COVID-19 day 161: 📈 2,590,552 cases; 126,140 deaths : 29 June 2020
Florida sets 7-day average case record for the 17th straight day; Jacksonville FL requires masks; kudos to Vietnam, twice; might A/C contribute to spread throughout the southern US?
It’s day 161 since the first case of coronavirus disease was announced in the United States. And it’s pretty obvious where this is headed.
The same (below) could be said about the state charts, not just the national one. I call it willful stupidity, evidenced by almost three months of inept preparation.
🦠 Monday, Johns Hopkins reported 2,590,552 (2,548,996) cases and 126,140 (125,803) deaths, an increase of 1.63% (1.54%) and 0.27% (0.21%), respectively, since Sunday (Saturday). A week ago, the daily numbers increased by 1.38% and 0.36%, respectively.
The seven-day average: 38,705 ⬆️(36,735) cases and 771 ⬆️ (761) deaths
Percent of cases leading to death: 4.87% ⬇️ (4.94%)
Today’s case rate is 758.35 per 100,000; the death rate, 37.93 per 100,000.
One week ago, the case rate was 698.57 per 100,000; the death rate, 36.37 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
“If I'd been almost anywhere else on the planet, I'd be dead. They would have flicked the switch after 30 days,” says Stephen Cameron from his hospital bed.
The 42-year-old Scottish pilot spent 68 days on a ventilator, thought to be a longer stretch of time than any patient in the UK. He did so not in a hospital in his hometown of Motherwell, but in Vietnam's sprawling and hectic Ho Chi Minh City, with no close friends or family for thousands of miles.
Patient 91: How Vietnam saved a British pilot and kept a clean Covid-19 sheet. BBC, 27 June 2020.
🔬 Research and medical news
MIT Press plans to publish reviews of COVID-19 preprints “in an effort to quickly and authoritatively call out misinformation as well as highlight important, credible research.” Amen.
If you or a family member gets sick enough to be a candidate for remdesivir, now we know what it will cost.
I’ve been asking about and looking for theories about air conditioning and the spread of COVID19 in hot, southern regions of the country. From Harvard, Edward Nardell, professor of medicine and of global health and social medicine and professor of environmental health and of immunology and infectious diseases:
“The states that, in June, are already using a lot of air conditioning because of high temperatures are also the places where there’s been greater increases in spread of COVID-19, suggesting more time indoors as temperatures rise,” Nardell said. “The same [thing] happens in wintertime, with more time indoors.”
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
⛱ Florida has set a seven-day rolling average case record every day since 13 June.
🏥 ICU beds are more full in states exhibiting the current spikes.
☆ Texas Medical Center hospitals, “which together constitute the world’s largest medical complex,” reported last week that base intensive care capacity hit 100%. At Houston Methodist Hospital, 60% of the patients are under age 50, a reverse of early days of the pandemic. The worry: an “unsustainable surge capacity” of intensive care beds after the 4th of July weekend.
This is not stopping the state Republican Party:
Harris County, where Houston is located, has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the state, but the Texas GOP plans to press forward with plans to hold an in-person convention from July 16-18 in the city’s George R. Brown Convention Center.
One of the sponsors of the state convention: the Texas Medical Association.
⓶ Around the world
I had not intended to do a two-fer on Vietnam, but the International Monetary Fund profiled the country today as a model for other developing countries.
Vietnam was regarded as highly vulnerable, given its long border and extensive trade with China, densely populated urban areas, and limited healthcare infrastructure. But Vietnam’s cost-effective containment strategy resulted in only 352 confirmed cases and no deaths in a population of almost 100 million people. The country was among the first to lift virtually all domestic containment measures.
⓷ Politics, economics and COVID-19
Remember Charlotte, NC and the Republican National Convention? And Trump demanding that North Carolina guarantee no physical distancing?
So the RNC moved to Jacksonville, FL. Guess what Florida city implemented a mandatory face covering rule today? Who thinks the Florida outbreak will be under control in less than two months?
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.
🌎 29 June
Globally: 10 021 401 cases (178 328 new) with 499 913 deaths (4 153 new)
The Americas: 5 042 486 cases (108 514 new) with 244 791 deaths (2 860 new)
US: 2 496 628 cases (44 580 new) with 125 318 deaths (507 new)
Johns Hopkins interactive dashboard (11.00 pm Pacific)
Global confirmed: 10,302,052 (10,145,791)
Total deaths: 505,505 (501,893)
Recovered: 5,235,813 (5,140,899)
🇺🇸 29 June
CDC: 2,545,250 (41,075) cases and 126,369 (885) deaths
Johns Hopkins*: 2,590,552 (2,548,996) cases and 126,140 (125,803) deaths
State data*: 2,578,079 (2,541,711) identified cases and 119,762 (119,435) deaths
Why WI data do not match state website; KS reports only M-W-FTotal tests (US, Johns Hopkins): 31,557,407 (30,988,013)
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)