Hot Zones in the US that Need to be Contained.


The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the US has grown to 1,698 (Mar 12 midnight GMT).  This number is much lower than the tens of thousands of cases that are probably already active in the US due to substantial under testing.  A number of areas in the US are now experiencing concentrated exponential growth of COVID-19.  These areas need to isolated immediately.  New Rochelle, NY has been “contained” but this is not enough.  Too many infections have already leaked out or begun in the rest of metro-NYC as people have traveled and congregated freely, and allowed the virus to proliferate.  NY state has 328 cases identified in just the last 12 days - much of it in metro-NYC.  All of metro-NYC should be contained, if not quarantined.  NYC, however, is not the only hot spot in the US. 


State
Cases
Deaths
Washington
420
31
New York
328
0
California
252
4
Massachusetts
108
0
Colorado
49
0
Florida
46
2
Texas
44
0
Louisiana
33
0
Illinois
32
0
Georgia
31
1
New Jersey
30
1
Virginia
30
0


Washington state has more than 420 cases and a hot zone around Seattle that must be contained.  California with 252 cases has two hot zones around San Francisco-Silicon Valley and Los Angeles that should be contained.  Finally, Massachusetts with 108 cases has a hot zone around Boston that needs to be contained.  These 5 metro areas should cordoned off and controlled as soon as possible.  In addition, other infected areas around DC, Miami, Atlanta, Denver, Philadelphia, etc. should be preparing to implement congregation and travel restrictions now. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

COVID-19 Infection and Mortality Rates as a Function of Age and Gender

Image
With over 2.4 million COVID-19 cases and over 160,000 deaths globally, there is a lot of data that can be analyzed to better understand this virus as a function of age, co-morbidities, medical history (such as prior exposure to coronaviruses like SARS, and other vaccines like BCG), etc.   The two important factors that have been noted since the early days of this pandemic are age and gender and they continue to be the most important factors.   We look at the age and gender dependencies with the best single data set provided by the Spanish Health Department containing over 200,000 cases (or 0.4% of the total population) and over 20,000 deaths.   Spain has tested over 2.0% of its population which while short of a comprehensive sample does begin to give us some ideas about how the disease has affected the entire country.   We look at the probability of a random person acquiring the disease as a function of age.   We know that this sample is not truly random no...
Read more

NYC is now Worse than China 2 days after Wuhan Quarantine

Image
China announced plans to quarantine Wuhan on January 22 when the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases was near 500 and threatened to go exponential or out of control.   The number of confirmed cases in NY state has now passed that threshold by 3 days and it is growing exponentially. Most of the confirmed cases in NY, NJ, and CT are located in the metro-NYC area.   If the US wants to adopt China’s successful, albeit painful, quarantine program they must do so NOW.   Many people with the benefit of hindsight criticized China for such draconic measures while others criticized them for doing it too late.   WHO seemed to be the only major organization that had praised China for its decisive action at that time.   Now is the time for Governor Cuomo, or really President Trump to adopt a strategy similar to China’s before the virus escapes the hot zones such as metro-NYC, Seattle, and San Franciso and...
Read more

Sweden Continues to Go Its Own Way in the Pandemic

Image
Sweden’s response to the COVID-19 Pandemic has been very unusual and it’s justification for continuing the policy is magical thinking.   They have relied on voluntary social distancing and “herd immunity” to solve their pandemic problem.   There are few words to adequately describe the tragedy unfolding in Sweden so I’ll just let these tables and graphs speak for themselves. The figure above shows the progress of the infection in Sweden since the first case was confirmed on Feb 25 th .   Since then the number of confirmed cases per day (brown squares) has increased steadily with no signs of stabilization.   The first death was reported on March 13 th and with about a 10-day lag, it has tracked steadily upward every day since then.   The death count (shown as blue diamonds) is plotted on the right axis scaled to 16% of the case count on the left axis.   That means the fatality rate is roughly 16...
Read more