Coronavirus

Recent debates about how and when it might be safe to reopen schools for the coming academic year has put the spotlight on whether young adults get infected by the novel coronavirus and how many subsequently die of COVID-19?    We had noted early on in the pandemic that the case fatality rate (CFR=deaths/cases) for COVID-19 is highly skewed against older males.   The average 85+ years old male has >30% chance of dying once they are infected which is 1000 times worse than the <0.03% measured for 17- years old young females (see figure below).   While you hear about the occasional death of a teenager this is out of more than hundreds of thousands of teenagers who have been infected in the USA.   Of course, no one knows the long term damage that could be caused by this pernicious and poorly understood virus so young adults are still cautioned against behaving irresponsibly and tempting fate.   Moreover, it is important to note that there is no e...

Ever since the first case of COVID-19 was identified in Miami on March 11 th  and the first death recorded on March 27 th , the number of cases and deaths have increased steadily in Miami-Dade County.  On March 24 th , when total case count neared 500, parts of Miami-Dade began to lockdown with most of South Florida locked down by March 30 th .  The lockdowns effectively flattened the curve within weeks.  After peaking with an average of 400 new cases per day in mid-April, the number of cases dropped slowly to near 150 per day, Miami-Dade reopened on May 18 th .  As it turned out this level of infection was not sufficiently low enough to safely reopen and soon after Memorial Day new cases began to surge again along with the rest of Florida.  The daily new cases for Miami-Dade (brown squares) track that of the rest of Florida (blue diamonds) very well at about 25%.  Over the last 12 days the 7-day rolling average case number for the rest of Flo...

After nearly 3 months of downplaying and ignoring the Pandemic, the President has finally taken a few positive steps towards mitigating the spread of COVID-19.   He is now strongly recommending the use of facial coverings .   While this is not the same as a national mandate for masks that we recommend it is a step in the right direction.   He still needs to reinstate some of the original guidelines for social distancing that expired April 30 th .   On the testing front, he seems to have shifted from saying the US should stop testing so much to saying that testing has allowed the US to show much better case fatality rate (CFR = deaths/cases) trends.   This is the same argument we had advanced in May to try to convince the President to test more.   The US needs to increase testing capacity to reduce turnaround times from more than a week currently to less than a day and to drive the positivity rate (percent positive test results) below the 5% level recom...

Wearing a mask – a public health tool – has been politicized in the USA.   It is unfortunate because many countries have shown that masking and social distancing can work to slow the spread and severity of a pandemic.   In the USA, the three largest states, California (CA), Texas (TX), and Florida (FL) have all experienced a significant resurgence in COVID-19 cases for the last 6 weeks since the end of May (see figure below).   Each of them has seen record new highs in daily case counts and deaths.   However, their reaction to the resurgence has been different and their recent experience and prognosis going forward will be very different. California as the largest state in the USA had the highest level of cases per capita in May as they expanded testing and picked up more asymptomatic and mild cases.   When infections exploded in June, Governor Newsom reacted the earliest and mandated mask-wearing across the state on June 19 th .   Subsequently, ...

For six weeks COVID-19 cases have been surging in Florida but the governor has insisted that it was not a problem because Florida was testing more and revealing more mild and asymptomatic cases.   Then when t he percentage of positive results started to rise 5 weeks ago from 4% toward 20% recently, he conceded that community spread is occurring but it was mostly among younger adults who will not require hospitalization or stress Florida’s health care system.   When hospital usage started to surge 3 weeks ago, he claimed that Florida has plenty of hospital beds and very few people will die.   Now, this week, death counts have been rising and setting new 7-day rolling average highs every day (see figure below).   He is still resisting healthcare experts’ calls for instituting more mitigation measures ranging from mandating mask usage to rolling back reopening steps, to statewide lockdown .   Even Texas Governor Abbott has conceded that a lockdown is possible ...

It looks like the surge in COVID-19 cases in California (CA) has not ended yet.   While cases are no longer making remarkable new highs, the 7-day rolling averages (solid blue line against the left axis in the figure below) are still increasing - reaching a new high of 8,242 (recent data are a little bit distorted by Los Angeles County restatement of data).   The imposition of statewide masking on June 18 th should have kicked in this week. But spotty compliance may not be sufficient to stop the surge.   On July 1 st , the governor also shut all bars, indoor restaurants, and movie theatres for 70% of the most infected population which should bite in a couple of weeks.   If not, additional rollback of reopening steps may be required.   In the meantime, death counts (brown line showing 7-day rolling average against the right axis) have started to rise after a 2-3 week lag toward a new high and reached a single-day high of 150 deaths.   Death co...