Good to see you again, SH ...------------------------------
Nearly 6 Percent of People In England May Have Had COVID-19https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/201893/largest-study-home-coronavirus-antibody-testing/Nearly 6 percent of people in England were likely infected with COVID-19 during the peak of the pandemic, researchers studying the prevalence of infections said, millions more people than that have tested positive for the disease.
A total of 313,798 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the UK, 270,971 of which have been in England.
However, a study that tested more than 100,000 people across England for antibodies to the coronavirus showed that nearly 6 percent of people had them, suggesting that 3.4 million people had previously contracted COVID-19 by the end of June.
Prevalence of infections appeared to be the highest in London, where 13 percent of people had antibodies, while minority ethnic groups were two to three times as likely to have had COVID-19 compared with white people.
Study: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/institute-of-global-health-innovation/Ward-et-al-120820-REACT-2.pdfThe overall infection fatality ratio - the proportion of infected people who died - was calculated to be 0.9%, similar to other countries such as Spain.Antibodies were found in almost all (96%) of those who had a previous infection confirmed by a swab test. People who had severe symptoms from the disease were twice as likely to have antibodies than those with no symptoms when they were diagnosed with or suspected having COVID-19 (29% vs 14%).
... More than 16% of care home workers with client-facing roles and 12% of healthcare professionals that have direct patient contact. In non-key workers, the rate was around 5%. ...
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Testing Crisis In Key States Skews Drop In New Caseshttps://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/12/accuracy-of-us-coronavirus-data-thrown-into-question-as-decline-in-testing-skews-drop-in-new-cases.html
The coronavirus outbreak appears to be leveling off in the United States as the average number of new cases declines across the country every day, but testing shortages in key states and other gaps in Covid-19 data call into question whether the outbreak is really slowing.The country recorded an average of 52,875 new cases every day over the last seven days, down 19% from an average of 65,285 new cases per day on July 28, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. However, Covid-19 testing has declined as well, falling from a seven-day average of about 814,000 tests per day two weeks ago to about 716,000, a 12% decline, over the same two-week period, according to data compiled by the Covid Tracking Project, a volunteer project founded by journalists at
The Atlantic magazine.
“I really have come to believe we have entered a real, new, emerging crisis with testing and it is making it hard to know where the pandemic is slowing down and where it’s not,” Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said in an interview with CNBC.
The decline in testing is particularly acute in some of the hardest hit states with the worst outbreaks, which further skews the overall case numbers across the U.S.
In Texas, for instance, new cases have fallen by 10% to an average of 7,381 a day from 8,203 two weeks ago, based on a seven-day moving average. Testing, however, is down by 53% over the same time frame. Meanwhile, the percent of positive tests has doubled over the last two weeks to about 24%, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Texas isn’t the only state that’s seen a drop in testing in recent weeks, according to the Covid Tracking Project. Testing has fallen in other states, including Florida, North Carolina and Tennessee, which are home to some of the country’s largest Covid-19 outbreaks.
https://mobile.twitter.com/COVID19Tracking/status/1293309888869756929... “How pathetic are we as a nation that six months into this pandemic, we can’t get this stuff right? We don’t have enough tests. Tests are taking two weeks,” he said. “We can’t figure out where the outbreaks are getting better or worse because our numbers are so messed up that we’re having to squint at the data.”
Catherine Troisi, an epidemiologist with The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, said that while testing varies across different regions of the state, overall, it has dropped off substantially at a critical time in the outbreak. The increasing portion of tests coming back positive indicates that the state should be testing more, not less, especially as school districts prepare to reopen in the coming weeks, which she expects to complicate the outbreak even more.
“We know we’re missing a lot of people. Basically, we don’t know what’s happening,”
... President Donald Trump said essentially the same thing at a July 14 press conference. “Think of this, if we didn’t do testing, instead of testing over 40 million people, if we did half the testing we would have half the cases,” he said at the time.
Smith, however, said the cases don’t actually go away. Public health officials just don’t know who’s infected.
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U.S. Records Over 1,500 Deaths, for the Deadliest Day Since May
... While the daily number of new Covid-19 deaths is far below the 2,000-plus daily new deaths that the country saw in March and April, the daily death toll remains stubbornly high.
Daily new deaths are rising rapidly in Georgia, according to a CNBC analysis of Hopkins data. Georgia reported 105 new deaths on Wednesday, pushing the state's seven-day average passed 67 deaths per day, more than 38% higher than a week ago, according to CNBC's analysis.
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The True Coronavirus Toll in the U.S. Has Already Surpassed 200,000https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/12/us/covid-deaths-us.htmlAcross the United States, at least 200,000 more people have died than usual since March, according to a New York Times analysis of estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is about 60,000 higher than the number of deaths that have been directly linked to the coronavirus.As the pandemic has moved south and west from its epicenter in New York City, so have the unusual patterns in deaths from all causes. That suggests that the official death counts may be substantially underestimating the overall effects of the virus, as people die from the virus as well as by other causes linked to the pandemic.
As the number of hot spots expanded, so has the number of excess deaths across other parts of the country. Many of the recent coronavirus cases and deaths in the South and the West may have been driven largely by reopenings and relaxed social distancing restrictions.
... Nine of the 13 states in the South started seeing excess deaths surge in July, months into the pandemic. A spike in cases in places like Texas put pressure on hospitals, echoing the chaos that ensued in New York months earlier. South Carolina, among the first states to reopen retail stores, saw deaths reach 1.6 times normal levels in mid-July.Unlike other states in this region, Louisiana saw its excess deaths peak in April — when total deaths reached 1.7 times normal levels. Medical experts said Mardi Gras gatherings most likely contributed to this spike.
... Counting deaths takes time and many states are weeks or months behind in reporting. The estimates from the C.D.C. are adjusted based on how mortality data has lagged in previous years. Even with this adjustment, it’s possible there could be an underestimate of the complete death toll if increased mortality is causing states to lag more than they have in the past or if states have changed their reporting systems.
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Critics of Sweden's Coronavirus Strategy Call for More Restrictionshttps://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/13/swedens-coronavirus-critics-urge-more-caution-to-avoid-a-second-wave.htmlCritics of Sweden's coronavirus strategy have called for more protective measures to be put in place ahead of a potential second wave of the virus once the summer is over.Writing in Swedish newspaper
Dagens Nyheter, Goran K. Hansson, the general-secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and Economist Lars Calmfors called for a change in the country's strategy towards the virus, one that has seen it shun a lockdown in favor of largely voluntary measures.
"It is now time to review the corona strategy," Hansson and Calmfors wrote in an op-ed Tuesday. "The beginning of autumn may be crucial for the corona pandemic's continued development in the country. A real retake is needed for the continued infection control strategy so that the spread of infection is kept down while waiting for both better treatment methods and vaccines," they said.
Sweden has seen a far higher death toll than its neighbors, with almost 5,800 deaths. The critics said the number of fatalities represented a "national catastrophe" for Sweden and called for more cost-effective measures, including quarantines for travelers from countries with a large number of infections, and face masks in public environments.
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