Coronavirus

A couple of weeks ago we pointed out that schools have become the new breeding ground for COVID-19 .   More data have allowed us to understand the problem a little better.   While people of all ages can get infected with the novel coronavirus, it seems that the younger the person, the less likely they are to get infected or die from the disease.   Deducing the  real underlying susceptibility to the novel coronavirus is not easy given that the measured infection rate depends on how mobile each group is, how compliant each group of people is with mask-wearing, social distancing, and personal hygiene, and how thoroughly each age group is tested for the virus.   With all grades of K-12 back at school or online at roughly the same time in Florida, those in elementary, middle, and high school are 37%, 47%, and 72% as likely as the average Floridian to get infected, respectively.   Teens in high school (14-17 yrs old) have been trending higher while younger child...

Many students have been back to school for a month now and we are seeing new outbreaks of COVID-19 cases among young people in Florida and throughout the USA.   Fortunately, the June to August resurgence of COVID-19 cases among the general population has eased so that the overall case counts in Florida have not increased yet.   As we had pointed out before COVID-19 is far less deadly for children and young adults but their rates of infection may not be all that different.   From the graph below, children younger than 15 seem to be less likely to get infected but since many have been staying home until recently, and as a group they were thought to be less vulnerable and tend to be under-tested,   Thus it is not clear yet what their true infection rate is.   The age group with the highest infection rate is young adults 25-34 who have been most socially active and were largely responsible for the summer surge in deaths as they went to bars and beaches and transmit...

Daily COVID-19 new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have been falling for several weeks in Florida along with that for the USA as a whole .  The pandemic in the USA has not burned out and many states in the Midwest are experiencing flare ups.  In Florida, the daily new case count after falling for 6 weeks has just flattened out this week at a level 5 times higher than in May when Florida first tried to reopen (see figure below).   This has not deterred the governor from  doing his second COVID-19 victory tour  and encouraging counties to resume reopening, nursing homes to accept visitors, residents to celebrate Labor Day, and schools to reopen for physical classes and team sports. Will an early victory dance and complacency encourage the virus to surge again this fall in Florida and the USA?   The governor is betting that kids can go to school safely because they are less likely to get infected than adults.  We have shown that this...