Coronavirus

Florida has reopened for business for four weeks now and its experience is similar to that encountered by other states and countries that are trying to reopen quickly after COVID-19 lockdowns.   Reopening the state for business is necessary and should be possible if enough testing and contact tracing resources are made available.   However, testing capacity has always been surprisingly problematic for the US since January 11 th when the genetic code for the novel coronavirus was first published and major countries such as South Korea and Germany were able to produce valid tests in quantity.   To date, Florida and the US as a whole still lags behind South Korea, Germany, Taiwan, Australia, and other best-in-class countries in terms of testing completeness and thoroughness.   The figure below shows that testing (brown square against left axis) in Florida has expanded in two months from 6,000 per day in late March to near 24,000 per day now.   The percentage of test results returning pos

California (CA) had and still has one of the best records in the war against COVID-19 in the USA with less than half the national average infections per capita and just 13% that of New York State.  At the same time its economy has been hard hit so it has little choice except to try to reopen safely.  But since it started reopening some activities earlier this month, its infection rate has crept up.  Its 7-day trailing average daily rate has increased by 25% from 1,723 to 2,170 per day.  California has published the most detailed demographic information about its confirmed cases and case fatality rate (CFR) which allows us to examine COVID-19 issues and trends in more detail.   The availability of more data confirms some of our major conclusions from our study earlier this month: 1.       Latinos continue to be infected at a higher rate than any other race/ethnicity, but their death rate is just average for the state.   This implies a lower CFR for Latinos (3.8%) than CA in gen

Sweden’s business-as-usual approach in the war against COVID-19 pandemic has been held up by many conservatives such as Senator Rand Paul as a less costly alternative to national lockdowns adopted by most countries around the world.  We have always maintained that Sweden’s laissez-faire or lazy approach (also tried for a short time by the UK and Netherlands, and still followed by devastated Brazil) is inhumane and does not save lives or even economic fortunes .  Moreover relying on "herd immunity" may be wishing thinking - scientific studies show that coronavirus immunity could disappear after 6 months.    While Sweden has always insisted that theirs is not a herd immunity approach they have always hoped that they could achieve herd immunity quickly to end the pandemic in Sweden.   Their latest antibody study showed that just 7.3% of Stockholmers developed COVID-19 antibodies by late April.   Sweden is losing the war on COVID-19 not just because they failed to impose a na

Many countries that have been locked down for over a month are now seeing some stabilization and are trying to reopen.   To improve their chances to reopen successfully, they have all ramped up their testing and tracking capabilities and continue to restrict foreign travel.   While the efficacy of International travel bans are debatable, most scientists believe that for countries to successfully manage a domestic test and contact tracing program, it would help to restrict travel from global hotspots to minimize reinfections.   Once a country has established a comprehensive domestic tracking program and controlled community spread, then they could allocate more resources to testing and contact tracing all foreign travelers.   The current CDC list of restricted countries was last updated on March 14 th ,   nearly 10 weeks ago, and urgently needs to be updated to include many new hotspots.   Just today, Russia and Brazil overtook many of the European countries that had been suffering