COVID-19 day 149 : 📈 2,163,290 cases; 117,717 deaths : 17 June 2020
Tulsa OK officials ask Trump campaign to move outside or reschedule; Oklahoma sets record four of the past six days; surges now in about half the states; Chile leads the world in daily reported cases
It’s day 149 since the first case of coronavirus disease was announced in the United States.
The top five daily COVID-19 reports in Oklahoma have occurred the past six days: 173, 225, 186, 228 and 259. The percent of those tested who are positive (positivity rate) has also increased. The seven-day moving average on Wednesday was 4.6%; at the first of the month, it was 1.2%.
So it’s not a big surprise that officials in Tulsa, OK, have asked the Trump presidential campaign to either move the Saturday campaign event outside (it’s slated for the Bank of Oklahoma Center, which holds 19,100) or to cancel it.
“It’s the perfect storm of potential over-the-top disease transmission,” said Bruce Dart, the executive director of the Tulsa health department. “It’s a perfect storm that we can’t afford to have.”
The campaign has already responded to public pressure and moved the date of the event from Friday, which is Juneteenth (19 June), to Saturday.
Two Tulsa attorneys, Clark Brewster and Paul DeMuro, filed an unsuccessful lawsuit that would have required all participants to wear masks.
🦠 Wednesday, Johns Hopkins reported 2,163,290 (2,137,731) cases and 117,717 (116,963) deaths , an increase of 1.20 % (1.12%) and 0.64% (0.72%), respectively, since Tuesday (Monday). A week ago, the daily numbers increased by 1.06% and 0.83%, respectively.
The seven-day average: 22,985 (22,104) cases and 716 (747) deaths
Percent of cases leading to death: 5.44% (5.47%).
Today’s case rate is 653.56 per 100,000; the death rate, 35.56 per 100,000.
One week ago, the case rate was 604.36 per 100,000; the death rate, 34.12 per 100,000.
Note: numbers in (.) are from the prior day and are provided for context. I include the seven-day average because dailies vary so much in the course of a week, particularly over a weekend.
🔬 Research and medical news
Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced it was dropping hydroxychloroquine from in its large global trial for COVID-19 treatments. CIDRAP.
Sections (no jump links, sorry!)
1, Around the country; 2, Around the world; 3, Politics, economics and COVID-19;
4, Case count; 5, What you can do and resources
⓵ Around the country
🌵Arizona reported a total of 40,924 cases on Wednesday. This is double the number of cases on 01 June (20,123). The daily reported cases: 1,827. Arizona has a 16.6% positivity rate (seven-day moving average).
⛱ Florida reported 2,610 new cases on Wednesday. The number of total cases increased to 82,719 from 56,830 on 01 June. Florida has a 7.4% positivity rate (seven-day moving average).
☆ Texas set another record for daily reported cases, 3,129. The number of total cases increased to 96,335 from 64,880 on 01 June. Texas has a 7.9% positivity rate (seven-day moving average).
⓶ Around the world
▪️The global outbreak is centered in our hemisphere. About half of today’s new global cases were in the Americas (58,250 of 119,759), and we accounted for 36% of global deaths (1,981 of 5,494). WHO data.
▪️The US fell to number three in total global cases today. Chile led the world with a reported 36,179 new cases; Brazil reported 32,188. US numbers were up to 25,559, the most since 25,639 on 12 June (Johns Hopkins data). You have to go back to 21 May for another day with more than 25,000 cases (25,434).
▪️Beijing has tested about 326,000 people as it tries to contain an outbreak connected to a large market. Beijing, population 22 million, can currently run about 400,000 tests a day. Today, the US, population 330 million, reported running 449,488 tests today. We are woefully behind.
The source of this outbreak remains unknown.
Beijing reported its last case of local COVID-19 transmission in mid-April. The current outbreak began when a man with no history of recent travel visited a doctor on 10 June with a fever and chills. He tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and was hospitalized the following day. Officials think he or a close contact was infected at the Xinfadi Agricultural Wholesale Market, a massive 112-hectare complex housing 2000 stalls selling produce, seafood, and meat with 10,000 customers and workers visiting daily, according to Xinhua. This led to the massive effort to test market workers, customers, and even residents of nearby neighborhoods.
⓷ Politics, economics and COVID-19
Cases are surging in about half the states but without the drama of New York and New Jersey in March and April. A warning from STAT News:
Experts had envisioned localized ups and downs as the U.S. epidemic dragged on. But the new bursts of cases have not galvanized a commitment to rein in the spread and steer those rises into downturns. Instead, there is fading attention in Washington, and many Americans seem inured by the steady stream of 800 daily Covid-19 deaths and desperate to return to work and daily life (emphasis added).
Because Governors removed or eased lockdowns before the recommended 14 days of steadily declining daily case numbers, the US was “primed” for this resurgence.
But if initial lockdowns were meant to cut off as much transmission as possible and reduce it to manageable levels, they were also supposed to buy health authorities time to design strategies for the long haul, to come up with plans to keep a brake on spread so people could emerge back into life without an explosion of cases… Authorities had to communicate to the public that some measures — including masks, distancing, and avoiding crowds — had to be maintained for the duration.
Now, we’re seeing the fruits of those efforts — and the lack thereof.
The U.S. has not hired enough contact tracers to satisfy expert estimates of what’s needed. Mask wearing has become a political flashpoint, with many people simply refusing or not seeing the purpose…
In Arizona, local health departments raced during the state’s stay-at-home period to build up contact tracing fleets and prepare for more cases, said Kacey Ernst, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Arizona. But they didn’t have sufficient time to build the capacities that would prove to be necessary once the state reopened…
Now, the state is regularly reporting more than 1,000 new cases a day, compared to a few hundred in May. Hospitalizations are up. There isn’t enough contact tracing in place to try to get a hold of the outbreak, Ernst said.
These are political decisions.
The White House presents a total disregard for the need for masks; it is not just the President who is out in public sans mask. And too many governors are following suit.
The Trump campaign presents a total disregard for the need to maintain physical distancing, both with the rally in Tulsa on Saturday and its desire for a traditional pomp-and-circumstance RNC in the summer.
Those political decisions play out. On a Facebook post that shared one of these newsletters, a lot of people (paid trolls?) have chimed in with a variety of misinformed posts. From “it’s no worse than the flu” to “those case numbers are made up”.
It will be a long summer. As it has been a very long year so far.
⓸ Case count
There is a lag between being contagious and showing symptoms, between having a test and getting its results. There is also a lag in reports of cases and deaths making their way into daily results; this lag is visible in predictable declines for both reports containing weekend data.
🌎 17 June
Globally: 8 061 550 cases (119 759 new) with 440 290 deaths (5 494 new)
The Americas: 3 899 859 cases (58 250 new) with 205 555 deaths (1 981 new)
US: 2 098 106 cases (18 514 new) with 115 980 deaths (496 new)
Johns Hopkins interactive dashboard (11.00 pm Pacific)
Global confirmed: 8,331,135 (8,175,482)
Total deaths: 448,504 (443,730)
Recovered: 4,065,733 (3,956,263)
🇺🇸 17 June
CDC: 2,132,321 (27,975 new) cases and 116,862 (722) deaths
Johns Hopkins*: 2,163,290 (2,137,731) cases and 117,717 (116,963) deaths
State data*: 2,150,932 (2,126,055) identified cases and 111,477 (110,683) deaths
Total tests (US, Johns Hopkins): 24,937,877 (24,449,307)
Take with a grain of salt. Tests not necessarily people. The CDC and at least 11 other states have combined the data for active infections with data for antibodies, boosting total number of tests which can drop the percentage who test positive.
📣 View weekly state infographics
* Johns Hopkins data, ~11.00 pm Pacific.
State data include DC, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands
The virus was not created in a lab and the weight of evidence is it was not released intentionally. Although early reports tied the outbreak to a market in Wuhan, China, analyses of genomic data in January suggested that the virus might have developed elsewhere.
⓹ What you can do
Stay home as much as possible, period.
Wear a mask when near non-family members.
Digestive problems may be a symptom.
Resources
👓 See COVID-19 resource collection at WiredPen.
📝 Subscribe to Kathy’s COVID-19 Memo :: COVID-19 Memo archives
🦠 COVID-19 @ WiredPen.com
📊 Visualizations: US, World
🌐 Global news (at WiredPen)
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