COVID-19 day 151 : 📈 2,220,961 cases; 119,112 deaths : 19 June 2020
Eight states report more than 1,000 new cases; most Americans (57%) think the national response to COVID-19 has been poor or fair; Chinese study suggests antibody levels drop quickly
It’s day 151 since the first case of coronavirus disease was announced in the United States.
It’s as though Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, was looking at the United States when he spoke at Thursday’s media briefing.
He spoke about South Korea, which had a spike in community transmission a month ago which it has successfully tackled; it had only 48 new cases today, down from a high of 800. One of its tactic, which was also employed in Wuhan, is to “[isolate] suspected cases in designated facilities rather than hospitals or at home.”
Why isolation? In May, we learned that “the rate of infection among household members [in China] was 16.3%, with adults facing a greater likelihood of infection than children.”
This week in The Lancet, researchers estimated an infection rate of 12.4% when household contacts were defined as close relatives and a rate of 17.1% when household contacts were defined as having the same address.
Their conclusion:
SARS-CoV-2 is more transmissible in households than SARS-CoV and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus.
The US has no such system of isolation.
We also do not have a robust system to isolate, test, treat and trace. China’s testing system leaves us in the dust.
And so the virus spreads.
On Friday, eight states reported more than 1,000 new cases versus last Friday, which had only five. In the top 10, only two had fewer cases today than last week, North Carolina and New York.
Arizona, California and Florida and Arizona set one-day records today.
🦠 Friday, Johns Hopkins reported 2,220,961 (2,191,052) cases and 119,112 (118,434) deaths, an increase of 1.37% (1.28%) and 0.57% (0.61%), respectively, since Thursday (Wednesday). A week ago, the daily numbers increased by 1.27% and 0.75%, respectively.
The seven-day average: 24,702 (23,824) cases and 662 (689) deaths
Percent of cases leading to death: 5.41% (5.41%).
Today’s case rate is 661.94 per 100,000; the death rate, 25.79 per 100,000.
One week ago, the case rate was 619.02 per 100,000; the death rate, 34.64 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.
🤓 Recommended reading
The battle over masks in a pandemic: An all-American story. Washington Post, 19 June 2020.
To understand who’s dying of Covid-19, look to social factors like race more than preexisting diseases. STAT News, 15 June 2020.
🔬 Research and medical news
Chinese study: Antibodies in COVID-19 patients fade quickly. CIDRAP, 19 June 2020.
What does and does not correlate with COVID-19 death rates? MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, June 2020.
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
For the first time, more than 3,000 people with COVID-19 are in Texas hospitals, according to the Texas Tribune. Ironically, perhaps, the highest per capita case rates are not in major cities like Dallas, Houston and San Antonio but in more rural areas of the state. There are also counties with scarce testing.
US cases of COVID-19 are increasing whereas there has been a slow but steady decline in total deaths. Today’s numbers: 29,910 cases and 678 deaths.
⓶ Around the world
At the WHO media conference on Thursday, Ghebreyesus said that the WHO had reports of more than 150,000 cases, setting a single day record.
Brazil reported 1,032,913 cases, adding another 54,771 today. The US added 29,910; Brazil, 14,516.
Brazil also reported the most deaths, 1,206. Spain reported 1,179 deaths; the US, 678.
Iran President Hassan Rouhani has announced that masks will become mandatory in high-risk areas.
⓷ Politics, economics and COVID-19
✅ The federal government reversed course on Friday and announced it will release a data set showing who has received taxpayer-funded Paycheck Protection Program loans.
❌ On Wednesday, President Trump claimed, in a television interview, that the coronavirus is “dying out.”
In a Wall Street Journal interview Wednesday, Trump argued coronavirus testing was “overrated” because it reveals large numbers of new Covid-19 cases, which in turn “makes us look bad,” and suggested that some Americans who wear masks do so not only to guard against the virus, but perhaps to display their anti-Trump animus.
STAT News talked with a variety of public health experts about how his “dismissiveness” could affect the course of the virus.
“The science behind how people process public warnings in a crisis supports this: You have to have people speaking with one voice,” said Monica Schoch-Spana, a medical anthropologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “You need a chorus.”
We need a chorus. Instead, we have cacophony.
📣 A Gallup-West Health poll of Americans in mid-May reflected a serious concern about the potential for health care costs to rise in the wake of COVID-19. They also gave the national response to COVID-19 a failing grade when compared with how much we spend on health care.
How concerned are you that the pharmaceutical industry will take advantage of the current COVID-19 pandemic to increase drug prices?
88% are very or somewhat concerned (55% very concerned)How concerned are you that the U.S. health system will take advantage of the current COVID-19 pandemic to increase the cost of care?
84% are very or somewhat concerned (41% very concerned)How concerned are you that the care required to treat COVID-19 patients will result in increased health insurance premiums next year?
79% are very or somewhat concerned (41% very concerned)
When asked to rate the national response to COVID-19 relative to how much the U.S. spends on healthcare, almost 6-in-10 ranked our response as “poor” or “fair”
9%, excellent
14%, very good
34% poor
23%, fair
There was an inverse relationship between education and the ranking, with Americans who hold college degrees more likely to rank the response poor or fair than those with some college, high school or less.
There was also an inverse relationship related to political party affiliation:
Democrats: 6%, excellent or very good; 84%, fair/poor
Independents: 20%, excellent or very good; 57%, fair/poor
Republicans: 44%, excellent or very good; 28%, fair/poor
Margin of error: ±3.9 for primary results and ±7 for subgroups (education and party affiliation)
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.
🌎 19 June
Globally: 8 385 440 cases (142 451 new) with 450 686 deaths (5 151 new)
The Americas: 4 092 526 cases (77 140 new) with 212 517 deaths (3 526 new)
US: 2 149 166 cases (23 139 new) with 117 472 deaths (770 new)
Johns Hopkins interactive dashboard (11.00 pm Pacific)
Global confirmed: 8,663,135 (8,464,739)
Total deaths: 459,474 (453,289)
Recovered: 4,245,777 (4,142,540)
🇺🇸 19 June
CDC: 2,178,710 (23,138) cases and 118,365 (733) deaths
Johns Hopkins*: 2,220,961 (2,191,052) cases and 119,112 (118,434) deaths
State data*: 2,209,665 (2,178,338) identified cases and 112,822 (112,174) deaths
Total tests (US, Johns Hopkins): 25,982,613 (25,403,498)
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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