, who noted the side effects were easily treated by medical personnel. “So it makes sense that you would see an immune response in certain areas where they see some substance that is not a naturally occurring substance in your body.” She said, however, that the side effects shouldn’t stop people from obtaining the vaccine. “In these cases the patients all had swelling and inflammation in the area that was given the filler,” Chi said. “A couple of the patients had cheek filler six months prior to their vaccine and one patient had lip filler done two days after the vaccine. All were treated with steroids and anti-histamines and all of their reactions resolved.”
Hospitals Retreat From Early Covid Treatment and Return to Basics – WSJ – Doctors are treating a new flood of critically ill coronavirus patients with treatments from before the pandemic, to keep more patients alive and send them home sooner. Last spring, with less known about the disease, doctors often pre-emptively put patients on ventilators or gave powerful sedatives largely abandoned in recent years. The aim was to save the seriously ill and protect hospital staff from Covid-19. Now hospital treatment for the most critically ill looks more like it did before the pandemic. Doctors hold off longer before placing patients on ventilators. Patients get less powerful sedatives, with doctors checking more frequently to see if they can halt the drugs entirely and dialing back how much air ventilators push into patients’ lungs with each breath. “Let us go back to basics,” said Dr. Eduardo Oliveira, executive medical director for critical-care services for AdventHealth Central Florida, which recommends its doctors stick with pre-pandemic guidelines for ventilator use. “The less you deviate from it, the better.” Advances also include new drugs, most notably steroids, for severely ill patients. As the U.S. surge stretches into winter, hospital ICUs are seeing record numbers of Covid-19 cases. Even with more effective treatment, the high volume has required a record number of them on ventilators in the U.S. last week, according to Covid Tracking Project data. Vaccines began distribution in the U.S. last week, but shots for most Americans remain months away. The disease has killed 1.68 million world-wide, according to Johns Hopkins University. Last spring, doctors put patients on ventilators partly to limit contagion at a time when it was less clear how the virus spread, when protective masks and gowns were in short supply. Doctors could have employed other kinds of breathing support devices that don’t require risky sedation, but early reports suggested patients using them could spray dangerous amounts of virus into the air, said Theodore Iwashyna, a critical-care physician at University of Michigan and Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals in Ann Arbor, Mich. At the time, he said, doctors and nurses feared the virus would spread through hospitals. “We were intubating sick patients very early. Not for the patients’ benefit, but in order to control the epidemic and to save other patients,” Dr. Iwashyna said “That felt awful.” Ventilators can injure lungs by causing too much strain as the machines force in air. They deliver air and oxygen through a throat tube, which the body typically fights. “We’ve got gag reflexes that are pretty hard to go away, precisely to avoid things going into our lungs,” That meant patients required more powerful sedatives to keep them from pulling out throat tubes. Sedation increases risk for delirium, research suggests, and delirium increases the likelihood of long-term confusion and death.
Pennsylvania student said she suffered heart failure at age 20 after mild case of Covid -A Temple University student says she experienced a life-threatening heart condition weeks after recovering from a mild case of Covid-19. In a Facebook post from Dec. 8, Madeline Neville writes that she returned to her family home for the Thanksgiving holiday after being diagnosed with Covid-19 in late October. Neville said that she tested negative before returning home. But soon after, she was hit by a second wave of symptoms. “I experienced such intense chest pain, shortness of breath, and a slew of other horrible symptoms that came on suddenly and as a complete surprise,” she wrote. In her post, Neville said that she was eventually airlifted to a Philadelphia hospital where she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure.”I have been hospitalized for the past nine days, where I struggled everyday to do even the most menial tasks like going to the bathroom and showering on my own, brushing my own teeth and hair, or even walking 10 steps,” she wrote.Neville said her doctors told her she had myocarditis, a swelling of the heart muscle that has been linked to Covid-19.Recently, doctors have raised the question of whether athletes should be required to undergo additional screenings before returning to gameplay following recovery from the disease because of the risk of myocarditis. “They were throwing around this term called ‘multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children,'” Neville said. The CDC has recently written that the Covid-linked syndrome has recently been observed in adults.When she first shared her story on Facebook in early December, Neville wrote that she hoped that her story might serve as a “reality check” for some of her peers who “take their health for granted.””I know that I did,” Neville wrote. “I believed that my youth and health would allow me to make it through any run in I had with the virus relatively unscathed.” “However, as someone who has been on the ass end of it, I wish I had chosen inconvenience over jeopardizing my health. I wish I had been more careful in my social interactions prior to contracting COVID, to save myself, my family, and my friends the pain of uncertainty regarding whether or not this illness would kill me.”
COVID-19 isolation hurting women more than men – A study by University of Calgary researchers with the Hotchkiss Brain Institute examining sex and gender differences on sleep, empathy and mood during months of isolation due to COVID-19 has found that women are suffering more than men with poorer sleep and more anxiety, depression and trauma, while also feeling more empathetic than men. The findings published in Frontiers in Global Women’s Health is one of the first studies to look at changes in mood and sleep quality during the pandemic. Dr. Veronica Guadagni, PhD, led an online survey of Canadians between March 23 and June 7 of this year. During this time, schools and many businesses were closed, and people stayed home as much as possible as part of a general lock down to prevent transmission of the virus. The researchers examined data from 573 participants, 112 men and 459 women with a mean age of 25.9 years. More than 66 per cent of the volunteer participants reported poor quality of sleep, more than 39 per cent reported increased symptoms of insomnia, and anxiety and distress were increased in the whole sample. Sleep, depression and anxiety symptoms were more prevalent in women. “Generally, the study found women reporting more anxiety and depression,” says Guadagni, a postdoctoral scholar at the Cumming School of Medicine (CSM). “Their symptoms worsened over time and with greater length of the isolation period. There was a progressive increase in anxiety, depression, poor sleep quality and trauma for males and females. But it was greater for females over time.”
COVID-19 pandemic’s death toll could shorten life expectancy in US by as much as 3 years – Life expectancy in the U.S. inched up for a second consecutive year in 2019, but the small gains are likely to be erased by the coronavirus pandemic – and dropping by as much as three full years, experts say. The nation’s overall mortality rate fell a bit in 2019, due to reductions in heart disease and cancer deaths. And life expectancy inched up – by several weeks – for the second straight year in 2019, according to data released Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But life expectancy for 2020 could end up dropping as much as two to three years due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, said Robert Anderson, who oversees the CDC’s death statistics. “We’ve had a lot of deaths added since August, so I think a drop of two to three years for 2020 isn’t out of the question,” Anderson said, according to the Washington Post. He said such a drop would mark the largest decline in U.S. life expectancy since World War II, when deaths pushed the metric down by 2.9 years in 1943, the paper reported. A medical staff member injects sodium bicarbonate into a patient in the COVID-19 intensive care unit (ICU) at the United Memorial Medical Center on Dec. 21, 2020 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Go Nakamura/Getty Images) Anderson said the figures are rough estimates, as data for all of 2020 is not yet available. But the virus in the U.S. has been a big driver of deaths this year, both directly and indirectly. More than 325,000 Americans had died from COVID-19 since the first U.S. cases were reported in early 2020, Johns Hopkins data shows. It has become the third leading cause of death, behind only heart disease and cancer, CDC figures show. For certain periods this year, COVID-19 was the No. 1 killer. RELATED: US tops 3 million deaths in 2020, by far most ever counted But some other types of deaths also have increased. A burst of pneumonia cases early this year may have been COVID-19 deaths that simply weren’t recognized as such early in the epidemic. There also have been an unexpected number of deaths from certain types of heart and circulatory diseases, diabetes and dementia, Anderson said. Many of those may also be related to COVID-19. The virus could have weakened patients already struggling with those conditions, or could have diminished the care they were getting, he said.
Scientists alarmed at spread of Covid mutant – The highly infectious variant of coronavirus that has emerged in south-east England is spreading rapidly to the rest of the UK and is already present elsewhere in the world, scientists warned on Sunday.The World Health Organisation said its Evolution Working Group is working closely with the UK medical authorities to understand how the variant, now called B.1.1.7, is likely to affect the course of the pandemic. It has been detected in the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia.Scientists say two aspects of B.1.1.7 give cause for concern. One is the unprecedented number of mutations it carries. The other is the speed with which it is supplanting other strains of the Sars-Cov-2 virus in south-east England.Jeffrey Barrett, director of the Covid Genomics Initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said 23 letters in the viral genetic code had changed, of which 17 might affect the behaviour of the virus – in particular helping it to enter and propagate within human cells.”This new variant is very concerning, and is unlike anything we have seen so far in the pandemic,” he said. “Hospitalisation rates have gone up recently [in south-east England] but roughly in line with the increase in case numbers, which doesn’t point to the new strain leading to more severe symptoms” said Francois Balloux, director of the UCL Genetics Institute in London.”I’d be very surprised if any evidence arose that it creates more serious symptoms,” Prof Balloux added. “It’s also not a strain that should be able to escape protection provided by immunisation caused by the current vaccines or prior infection.” But Kristian Andersen, director of infectious disease genomics at Scripps Research Institute in California, said: “I have seen many articles stating ‘no effect on immunity or vaccines or clinical features. That is not correct . . . The fact is we don’t know but we will in coming weeks.” The increased infectivity of the variant is illustrated by the fact that, after appearing in Kent on September 20, it was responsible for 28 per cent of infections in London by early November and 62 per cent in the week ending December 9. Computer modelling suggests that it is 70 per cent more transmissible than other Sars-Cov-2 strains circulating in the UK and raises the R value – the average number of people to whom someone with Covid-19 passes the infection – by 0.4, which makes the pandemic far harder to control without stringent lockdown measures.According to a paper released on Saturday by the Covid-19 Genomics Consortium UK, labs have sequenced 1,623 Sars-Cov-2 viral genomes showing the B.1.1.7 variant. These include 519 in London, 555 in Kent, 545 elsewhere in the UK including Scotland and Wales, and four in other countries. Regular Covid-19 tests do not detect viral mutations. Variants can only be identified through a readout of all 30,000 letters of genetic code in each Sars-Cov-2 sample using specialised sequencing machines. All viruses mutate and B.1.1.7 is not the first variant to cause concern. Examples include the D614G mutation that emerged early in the pandemic and moderately increases the transmissibility of Covid-19. That strain spread from Spain to the rest of Europe over the summer. The Y453F mutation arose in Danish mink but has not spread widely in other countries. The strain now causing most international concern, besides B.1.1.7, is a different variant in South Africa called 501.V2. Professor Salim Abdool Karim, leader of the country’s Covid-19 programme, said on Friday: “We did not expect the rapid way in which this variant has become dominant in South Africa . . . We are finding between 80 and 90 per cent of the virus is this 501.V2 mutant.”
CDC Monitoring New “Mutant” COVID Strain From South Africa -Over the last week alarm has sounded over a new variant of COVID-19 rapidly spreading across the U.K. In an interview with CBS News yesterday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explained that VUI-202012/01 (the first Variant Under Investigation in December 2020), isn’t the first nor the last time the virus will undergo a mutation. In fact, there is another mutant COVID strain spreading around South Africa that the CDC is currently monitoring. Read on – and to ensure your health and the health of others, don’t miss these Sure Signs You’ve Already Had Coronavirus. According to the CDC, the new variant, dubbed 501Y.V2, was discovered over the weekend and isn’t connected to the U.K. mutation. “On December 18, 2020, the South African government announced that it had also seen the emergence of a new strain in a scenario similar to that in the U.K.,” they wrote on their website. “The South African variant also has the N501Y mutation and several other mutations but emerged completely independently of the U.K. strain and is not related to it.” According to The Daily Mail, the CDC is currently “monitoring the implication for the U.S.” “Putting our data together with that in the U.K., this [South African] variant is a bit more effective at spreading from person to person and that is not good. It means we have to get a bit better at stopping it,” Dr. Richard Lessells, one of the specialists leading research into the new variant in South Africa, told The Guardian. “Ours raises a few more concerns for a vaccine [than the U.K. variant] … Another worry is reinfection. We are currently doing the careful, methodical work in the laboratory to answer all the questions we have and that takes time.” Dr. Fauci also acknowledged the new mutation during an interview with PBS, noting that it was likely in America as well. “When you see something that is pretty prevalent in a place like the U.K. – there are also mutations that we’re seeing in South Africa – and given the travel throughout the world, I would not be surprised if it is already here,” he pointed out. South Africa has recently experienced a surge of cases, which experts believe is due to the new strain. The country’s health minister, Zweli Mkhize, says that the new variant appears to be linked to higher rates of severe illness in younger people.
One in five US prisoners has contracted COVID-19, 17,736 have died -As the coronavirus pandemic continues to surge across the US bringing with it a wave of death, a forgotten section of the population is being especially ravaged: prisoners in state and federal prisons. The Marshall Project has been tracking inmate cases and deaths since mid-March. The non-profit news organization, in coordination with the Associated Press, reports that by December 15 at least 276,107 people in prison had tested positive for the illness, a 10 percent increase over the week before, far outpacing the previous peak in early August. As testing for the virus is limited, and all cases are not reported, this number is undoubtedly much higher.The following number of new cases were reported on the last week studied:
- California: nearly 6,000
- Federal Bureau of Prisons: more than 3,000
- Michigan and Pennsylvania: more than 2,000 each
- Arizona and Nevada: more than 1,000 each
These staggering figures show that the ruling elite’s policy of “herd immunity” is even more concentrated within prison walls, where prisoners are confined to close quarters and social distancing is nearly impossible. As with workers sent into auto, meat processing and other factories, the lives of prisoners are seen as expendable. Prisoners, moreover, are viewed as a drain on the resources of the capitalist state, which receives limited cash value from their incarceration.Federal prisons have had 33,410 cases, more than any one state prison system, and 175 deaths, second only to Florida, which has seen 189. The number of federal cases has been boosted by the Trump administration’s pursuit of executing as many federal prisoners as possible before Joe Biden is to be sworn as president on January 20. Biden has said he will move to end federal executions.The Department of Justice, under the direction of Attorney General William Barr, is on track to carry out 10 executions on Trump’s way out of office, more than have taken place over the previous three decades. Barr, who directed the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) last year to reinstate capital punishment for federal inmates after what had been an essential moratorium on federal executions, will leave his post before Christmas, washing his hands of the final three executions scheduled in January.
December 21 COVID-19 Test Results; Record Hospitalizations, Record 7-Day Deaths – (graphs) Note: The week-over-week growth in positive cases has slowed. Hopefully that continues.The US is now averaging close to 2 million tests per day. Based on the experience of other countries, for adequate test-and-trace (and isolation) to reduce infections, the percent positive needs to be under 5% (probably close to 1%), so the US has far too many daily cases – and percent positive – to do effective test-and-trace. There were 2,076,374 test results reported over the last 24 hours.There were 178,191 positive tests. Over 51,000 US deaths have been reported so far in December. 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 8.6% (red line is 7 day average). The percent positive is calculated by dividing positive results by total tests (including pending). And check out COVID Act Now to see how each state is doing. (updated link to new site) The second graph shows the 7 day average of positive tests reported and daily hospitalizations.
Record Hospitalizations
Record 7 Day Average Deaths
U.S. sets COVID-19 hospitalization record, as hospitals scramble to find enough nurses and doctors— More than 117,000 Americans were in the hospital because of COVID-19 symptoms on Tuesday, the largest number of currently hospitalized people from the virus since the pandemic started, according to the Covid Tracking Project. Tuesday, December 22, was also the 21st consecutive day the number of people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 has been above 100,000 in this country. The second-highest day was Monday, with just over 115,000 people hospitalized. Several mobile field hospitals are being erected in California to handle the growing surge of COVID-19 patients. In California alone, state officials reported 700 new hospitalizations on Tuesday. Doctors and nurses say they are treating patients in hallways and parking lots because of the lack of space for more people. The California Department of Public Health reports there are 0% ICU beds available in the large Southern California region, including Los Angeles and San Diego, as well as the San Joaquin Valley region in the center of the state. The record high number of people in the hospital with a transmissible disease is straining medical facilities, as well as staff. Leaders around the country say they are increasingly worried about staffing levels at medical facilities. At a time when there are surges in patients needing intense care, there are staffing shortages and staff balancing quarantine measures. Because “hot spots” are popping up almost everywhere, there are not many doctors or nurses who are available to help other regions. California says they are in need of about 3,000 temporary medical workers to meet the demand. State officials are reaching out to foreign partners in Australia, Taiwan and other locations to recruit critical care nurses, the LA Times reports..
As pandemic surges, California hospitals move to ration care -As the COVID-19 virus continues to spread unabated, infecting tens of thousands every day throughout California, overwhelming health care systems and completely filling intensive care units (ICUs), hospitals are moving to implement plans to ration care, withholding it from those deemed unlikely to survive the disease. This disaster is not unpredictable but the outcome of the bipartisan “herd immunity” policy pursued by the ruling class – refusing to close non-essential workplaces and schools with full compensation – which has allowed the virus to spread unabated, sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives for corporate profits. According to the Los Angeles Times, there were 53,326 confirmed cases on Friday (a new record), bringing the total to nearly 1.9 million, while there were 265 deaths, adding to the nearly 23,000 California residents who have lost their lives to the disease. As of Monday, nearly 18,000 Californians were hospitalized with COVID-19, with more than 3,400 placed in ICUs. The state will soon surpass the single-day record for hospitalizations set by New York state at the peak of its deadly first wave in April. ICUs are at zero capacity throughout Southern California and the 12-county San Joaquin Valley area, while the state’s overall capacity stands at 2.1 percent. The state’s models currently project that at the current rate there could be 100,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations in the next month alone. Last week, the state was forced to activate its “mass fatality” program, which occurs when more deaths take place than can be handled by the local coroner or emergency personnel. Governor Gavin Newsom ordered tens of thousands of additional body bags and the deployment of dozens of refrigerated trailers to hold corpses. The catastrophe in California is unfolding as a new strain of the disease has been identified in the United Kingdom that is reported to be 70 percent more infective than the variants found in the US or other parts of Europe. A document outlining the shift toward rationing care circulated among doctors at four Los Angeles – area hospitals was revealed by the Times over the weekend. “Some compromise of standard of care is unavoidable; it is not that an entity, system, or locale chooses to limit resources, it is that the resources are clearly not available to provide care in a regular manner,” reads the document, according to the Times. Decisions on how to allocate scarce resources – especially respiratory therapists, ICU nurses, and critical care physicians – will be made by a triage officer. For those patients lucky enough to receive such resources, they will be limited to only two days, at which time the decision to continue treatment will be reassessed. “The ethical justification,” reads the document, “is that in a public health emergency when there are not enough critical care resources for all, the goal of maximizing population outcomes would be jeopardized if patients who were determined to be unlikely to survive were allowed indefinite use of scarce resources.”
Covid-19 Patient Kills Fellow Covid-19 Patient in California Hospital, Officials Say – A man being treated for Covid-19 allegedly killed a fellow Covid-19patient at a hospital in California last week, officials said. Jesse Martinez, 37, was arrested and charged with murder, a hate crime enhancement and elder abuse after he allegedly struck his 82-year-old hospital roommate with an oxygen tank on Dec. 17. Martinez allegedly became upset when the victim began to pray and attacked him with an oxygen tank, according to the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.The two men were patients at Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster, about 70 miles north of Los Angeles.The victim and suspect did not know each other, the sheriff’s department said. The victim, whose name has been withheld pending notification of next of kin, succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead on Dec. 18. Martinez is being held on $1 million bond and is scheduled to appear at Antelope Valley Court in Lancaster on Dec. 28. Court documents did not indicate that Martinez had a lawyer and it is unclear if he retained legal representation.
Collapsed Patient on Crowded Plane Had Covid – A United Airlines passenger who died after collapsing on a Los Angeles-bound flight – and receiving CPR from fellow travelers – had the coronavirus, a coroner said.The 69-year-old man, identified as Isaias Hernandez, passed away at a Louisiana hospital shortly after United Flight 591 made an emergency landing in New Orleans on Dec. 14.Several other passengers had attempted to revive him for over an hour in the air – even after the man’s wife admitted her husband had been experiencing COVID-19 symptoms.The suspected diagnosis was confirmed Tuesday when Jefferson Parish Coroner Gerry Cvitanovich determined that the man died of COVID-19 and acute respiratory failure, the Washington Post reported. Hernandez had wrongly said he did not have any coronavirus symptoms on a pre-flight checklist, the newspaper said.Nearly 200 people were on board the Orlando-to-LA flight when he lost consciousness mid-flight.One of the fellow passengers who came to his aid, EMT Tony Aldapa, said on Twitterthat he knew the risks of performing CPR but “could not have sat idly by and watched someone die.”Hernandez’s wife later said that her husband had been scheduled for a COVID-19 test when the couple arrived in California – after he lost his senses of taste and smell and was having trouble breathing, according to the Washington Post.
EMT who gave CPR to passenger with COVID-19 says he has symptoms – An off-duty EMT who performed CPR on a United Airline passenger who later died of COVID-19 has revealed that he is now showing symptoms of the deadly virus – and feels like he “got hit by a train,” according to a report.Tony Aldapa was among the passengers who tried to revive Isaias Hernandez, 69, who collapsed on an Orlando-to-Los Angeles flight Monday, even after the man’s wife admitted he had coronavirus symptoms.On Tuesday, Jefferson Parish Coroner Gerry Cvitanovich determined that Hernandez died of COVID-19 and acute respiratory failure. “It was all kind of just second nature to see someone in a bad place, you try to bring them out of the bad place,” Aldapa told CBS Los Angeles. “There were three of us that were essentially tag-teaming doing chest compressions – probably about 45 minutes,” the emergency medical technician said. Hernandez’s wife later admitted that her husband had symptoms of the killer bug before getting on the flight and was heading home to get tested.”She told me he had symptoms, he was short of breath and she just wanted to get him home and they planned on getting tested this week,” Aldapa told the station. After making an emergency landing to get the man to a hospital, where he died, the flight continued on to LA.Aldapa is now worried he has contracted the disease. “Essentially I just feel like I got hit by a train,” he told CBS LA. “I had a cough, my whole body still hurt, I had a headache.” Meanwhile, TMZ has reported that United still has not notified the 179 passengers on the flight that Hernandez had COVID-19, saying it is not its responsibility.An airline rep told the outlet that they have been in touch with the CDC and provided the agency with the flight manifest – adding that it’s up to the CDC to contact passengers who may have been exposed.
Wisconsin reports new single-day record of COVID-19 deaths— The Wisconsin Department of Health Services reported a new single-day record for COVID-19 deaths.The state updated its webpage on COVID-19 death statistics Tuesday and listed 120 more lives added to the total of those who have died due to the disease.The average number of COVID-19 deaths in the state reported each day has been on the rise for the past week.The Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project reported Monday that deaths attributed to the disease were rising in 19 states, including Wisconsin. On average, over 2,600 deaths due to COVID-19 are reported nationwide every day. Dane County added 27 new deaths attributed to the disease to an online data dashboard that tracks COVID-19’s impact in the county. Public health staff report the deaths based on death certificate records that they analyze every week.
Coronavirus dashboard for December 22: the pain threshold – (5 graphs) Total US infections: 18,035,209. Because many asymptomatic cases in particular have probably not been diagnosed, I suspect the truer number is on the order of 25 million, or 1 in every 13 Americans.
- Past 7 days average daily infections: 215,429
- Total US deaths: 319,364
- Past 7 days average daily deaths: 2,655
Here is the latest overall look at new infections and deaths countrywide (note separate scales): Each wave of new infections has been bigger than the one preceding, but deaths only in the past month have risen on a per capita basis to and exceeding the early peak from March and April. In the past 2 weeks, the rate of new infections has stabilized. We can expect deaths to stabilize in the next week or two at the level of one 9/11 each and every day. Unfortunately, there is a behavioral feedback loop bordered by complacency and panic. The former means that voluntary measures alone will never defeat the pandemic. The latter has meant that patent and visible danger leads to a period of serious scaling back of risky activities by the majority of individuals. Given the recent huge surge in cases, is there still a “pain threshold?” I think so, and it probably has been triggered most cogently by news reports of hospital ICU’s that are already at full capacity and most turn away patients, accompanied by a continuing rise in deaths. In the below graphs, I break out new infections, hospitalizations, and deaths by those States which at various times have been the “poster children” for out of control outbreaks: NY and NJ in March and April, AZ and FL during the summer, ND and SD about a month ago, and TN, AL, and MT now. Obviously there is no set threshold for when infections start to change behavior. No doubt part of this is the differing demographics of the successive waves of infection, as well as improvements to medical treatment. There does seem to be a “pain threshold” for deaths at roughly the level of 2.5 deaths per 100,000 population daily, but note that in summer public behavior changed in AZ and FL well below that level. The rate of hospitalizations seems to correlate most closely with a “pain threshold.” At the level of 4 to 8 hospitalizations per 100,000 population, there is a palpable change in the public’s behavior. Because the large majority of infections do not lead to hospitalizations, it is likely that the level of infections itself does not sufficiently alarm the public so as to change their behavior. But once serious, life-threatening cases become noticeable enough, as indicated by the level of hospitalizations, and additionally by a big rise in reported deaths, people’s behavior begins to change. That even North and South Dakotans changed their behavior once the situation became dire enough seems like the best proof for the existence of such a “pain threshold.” The newest “poster children” are Tennessee and, alas, California (shown with North Dakota for comparison):
Doctor dies of COVID-19 after filming viral video: ‘This is how Black people get killed’ – A Black female doctor died of COVID-19 on Tuesday, just weeks after posting a viral video in which she said she believed she was not receiving proper medical treatment because she was Black. CBS News on Thursday reported the death of Susan Moore, a physician in Indiana who had tested positive for the coronavirus on Nov. 29, and experienced symptoms like a high respiratory rate, high heart rate and high fever, in addition to coughing up blood.In a Dec. 4 video posted on Facebook, Moore said her symptoms were being ignored, with doctors pushing her to leave the Indiana hospital and return home despite lingering symptoms.She said even though she told physicians she was in a great deal of pain, she did not receive pain relievers until a CT scan revealed pulmonary infiltrates and inflamed lymph nodes.”He made me feel like I was a drug addict, and he knew I was a physician,” said Moore of her interaction with the physician who was treating her.”This is how Black people get killed,” Moore said in the video. “When you send them home and they don’t know how to fight for themselves.””I put forth and I maintain if I was white, I wouldn’t have to go through that,” she added.Moore said she spoke to a patient advocate who said there was little that could be done, at which point Moore requested to be moved to a different hospital. CBS News reported that 12 hours after Moore returned home, her temperature spiked and her blood pressure dropped, returning her to the hospital. Moore died at a different hospital than the one in which she filmed her video.
A person who knowingly went to work while sick likely led to the COVID-19 deaths of 7 people and forced more than 300 people into quarantine, health officials say –A person living in southern Oregon knowingly went to work while sick, and likely caused seven people to die from COVID-19 and forced more than 300 people into quarantine, health officials said.Douglas County officials said last week that the person had “unwittingly and unconsciously” chose to go to work while sick, and later tested positive for COVID-19.It’s unclear exactly when the the person went to work or where they are employed, but Douglas County officials said in a December 17 statement that the action led to two major COVID-19 outbreaks.”One of those outbreaks has resulted in seven deaths, and the other recent outbreak has placed over 300 people/families in quarantine,” the statement said. “We can’t even imagine the tremendous remorse these people are feeling right now, and we sympathize with them.”Officials referred to the person’s decision to go to work as a “superspreader action” – a take on the term “superspreader event” that can be used to refer to weddings and other large gatherings during which COVID-19 can spread.Douglas County, which has a population of just u under 111,000, has had 1,323 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began, and 37 deaths from the virus.Oregon Gov. Kate Brown recently encouraged residents to stay home for the holidays.”As you did with Thanksgiving, I am asking once again that you rethink your Christmas and New Years plans,” she said at a news conference, according to Oregon Live.
Ohio coronavirus cases increase by 7790; 109 new deaths: Wednesday update– Ohio officials reported Wednesday 7,790 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total case count in Ohio to 644,822. The number of people who have died with COVID-19 increased by 109 on Wednesday, to 8,361 deaths in all. Cases are below the 21-day rolling average of 9,852. Deaths are above the 21-day average of 80. The state follows the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s definition of a “case,” which includes those diagnosed through genetic PCR or antigen tests, or people diagnosed in a clinical setting – experiencing symptoms who are linked to a confirmed COVID-19 case, among other criteria. Other data released Wednesday:
- -7.35 million PCR and molecular coronavirus tests have been performed in Ohio.
- -126 fewer people were hospitalized on Wednesday, according to data provided by the Ohio Hospital Association. The 4,694 hospital beds used by COVID-19 patients on Wednesday will be revised in coming days, as more complete admissions and discharge data is collected.
- -The percent of PCR and molecular tests that have come back positive was 15.3 on Monday, the most recent day for a positivity rate. The rate for the past seven-days was 14%.
Ohio reports 8828 new coronavirus cases, to a total of 653650: Thursday update -The number of newly reportd coronavirus cases increased by 8,828 on Thursday, and deaths went up 95, according to the Ohio Department of Health. In all, there have been 653,650 cases since the beginning of the pandemic, and 8,456 total deaths. Thursday’s cases were below the 21-day rolling average of 9,848 cases. Deaths were above the 21-day average of 81. The state follows the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s definition of a “case,” which includes those diagnosed through genetic PCR or antigen tests, or people diagnosed in a clinical setting – experiencing symptoms who are linked to a confirmed COVID-19 case, among other criteria. Among other data Thursday: -489,808 people are presumed recovered from COVID-19 cases. The Department of Health presumes someone is recovered when their symptoms were over 21 days old and they haven’t died from the coronavirus.
COVID-19 in Ohio: Nearly all of Ohio is red on state’s map – Nearly all of Ohio’s 88 counties are red in the newest version of the state’s coronavirus advisory map released Thursday. The map shows 84 of the state’s 88 counties are red (Level 3) in the four-tier, color-coded Ohio Public Health Advisory System, with only four orange (Level 2) counties: Monroe, Hocking, Vinton and Gallia. There have been no yellow (Level 1) counties for weeks. The only change to the map from last week is that the sole purple (Level 4) county – Richland – dropped to red this week. There were 8,828 new cases reported Thursday, an increase from Wednesday but below the 21-day average of 9,848. Another 95 deaths were reported, pushing the state’s total to 8,456. The 21-day average for deaths is 81. Hospitalizations also were below the 21-day average of 384 with 320. But two new maps detailing cases per capita by county and how many patients are filling intensive care units showed how widespread COVID-19 remains. DeWine and the Ohio Department of Health have said the original map was designed as an early warning system to measure when cases and health care use were escalating to let people know when to take increased precautions. Now, those measures are all at an elevated plateau, so the advisory system doesn’t accurately reflect the sustained high levels, the health department said. According to the per capita map, every county in Ohio exceeds the CDC’s threshold for high incidence, which is 100 cases per 100,000 residents. Case incidence is a measure of how many cases there are in each county, adjusted for population. ODH said the information can help people understand the severity of COVID-19 transmission by county. At the beginning of August, the statewide average of cases per capita during the previous two weeks was 101. This week, the statewide average is 769 cases per 100,000 residents during the past two weeks. There also are seven counties that are at 1,000 or more, which means at least 1 out of every 100 residents has tested positive for COVID during the past two weeks and are at risk of spreading it to others. According to a new ICU map, at the beginning of August, about 12% of Ohio’s ICU patients were COVID-19 positive, or 1 out of every 8. Now, it’s up to 31%, or 1 out of every 3. “While there are some differences across counties, most counties in Ohio have worsened on these measures since the fall and remain at unacceptably high levels of spread,” ODH said in a news release. “The current impact on the healthcare system is severe and unsustainable.”
LA County sets grim milestone with 140 COVID-19 deaths in a single day –Los Angeles County reported 140 COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday, the largest number of fatalities counted in a single day in the county as coronavirus cases continue to surge. More than 13,000 COVID-19 cases were reported Wednesday alone, according to a tally from the Los Angeles Times. County health officials have warned health care providers not to send patients to area emergency rooms unless necessary, the newspaper reported. The officials also sent a memo to health care providers on Wednesday saying local hospitals have reached a breaking point. “It is critical that as a healthcare community we look at all available opportunities to help decrease the surge on hospitals and our 911 system, where possible,” Sharon Balter, the county’s chief of communicable disease control and prevention, wrote in the memo, according to the Times. L.A. County has reported an average of 13,789 coronavirus cases per day over the last week. Four out of five regions across California are under stay-at-home orders, and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said Southern California will likely remain in lockdown beyond Dec. 28, when restrictions are currently scheduled to end.
California becomes 1st state to record 2 million coronavirus cases – California became the first state to record 2 million confirmed coronavirus cases, reaching the milestone on Christmas Eve as nearly the entire state was under a strict stay-at-home order. Gov. Gavin Newsom warned that hospitalizations could soon double if people don’t change their behavior for the holidays. A tally by Johns Hopkins University showed the nation’s most populous state has recorded 2,010,157 infections since January. At least 23,635 people have died from the virus. The first COVID-19 case in California was confirmed Jan. 25. It took 292 days to get to 1 million infections on Nov. 11. Just 44 days later, the number topped 2 million. The California Department of Public Health separately tallied 2,003,146 cases and a one-day bump of 39,070 infections that was down from the one-day peak of nearly 54,000 cases at mid-month. The state’s death toll climbed by 351, also down from the record high set last week. Another 427 people were hospitalized, raising the total to 18,875. The 3,962 in intensive care units was a record high, as is the number of those hospitalized. “We’re projecting that our hospital number will double in just the next 30 days, and our projections have gotten much more solid,” Newsom said in a video posted on his social media pages from his home, where he remains in quarantine for the second time after a potential exposure. “I fear that, but we’re not victims to that if we change our behaviors.” California’s infection rate – in terms of the number of cases per 100,000 people – is lower than the U.S. average. But its nearly 40 million residents mean the outbreak outpaces other states in sheer numbers. The crisis is straining the state’s medical system well beyond its normal capacity, prompting hospitals to treat patients in tents, offices and auditoriums. “In most hospitals about half of all of the beds are filled with COVID patients and half of all the ICU beds are filled with COVID patients, and two-thirds of these patients are suffocating due to the inflammation that’s in their lungs that’s caused by the virus,” said Dr. Christina Ghaly, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. “They’re suffocating to the point that they can no longer breathe on their own, and they have to have someone put a tube down their throat, in order to oxygenate their organs. Many of these people will not live to be in 2021,” she said.
‘It’s So Much Worse Than Before.’ Dread And Despair Haunt Nurses Inside LA’s ICUs — The massive surge in coronavirus cases has left hospitals in Los Angeles County scrambling to handle the increasing numbers of patients showing up at their doors. Nowhere is that more evident than in hospitals’ intensive care units, which are rapidly filling up with the worst COVID-19 cases. “We have no ICU beds,” says Brad Spellberg, chief medical officer of LAC+USC Medical Center, one of the area’s largest hospitals. “We are just continually, 24 hours a day, scrambling to move patients around. The flood just continues.” As dire as the situation is, Spellberg says, it’s going to get even worse. The crush of cases spurred L.A. County health officials to send guidance to the four public hospitals it manages on how to ration emergency care, reports the Los Angeles Times. Instead of trying to save every life, the goal would be to save as many patients as possible. That means those less likely to survive would not get the same kind of care they would usually receive. That type of triage is just weeks away, Spellberg warns. “We are the safety net, that is the point. The safety net itself is stressed to the limit,” he says. More than 15,000 residents test positive every day, on average, in Los Angeles County. The average daily deathsfrom COVID-19 in the county stands at 94, and 281 statewide. A staggering 6,155 Angelenos are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, and 20% of them are in the ICUs spread across the county’s 80 acute-care hospitals. “We are forecasting that in this current surge – between Nov. 1 and Jan. 31 – 8,700 people in Los Angeles County will die from COVID. That is nearly three times the number of people that died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks,” “The worst is yet to come,” Spellberg fears Los Angeles is rapidly approaching the situation in New York City last April, where hospitals were overwhelmed with critically ill COVID patients. What does that look like, on the inside? Spellberg says it’s like “battlefield medicine,” a frantic race to save lives when there aren’t enough staffers to cope: “You’ve got nurses that are assigned 20 patients when they’re only supposed to be assigned five. You’ve got doctors who haven’t managed a ventilator in 20 years suddenly being responsible to manage ventilators.” “If it gets as bad as it did in New York, and if we don’t slow this thing down in L.A.,that’s where we’re going,” Spellberg says.
Virginia sets new records for COVID-19 cases on Christmas Eve – On Christmas Eve, Virginia reported a new record number of COVID-19 cases, and the state’s seven-day average of new cases hit another high as well. The Virginia Department of Health reported 4,782 new cases of coronavirus Thursday, surpassing the previous one-day high of 4,652 just the day before. The statewide seven-day average of new cases reached a new high of 3,974.6, surpassing the previous high high of 3,920.3 set Dec. 12. The average is up 11% in the past week and 65% in the past month. The Northern Virginia region reported 1,129 new cases on Thursday, and its seven-day average rose to 1,034.4, below the peak of 1,124.4 set Dec. 12. The health department reported 31 new deaths related to COVID-19 Thursday, with five of those in Northern Virginia: three in Fairfax County and two in Arlington County.
ICUs begin filling up in New York City as Cuomo, de Blasio dither on effective pandemic restrictions -Intensive care unit (ICU) occupancy is climbing toward capacity in several hospitals in New York City. With cases, test positivity rates and hospitalizations continuing to increase, it is only a matter of time until overall city ICU capacity is strained beyond capacity, resulting in an even greater loss of life than has already occurred. According to data from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), two hospitals, Flushing Hospital Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, are already above 100 percent ICU capacity, and four others in New York City, including Staten Island University Hospital, are at or above 90 percent capacity. Several hospitals across the New York City area have fewer than five available ICU beds, including University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, and Nassau University Medical Center on Long Island. While overall capacity is around 20 percent according to HHS data (which has a delay of a week or more), at least some of this appears to be due to increasing ICU bed capacity, according to Gothamist. Even if additional beds are added, staffing and equipment are needed to properly treat COVID-19 patients. Moreover, even if there is capacity elsewhere in the city or state, if an individual hospital is overwhelmed this can cause a localized spike in deaths. Even though hospitals are transferring patients more often than they did in the disastrous early stages of the pandemic, it is difficult to safely transfer patients who require intensive care or are nearing that point. The past week has seen 189 deaths in New York City alone, an increase from the 152 deaths on average the prior four weeks. Similarly, there have been 1,439 hospitalizations in the past week compared to 1,283 on average in the preceding four weeks. With the more infectious COVID-19 variant that originated in the United Kingdom almost certainly circulating in New York already, the only way to avert a staggering increase in cases, hospitalizations and deaths rivaling the spring is through significant measures to reduce the spread of the disease, particularly the immediate closure of schools and nonessential businesses, the provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) and safe working environments to those working in essential industries, and the guarantee of full income protection for workers and small businesses affected by shutdown measures. Instead of making any efforts along these lines, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, have enacted ludicrously limited measures under the state’s “micro-cluster strategy.” The strategy, which involves Cuomo designating geographic areas as yellow, orange or red zones and applying limited measures per tier, is wholly inadequate to stop the spread of COVID-19, as evidenced by steadily increasing cases and deaths.
December 24 COVID-19 Test Results; Record Hospitalizations –Note: Expect a dip in the data over the holidays. The week-over-week growth in positive cases has slowed. Hopefully that continues. The US is now averaging close to 2 million tests per day. Based on the experience of other countries, for adequate test-and-trace (and isolation) to reduce infections, the percent positive needs to be under 5% (probably close to 1%), so the US has far too many daily cases – and percent positive – to do effective test-and-trace.There were 1,889,205 test results reported over the last 24 hours. There were 199,375 positive tests. Almost 61,000 US deaths have been reported so far in December, surpassing April as the deadliest month. 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 10.6% (red line is 7 day average). The percent positive is calculated by dividing positive results by total tests (including pending). And check out COVID Act Now to see how each state is doing. (updated link to new site)The second graph shows the 7 day average of positive tests reported and daily hospitalizations.
US deaths top 3 million, record year driven by COVID-19 – This is the deadliest year in U.S. history, with deaths expected to top 3 million for the first time – due mainly to the coronavirus pandemic.Final mortality data for this year will not be available for months. But preliminary numbers suggest that the United States is on track to see more than 3.2 million deaths this year, or at least 400,000 more than in 2019.U.S. deaths increase most years, so some annual rise in fatalities is expected. But the 2020 numbers amount to a jump of about 15%, and could go higher once all the deaths from this month are counted.That would mark the largest single-year percentage leap since 1918, when tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers died in World War I and hundreds of thousands of Americans died in a flu pandemic. Deaths rose 46% that year, compared with 1917.COVID-19 has killed more than 318,000 Americans and counting. Before it came along, there was reason to be hopeful about U.S. death trends.The nation’s overall mortality rate fell a bit in 2019, due to reductions in heart disease and cancer deaths. And life expectancy inched up – by several weeks – for the second straight year, according to death certificate data released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.But life expectancy for 2020 could end up dropping as much as three full years, said Robert Anderson of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
COVID-19 hospitalizations, deaths worldwide reach record highs – All over the world, the 2020 holiday season is dominated by the tragic reality that 1.7 million human beings, cut down by the coronavirus pandemic, will never again have the opportunity to visit and celebrate with loved ones. More than three people have died each minute from the disease since the first case of COVID-19 was reported to the World Health Organization. They include grandparents forced to say goodbye to their loved ones via computer, workers whose last moments were spent struggling to breathe on a ventilator, young adults whose lives had barely begun, and infants as young as two months old who were barely aware of the world before their lives were snuffed out. Nearly a year on, the pandemic is accelerating. More than 11,500 people are dying every day, almost double the highest death rate recorded during the first wave in April. It took four months for the first 100,000 lives to be lost. Now, 100,000 people are killed every nine days. The United States remains the most hard-hit country. President Donald Trump’s policy of herd immunity, aided and abetted by the Democrats, has so far slain more than one in every 1,000 people living in the country. Every day nearly 3,000 deaths are reported, along with 220,000 new infections, as schools and workplaces are forced to remain open, further spreading the deadly disease. The most recent surge has prompted a variety of ominous comments, particularly from President-elect Biden’s coronavirus advisory board. Dr. Celine Gounder, a professor at New York University, told MSNBC that a “surge on top of a surge on top of a surge” is coming in the next few weeks. She warned that hospital workers will “have to be making some very difficult decisions about triaging, unfortunately, who gets what care and who does not.” This will be most true in states such as California, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas, where hospital systems are nearing capacity. “If we have another surge after Christmas and New Year’s like we did after Thanksgiving, it will completely break our hospitals,” Tennessee Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey told National Public Radio. Comments along these lines were made by another member of Biden’s advisory board, Dr. Atul Gawande. He told CNBC that “hospitals in more than a third of the country are already full to overflowing,” setting the stage for an even more catastrophic situation than that which already exists. There are more than 115,000 coronavirus-related hospitalizations in the US, double the peak numbers in both July and April, and the daily hospitalization rate is rising, When asked about how to avoid an even worse scenario, Gawande responded, “What do we do about it? It is still the same practices that really work,” before adding, “The next 100,000 deaths are baked in.”
England COVID Mutation ‘Out of Control’ Health Secretary Says – A new strain of coronavirus is “out of control” in parts of southern England, the U.K. health secretary has warned, adding that it has also been found as far away as Australia.Matt Hancock, was speaking the day after a stricter lockdown was announced for London and surrounding areas after scientists confirmed the existence of a new variantof the virus that could be up to 70 percent more transmissible. Speaking on Sunday morning political shows, Hancock said that people needed to act as though they have the virus in order to stop it spreading . “Unfortunately this virus, the new strain, was out of control, we’ve got to get it under control and the way we can do that, the only way you can do that is by restricting social contact and essentially – especially in tier 4 areas – everybody needs to behave as though they might well have the virus,” he told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday.He repeated the assertions on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show a short while later.How far the new variant has spread is currently unknown, though the health secretary told Sky News it had been discovered in other countries, including Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia, on the other side of the planet to Britain. The mutation, known as N501Y, means the new strain can spread faster, however, scientists say it does not appear to be deadlier and could still be stopped by vaccines.
What We Know About the New Covid-19 Strain in England – WSJ – Scientists are hurrying to understand why a new strain of the coronavirus that emerged in England in September appears to be spreading far more rapidly than earlier variants. The early conclusion, according to British scientists, is that the virus has mutated to change the so-called spike protein on the surface of the virus, increasing the protein’s ability to cling onto and enter human cells. These changes allow the mutation, known as N501Y, to spread 70% faster than earlier versions of the virus, early analysis suggests. Viruses mutate all the time and coronaviruses less so than some others, such as the ones that cause influenza. Sometimes these accidental changes alter the attributes of the virus and sometimes not. Scientists have identified 23 genetic changes on the new variant, an unusually large number, some of which are associated with changes in the proteins the virus makes.The spike protein is located on the top of the spikes depicted on graphic representations of the virus and give it the crown-like appearance from which the coronaviruses get their name. The spike protein contains amino acids that use an enzyme in the body, called furin, to dissolve cell coatings and allow the virus to enter. Three main questions are now being investigated: Is the new variant more contagious, is it more likely to be fatal or cause serious illness, and is it more likely to defeat the body’s immune responses, including those encouraged by vaccines? The provisional answers to those questions, as outlined by British scientific advisers on Saturday, are yes, no and no. Patrick Vallance, the British government’s chief scientific adviser, said the variant had first occurred in September either in London – where it was identified on Sept. 21 – or in the nearby county of Kent, where it was found on Sept. 20. By mid-November, 28% of cases in London were attributable to the new variant. In the week starting Dec. 9, it was responsible for 62% of cases in the capital.”It is becoming the dominant variant; it is beating all the others in terms of transmission,” he told a press conference on Saturday.A preliminary description of the variant,published online by scientists associated with a British effort to track genetic variations of the virus, suggested the new strain may have developed in someone suffering from chronic infection, possibly because of a weakened immune system.Mr. Vallance said the conclusions that the mutation was less dangerous and unlikely to compromise the effectiveness of vaccines were preliminary. He said there were theoretical reasons why the new variant might alter the immune response, though there was no evidence so far that was the case.”The working assumption is that the vaccine response should be adequate for this virus, but we need to keep vigilant about this,” he said.
UK health officials announce 2nd new COVID-19 strain – Britain’s health secretary Matt Hancock alerted the United Kingdom of another new strain of COVID-19 circulating in the country after scientists announced the discovery of a second, “more transmissible” mutation of the novel coronavirus. “We’ve detected two cases of another new variant of the coronavirus here in the U.K.,” Hancock said during a news conference Wednesday. “Both are contacts of cases who have traveled from South Africa over the past few weeks.” Hancock said the country’s top scientists recently met with their South African colleagues in regard to the latest discovery. “This new variant is highly concerning because it is yet more transmissible and it appears to have mutated further,” Hancock said. Hancock explained the country is now largely quarantining and monitoring cases throughout the U.K. The government also imposed travel restrictions from South Africa. Hancock urged any citizen who traveled to South Africa or who has been in contact with someone who traveled to South Africa in the past two weeks to quarantine immediately. Viruses mutate regularly, and scientists have found thousands of different mutations among samples of the virus causing COVID-19. But many of these changes have no effect on how easily the virus spreads or how severe symptoms are. Before the latest discovery, the U.S. CDC acknowledged the U.K. government’s discovery of the previous new strain, saying “this variant strain has been predicted to potentially be more rapidly transmissible than other circulating strains.” “When you see something that is pretty prevalent in a place like the U.K. – there are also mutations that we’re seeing in South Africa – and given the travel throughout the world, I would not be surprised if it is already here,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, told PBS. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention echoed Fauci’s concern. “Ongoing travel between the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the high prevalence of this variant among current UK infections, increase the likelihood of importation,” the CDC said in a statement. “Given the small fraction of US infections that have been sequenced, the variant could already be in the United States without having been detected.”
Santa likely delivered coronavirus to nursing home, infecting 75 people – Santa Claus likely delivered the gift of COVID-19 to at least 75 residents and staff of a nursing home in Mol, Belgium. One person who was already receiving palliative care has died while another is struggling with severe symptoms. Fortunately, most others aren’t yet exhibiting symptoms of infection. According to city officials, the managers of the care home made an “error in judgement.” From CNN: The man who played Sinterklaas, who is the son of a resident, tested positive for coronavirus after his visit.He “was not feeling sick at the time of the visit” and “the activity was not cleared beforehand with the crisis center, otherwise negative advice would have been given,” the municipality said[ … ]“Contrary to reports in the media, St. Nicholas did not visit every room. The management reassures us that the saint only visited common areas, including the seating areas,” the municipality said.“The saint maintained distance at all times from the residents, and didn’t remain in any area longer than a few minutes. The saint did not hand out presents.”
Half a million dead in Europe from COVID-19 pandemic – Today, Europe marks yet another grim milestone in the coronavirus pandemic. Half a million people have officially died of the virus across Europe, according to the figures published by Worldometers, which includes Russia in its European total.The actual number of COVID-19 deaths is likely far higher. An October 14study in the scientific journal Nature, examining excess deaths in 21 countries, found that the number of deaths above historical norms for January – June was around 20 percent higher than deaths officially attributed to COVID-19. If this is true for all of Europe, in fact there have been a further 100,000 deaths attributable to the pandemic.The marker of 300,000 deaths was passed near November 10, the 400,000 marker at the end of November. The next 100,000 deaths came in three weeks. As with the previous milestones, it will be noted briefly, if at all, on television news programs. Above all, no European government is proposing a serious policy to urgently address the growing death toll and advance a scientific response. Any measure restricting production, corporate profits and the wealth of the European financial elite is rejected out of hand. A paramedic walks out of a tent that was set up in front of the emergency ward of the Cremona hospital, northern Italy [Credit: Claudio Furlan/Lapresse via AP, file]More than 3,000 people are dying each day. Britain recorded more than 37,000 cases and 691 deaths yesterday. Monday saw over 350 deaths in France and 415 in Italy. Yesterday, German health departments reported 19,528 new cases and 731 deaths to the Robert Koch Institute. This makes last week by far the worst yet in Germany, with 175,314 infections and over 4,300 deaths. The virus is still spreading rapidly and is in fact accelerating. In December, France and the UK ended partial lockdowns, which had never closed non-essential production or schools, encouraging the population to travel for the holidays. In Britain, the Johnson government announced that shopping centers would be open 24 hours a day, to ensure that retailers’ most profitable period would not be impacted. In France, the R rate is now above 1, meaning the virus is again growing exponentially. The Macron government ended lockdown measures on December 15 though case numbers never fell below 10,000 – twice the threshold it claimed was necessary to allow for loosening restrictions. There are now 15,000 to 20,000 cases per day.In Britain, the virus is spiraling out of control, with more than 30,000 cases per day. Its spread is being accelerated by the emergence of a new strain, 70 percent more infectious, that now makes up more than 60 percent of cases in southeastern England. This strain has already been recorded in Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, Denmark, and beyond.Scientific evaluations of the new strain estimate that it could increase the R rate by anywhere from 0.4 to 0.9. In an area with 10,000 daily cases, this would mean 4,000 to 9,000 new cases each day. It is unknown whether the new strain is more lethal, but a rapid growth in case numbers would more quickly overwhelm hospitals and thereby massively increase fatalities.
New Covid-19 Surge Sweeps Across Latin America – Mexico City has ordered nonessential businesses closed for the holiday season as a rebound in Covid-19 cases threatens to overwhelm hospitals. Brazil, with the second-highest number of official Covid-19 deaths after the U.S., registered record rates of new infections in recent days. Parts of Peru are seeing testing positivity rates of nearly 100%. Latin America, with more deaths per capita during the pandemic than any other region, is suffering from a second surge of Covid-19, ending a period of several months where cases and deaths declined. The surge is particularly acute in the region’s two biggest countries, Mexico and Brazil. Daily deaths in Brazil topped 1,000 on Thursday for the first day since September, and the country posted roughly 70,000 new daily infections on Wednesday and Thursday, a record. In Mexico, the daily death toll has doubled to about 600 a day from about 320 in mid-October. “We urgently need to bend the curve of contagion,” said Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico City’s mayor, this week. Health authorities ordered the closure of nonessential businesses such as restaurants and shopping malls from Saturday until Jan. 10 across the capital and surrounding municipalities, home to some 22 million people. Cases are rising quickly in Colombia, Peru, Argentina and Chile, and even in Uruguay and Paraguay, two nations that had escaped relatively unharmed from the pandemic. Uruguay, which had only about 10 daily new infections in late September, registered more than 500 a day so far this past week. President Luis Lacalle Pou said the country would close its borders to visitors during the holiday season and limit crowds and some public transport. “The world’s second wave is our first wave,” he said. Paraguay has posted nearly 1,200 new cases a day in December compared with 150 in August, which officials say is already overwhelming hospitals in the poor, landlocked nation. Health Minister Julio Mazzoleni said the country is entering “a new, very difficult stage of the pandemic.” Colder weather in the Northern Hemisphere is partly to blame for the uptick in cases in Mexico by forcing more people indoors. But the more important factor across the region appears to be fatigue with social-distancing measures. In Brazil, people are increasingly gathering on the beach and at parties during the Southern Hemisphere summer. “People have completely let down their guard – they’re planning parties, traveling, and they will pay the price,” said Eliseu Waldman, an epidemiologist at the University of Sao Paulo.Latin America, with 8% of the world’s population, has accounted for roughly a third of global Covid-19 deaths. Brazil has registered more than 184,000 deaths, second to the U.S.’s 312,000. The true toll from the pandemic – including people who died from Covid-19 but weren’t included in countries’ official tolls – is far higher. The three countries with this year’s highest excess mortality – the number of people who have died compared with previous years – are all in Latin America: Peru, Ecuador and Mexico.
Rubber glove factories become COVID-19 epicentres in Malaysia – Workers are fighting the world’s largest medical glove manufacturer, Top Glove, over unsanitary working conditions that have led to the largest, active coronavirus hotspots in Malaysia. Damning exposures by workers have revealed sweltering and unsafe conditions, with lack of protections, no social distancing and packed dormitories. According to statistics from Malaysia’s Ministry of Health, 5,700 of Top Glove’s 11,215 employees at just one of its manufacturing centres have tested positive for coronavirus since November. For a number of days, the company’s 21,000 employees accounted for over half of Malaysia’s new cases. The company was forced to submit to staggered shutdowns of its factories, largely in the Meru region. Responsible for 60 percent of the world’s disposable gloves, the company reported on December 16 that it had tested 10,000 employees, of whom 93 percent had recovered, but declined to specify how many had tested positive. It also announced the reopening of its factories despite days earlier confirming its first COVID-19 death, 29-year-old security guard Yam Narayan Chaudhary, who was based at a manufacturing facility in Klang, 40 kilometres west of the capital Kuala Lumpur. Chaudhary died in a Selangor province hospital due to COVID-related pneumonia and lung fibrosis but was not admitted to the hospital for three days owing to the decisions of management. Why this occurred has not been explained, although it is of piece with Top Glove’s exploitative conditions. No condolences or information were passed on to his family in western Nepal. “Our whole family was very much shocked,” his brother Bhabindra told the New York Times. “He always tried to assure us that he is quite young and healthy, so nothing could happen to him with COVID. We feel it’s Top Glove’s failure that they are not able to protect their workers.”
Deadliest week since COVID-19 pandemic began in Germany – Last week was by far the worst in the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, with officially 175,314 infections and over 4,300 deaths (against 3,050 the previous week). Across Europe, the death toll exceeded the catastrophic half-million mark on Tuesday. After reports of deadly mass outbreaks in old people’s homes dominating the headlines in recent weeks, the “profits before lives” policy of recent months is now revealing its murderous consequences more and more clearly in hospitals. According to the Pforzheimer Zeitung, a hospital in Tettnang on Lake Constance halted admissions on December 10 because the virus had been detected in 34 people. Three infected patients had to be taken to Friedrichshafen, 13 kilometres away, due to severe symptoms. In the meantime, 84 staff and 26 patients have been infected – only five of the remaining patients tested negative. At the hospital in Wangen im Allgau, which is currently treating 18 COVID-19 patients, 28 staff members – including eight doctors – are infected and in quarantine. In addition to COVID-19 cases, the clinic only treats emergencies and performs deliveries – although the virus is also particularly deadly for pregnant women. The hospital in Pfullendorf reports three infected staff members and has also imposed an admission ban. Meanwhile, in Saxony, the shortage of intensive care beds for COVID-19 patients is “significantly larger than officially reported,” broadcaster MDR reports. While the DIVI intensive care register shows 50 free intensive care beds for the districts of Bautzen, Dresden, Sachsische Schweiz Osterzgebirge, Gorlitz and Meisen, according to the hospital control centre’s bed lists there are only about 20 available – less than half. One reason for this, according to the Gorlitz hospital, was “staff who are ill or in quarantine, which means that free beds cannot be occupied.” According to a report by dpa press agency, the high death toll means corpses must now be stored temporarily in Zittau in eastern Saxony. The dead are being warehoused “in the flood support base” and will only be brought to the crematorium “when they are released for cremation,” the city of Zittau reported on Tuesday evening. In Hanau, Hesse, a refrigerated container for coronavirus corpses had already been put into operation last week at the city’s main cemetery to store bodies from the completely overloaded hospitals. In addition to the virus hotspots in Saxony, which have been overwhelmed by the pandemic, there are now districts in Bavaria, Thuringia and Brandenburg with 7-day incidences of between 500 and 680 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. In Bavaria, all intensive care beds are occupied in eight cities and districts. Since the devastating lack of staff there is exacerbating the situation, in a “cry for help” to the population, the counties in the metropolitan region of Nuremberg/Furth/Erlangen are now looking for helpers to relieve the staff in hospitals. As reported by the Munchner Merkur, the “excess mortality due to coronavirus” in Bavaria was so great that “the population is shrinking for the first time in a long time.” Depending on the region, the death figures are on average between 6 and 18 percent higher than 2016 to 2019, the paper said.
Britain descends into chaos as coronavirus crisis mounts – The COVID-19 death toll in Britain continues to rise inexorably, with predictions that National Health Service hospitals will be treating more coronavirus patients on Christmas Day than at any point in the pandemic. On Tuesday, 691 more people were announced dead from the virus. Yesterday this was topped with 744 deaths reported, the highest total since April 29. The 39,237 new coronavirus cases announced yesterday was the highest yet recorded in Britain. This carnage takes place under conditions in which the entire country is descending into chaos. Supermarkets such as Tesco are limiting purchases of toilet roll, eggs, rice and other staples, amid warning of fruit and vegetable shortages amid scenes of panic buying. Yesterday, at the port of Dover and across large parts of the county of Kent, thousands of truck drivers were still unable to return to their home countries on the European continent, despite an agreement with France to let COVID-tested drivers cross to Calais. As early as December 18, a 20-mile queue began forming on the M20 motorway and on the A20 leading into Dover. Much of the extra traffic was due to retailers seeking to get goods into the UK in time for Christmas amid problems at already full container ports and uncertainty over the outcome of Brexit talks between London and the European Union. Around 5,000 lorries are queued up in three separate locations in Kent. Many of the hauliers have spent days sleeping in their cabs with no access to basic supplies. Truck drivers scuffled with police officers at Dover yesterday. Drivers stood in pouring rain and strong winds chanting, “We want to go home.” One told the BBC, “We are very tired. We’re staying in cars, we don’t have a lot of food, no money. Police three days ago told us that testing will start soon, but they don’t know when and that’s why people are protesting”. Earlier, truckers clashed with police at the disused Manston airfield 18 miles from Dover. Around 3,800 lorries are parked up like sardines at Manston waiting to return home. They blockaded the A299 motorway in Kent yesterday morning in a mass protest. The UK must test every truck driver leaving the UK for France, after a highly infectious strain of COVID-19 was acknowledged by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson last week. On Tuesday evening, Johnson and President Emmanuel Macron reached agreement on a deal to reverse the unilateral 48-hour French ban on freight lorries travelling between Dover and Calais, as well as travel through the Channel Tunnel. Until January 6, only lorry drivers and French and EU citizens or residents who have an essential reason to travel and who show a negative test result less than 72 hours old will be allowed into France.
EU countries receive COVID-19 vaccines ahead of rollout -Countries in the European Union began receiving their first shipments of the COVID-19 vaccine this weekend ahead of a massive rollout planned for Sunday.Efforts will be underway Sunday to vaccinate vulnerable people and first-priority medical workers in some of the countries that experienced the brunt of the virus’s first wave this spring, including the Czech Republic, Italy and Spain, The Associated Press reported. “It’s here, the good news at Christmas,” German Health Minister Jens Spahn said, according to the AP. “At this moment, trucks are underway across Europe, across Germany and its regions, to deliver the first vaccine. More deliveries will follow the day after tomorrow. This vaccine is the decisive key to end this pandemic.”The European bloc’s 27 member nations have seen a combined 16 million coronavirus cases since the beginning of the pandemic, with 336,000 fatalities, the AP reported.Doses of about 10,000 per country began shipping out of Pfizer-BioNTech’s manufacturing center in Belgium before Christmas.While the first shipments are relatively small in scale, the mass vaccination program is slated to begin in January and will focus on immunizing many more people across the EU. The EU has agreed to purchase up to 300 million Pfizer-BioNTech doses and millions more from other manufacturers such as Moderna.
Japan reports record-high 3,743 new COVID-19 cases – Japan confirmed 3,743 coronavirus cases on Thursday, marking the highest daily tally for a second straight day, as Tokyo and several other areas continued to report record numbers of infections amid growing concern over the strain on the medical system. The country’s cumulative total of confirmed cases topped 211,000, according to a Kyodo News tally based on official data. The death toll climbed to over 3,100, with 54 reported Thursday. A record of over 640 people had developed severe symptoms, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said. In Tokyo, 888 new cases were reported, exceeding the previous record of 821 logged on Dec. 17 and bringing the cumulative total in the capital to 54,018. Three prefectures adjacent to Tokyo also marked daily records, with 495 cases reported in Kanagawa, 251 in Saitama and 234 in Chiba. Outside the capital region, Aichi, Gifu and Kyoto prefectures also logged record numbers of infections. The monthly figure for infections in Tokyo in December has topped 13,000 and already surpassed the total for November, when the previous high of 9,850 was logged. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has since Dec. 17 raised its alert regarding the strain on the medical system to the highest of four levels, and has asked residents to refrain from nonessential travel. Restaurants, bars and other establishments that serve alcohol have been asked to shorten their business hours by closing at 10 p.m. or earlier in a wide area of Tokyo, the hardest hit of the country’s 47 prefectures. Among the new cases in Tokyo on Thursday, people 65 or older numbered 93, while the number of severely ill patients based on Tokyo’s standards came to 73, up four from the previous day. People in their 20s made up the largest group at 240, followed by 184 for people in their 30s and 143 among people in their 40s.
South Korea, Japan, Indonesia Record Highest Daily Increases in COVID Cases – South Korea, Japan, and Indonesia recorded the highest daily increase in coronavirus cases Friday as a third wave of COVID-19 hit the countries. In South Korea 70% of the more than 1,200 new cases were in the greater Seoul area, where half the country’s 52 million people live. In Japan, with 884 cases reported Friday nationwide, Tokyo had the largest number of infections. Indonesia reported its biggest daily rise in deaths, with 258 fatalities and 7,259 infections, bringing the country’s total numbers to 20,847 and 700,097, respectively. Mexico on Thursday became the first Latin American country to launch a COVID-19 vaccination initiative, offering hope to a nation that has lost more than 120,000 people to the pandemic. A 59-year-old head nurse at the intensive care unit at Mexico City’s Ruben Lenero hospital was the first to get the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, in keeping with the country’s strategy to focus first on health care workers. “This is the best gift that I could have received in 2020,” Ramirez said after being inoculated in a ceremony broadcast by national media. Chile will immediately start inoculations of health care workers after receiving the first 10,000 doses of a 10 million-dose order of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine Thursday, officials said. Also Thursday, Costa Rica was preparing to vaccinate two senior citizens in a home near San Jose, while Argentina received about 300,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. The United States is about to complete its second week of vaccinations with about 1 million inoculations, mainly among health care workers and elderly residents of nursing homes. The numbers, however, are far short of the goal set by Operation Warp Speed, the federal government’s effort to mass produce millions of doses of vaccines, to inoculate 20 million Americans by the end of the year. U.S. Operation Warp Speed chief adviser Dr. Moncef Slaoui has warned that it would take longer to administer the doses. The Trump administration has reached a deal worth $2 billion to secure an additional 100 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which would boost the nation’s supply to 200 million doses by mid-July.
Global COVID-19 cases surpass 80 million – The total number of global coronavirus cases on Saturday surpassed 80 million as countries around the world are experiencing surges of the disease amid the holiday season. According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, about 472,000 new COVID-19 cases were recorded on Christmas Day globally, with the number of deaths due to the virus now standing at more than 1.75 million. The U.S. far surpasses other countries in the number of total cases with more than 18.8 million infections as of Saturday. The U.S. is followed by India with nearly 10.2 million cases and Brazil, which has recorded 7.4 million infections. The U.S. also leads the world in coronavirus-related deaths with more than 330,000, followed by Brazil at 190,488 and India at 147,343. The grim milestone comes as some countries are now battling a new strain of the virus that British scientists this week found to be 56 percent more contagious than the original. The first reported cases of the new strain were found in the United Kingdom, prompting several European countries and others around the world to limit foreign travel. On Saturday, Japan announced that it would temporarily ban nonresident foreign nationals from entering the country, citing the risk of the new COVID-19 strain. Japanese officials confirmed that a more contagious strain of the virus from the U.K. had entered the country, with the first detected cases involving passengers arriving from Britain. Despite the surges in coronavirus infections and deaths, the approval of vaccines in several countries could signal an eventual end to the pandemic.
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