H5N1

Russia's daily COVID-19 death toll at record high as vaccination program stalls

Via Reuters: Russia's daily COVID-19 death toll at record high as vaccination program stalls.

MOSCOW, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Russia reported a record 1,002 deaths from coronavirus on Saturday, the first time the daily number has passed the 1,000-mark since the start of the pandemic.  

New COVID-19 cases, confirmed in the past 24 hours, were at 33,208, setting a record for the fifth consecutive day, the Russian coronavirus task force said.   

Russian authorities blame a slow vaccination campaign for the sharp rise of infections and deaths, which forced the health ministry this week to ask retired vaccinated medics to return to hospitals.  

Russia estimates that 45% of its population may have an immunity to the novel coronavirus after receiving a vaccine or recovering from the illness, data published by the coronavirus task force on Saturday showed. In Moscow the figure is 61% and is at 64% in the region surrounding the capital.

Russia was quick to develop and launch its Sputnik V vaccine when the coronavirus pandemic struck last year, but take-up has been slow, with many Russians citing distrust of the authorities and fear of new medical products.  

Only around 48 million out of 144 million Russians are fully vaccinated, according to the latest data from the coronavirus task force, with 51 million having received one shot.  

The latest coronavirus deaths brought the total official national death toll to 222,315, with a total 7,958,384 cases.  

The Rosstat statistic service, which keeps a separate count of coronavirus deaths, said this month that around 418,000 deaths were recorded between April 2020 and August 2021.

The excess mortality in Russia, which some epidemiologists say is the best way to measure the impact of a pandemic, reached 575,000 extra deaths in the same period in comparison with the average mortality rate in 2015-2019.

Russia sets new record coronavirus cases, fatalities

Via The Moscow Times: Russia Sets New Record Coronavirus Cases, Fatalities. Excerpt:

Russia reported a new record number of daily coronavirus deaths and infections Thursday, as officials sound the alarm over the strain placed on the country’s hospitals from an unremitting fourth wave of the pandemic.  

The government’s coronavirus information center reported 986 fatalities over the past 24 hours, up from the previous records of 984, set Wednesday. 

Russia also reported an all-time high of 31,299 new coronavirus cases, almost 2,000 more than the previous high set on Dec. 24, 2020.  

Russia has now set a new record number of fatalities for 12 of the last 16 days.  

Surging cases and fatalities put Russia at odds with the global trend of a pandemic showing some signs of a retreat. The World Health Organization (WHO) said earlier this week that global deaths from Covid-19 are falling and have reached their lowest levels in almost a year.  

Russia’s Health Minister Mikhail Murashko issued a stark warning earlier Thursday that 1.1 million patients are currently being treated for Covid-19 — “the highest strain” that has been put on Russia’s healthcare system since the start of the pandemic.  

Murashko urged skeptical Russians to get vaccinated and called on retired doctors to come out of retirement to help treat the growing numbers of patients.   

Only a third of Russians have been vaccinated against the coronavirus, and opinion polls show more than half of the population do not plan on getting a shot.

Russia's daily COVID-19 death toll hovers near all-time high

Via Reuters: Russia's daily COVID-19 death toll hovers near all-time high.

MOSCOW, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Russia reported 957 coronavirus-related deaths on Monday, close to the all-time high of 968 reported two days earlier.  

The government coronavirus task force also said it had recorded 29,409 new cases in the last 24 hours, an increase from 28,647 cases on Sunday.  

Moscow, which reported 5,002 cases on Monday, said it was launching free "express" antibody-based tests for COVID-19 at a number of locations including shopping malls in an attempt to avert a new wave of restrictions.  

The number of people hospitalised over the last two weeks in the capital has doubled in comparison with the previous fortnight, the Interfax news agency quoted the city's COVID-19 task force as saying.

I can't get through to the Russian ministry of health website, which I hope will have more details on the situation there. Journals like Pravda and Argumenti i Fakti scarcely mention the pandemic, except to tout the Sputnik V vaccine.

New Zealand braces for rising Covid cases as expert warns of potential explosion

Via The Guardian: New Zealand braces for rising Covid cases as expert warns of potential explosion. Excerpt:

New Zealand is bracing for increasing numbers of Covid-19 cases after recording 94 new infections over the weekend, while pandemic modellers say that if the government stays its current course new cases will quickly top 100 a day.  

“We are on the exponential growth curve,” an epidemiologist and public health professor, Michael Baker, said. “If you look at the trend, it’s clearly going up in Auckland, and it’s not just the total cases but also the unexplained cases, which suggests transmission in the community is increasing.”  

Baker said that if the government kept its current restrictions, or loosened them further by reopening schools, as announced last week, “there’s only one way it can go and that’s up”.  

“This is really simple. This is where every epidemiologist and disease modeller will agree 100%. Don’t do it.”  

Case numbers began rising steadily soon after the government loosened restrictions in Auckland, the centre of the Delta outbreak, from a level 4 to level 3 lockdown. Cases have since spread beyond the city’s borders, cropping up in Northland and Waikato.  

On Monday, the government announced another 35 cases, all in Auckland, taking the total number of cases in the outbreak to 1,622. According to the Ministry of Health, 29 of the previous day’s cases were infectious in the community, and 21 of the cases announced had not yet been linked to existing cases.  

Last week, the government announced a new “steps” system for Auckland to reduce restrictions ​​in the coming weeks, subject to case numbers: first allowing outdoor gatherings, then gradually reopening some schools and allowing retail and hospitality to restart.  

Baker said that with Auckland’s outbreak growing, following those steps would be a mistake and could cause the outbreak to explode.  

“You go down the alert level system when the outbreak is coming under control,” he said. “You don’t go down the system when the outbreak is increasing. This is basic infectious disease epidemiology.”

COVID-19 in Brazil, epi-week 39

The CONASS PANEL | COVID-19 dashboard has the numbers for ep-week 38, ending today. First, today's numbers:

The week saw 115,813 new cases, a bit more than last week's 112,979. So cases haven't really fallen for about 4 weeks. Deaths were very slightly lower this week: 3,523, compared to last week's 3,692:

The US in the pandemic as of October 2, 2021

A few charts describe the situation in the United States as we approach the second anniversary of the first reports of a novel pneumonia in Wuhan. First, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) dashboard, with American figures highlighted:

Note the 28-day numbers: in themselves, they reflect a medical disaster, but they're just the cases and deaths reported in the last four weeks. All told, 700,000 dead Americans reflect a greater toll than the US suffered in the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, or in the Civil War.

 

Some charts from Our World in Data give us some perspective, but not much consolation. First, new cases:

While the count is falling, it's still well over 100,000 a day.

Daily deaths are just beginning to drop, to roughly 1,900 a day—far better than the awful spike last winter, but still bad. So is the count of vaccination doses:

The Americans, and the world, will be a long time in understanding why a rich, powerful nation succumbed so badly to COVID-19, when it should have led the world in an effective response.

Brazil: COVID-19 cases spike (updated)

When I opened the CONASS PANEL | COVID-19 dashboard just now, I expected to see a continuation of the downward trend of the last 6 or 7 weeks. Instead, I see a sharp increase in cases, more than double last week's, and a less pronounced rise in deaths:

Looking at the numbers for epi-week 37, which ended today, we have 241,161 new cases (the highest since epi-week 30) and 3,950 deaths (roughly a 25% increase over last week, which was the lowest since April 2020):

I don't know whether the increases represent the start of a resurgence or just some late data from previous weeks.  This article from the UOL news agency reports the recent fall in cases and deaths but can't quite explain it, and I can find nothing that discusses this week's spike.

 

Update: Tweets from Coronavirus News state that the spike is indeed the result of data from São Paulo and "a review of previous records made by Rio de Janeiro."

COVID-19 in Brazil: 13,406 new cases, 731 deaths today

A screenshot from the CONASS PANEL | COVID-19 dashboard:

It has taken 21 million cases and almost 600,000 deaths, but the numbers are finally going down. Epidemiological week 36, which ended last Saturday, saw 111,300 cases. That is the lowest case count  since epi-week 20 of 2020, which ended on May 16 with 77,203 cases.  Deaths are sharply lower as well: 3,196 this week, the lowest since epi-week 45 of 2020, ending on October 31, when 2,386 died.

In effect, Brazil has endured a nightmare year that now seems to improving to a merely bad dream. I hope the numbers don't start rising again.

COVID-19 infected many more Americans in 2020 than official tallies show: Over 100 million

A blog post by Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health: COVID-19 Infected Many More Americans in 2020 than Official Tallies Show. The research paper he cites was published on August 26, but for some reason I missed it until People's Daily Online published  a story on it today, which led me to Dr. Collins's blog. The complete post, with my bolding:

At the end of last year, you may recall hearing news reports that the number of COVID-19 cases in the United States had topped 20 million. While that number came as truly sobering news, it also likely was an underestimate. Many cases went undetected due to limited testing early in the year and a large number of infections that produced mild or no symptoms.  

Now, a recent article published in Nature offers a more-comprehensive estimate that puts the true number of infections by the end of 2020 at more than 100 million. That’s equal to just under a third of the U.S. population of 328 million. This revised number shows just how rapidly this novel coronavirus spread through the country last year. It also brings home just how timely the vaccines have been—and continue to be in 2021—to protect our nation’s health in this time of pandemic.       

The work comes from NIH grantee Jeffrey Shaman, Sen Pei, and colleagues, Columbia University, New York. As shown above in the map, the researchers estimated the percentage of people who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, in communities across the country through December 2020.  

To generate this map, they started with existing national data on the number of coronavirus cases (both detected and undetected) in 3,142 U.S. counties and major metropolitan areas. They then factored in data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the number of people who tested positive for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. These CDC data are useful for picking up on past infections, including those that went undetected.  

From these data, the researchers calculated that only about 11 percent of all COVID-19 cases were confirmed by a positive test result in March 2020. By the end of the year, with testing improvements and heightened public awareness of COVID-19, the ascertainment rate (the number of infections that were known versus unknown) rose to about 25 percent on average. This measure also varied a lot across the country. For instance, the ascertainment rates in Miami and Phoenix were higher than the national average, while rates in New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago were lower than average.  

How many people were potentially walking around with a contagious SARS-CoV-2 infection? The model helps to answer this, too. On December 31, 2020, the researchers estimate that 0.77 percent of the U.S. population had a contagious infection. That’s about 1 in every 130 people on average. In some places, it was much higher. In Los Angeles, for example, nearly 1 in 40 (or 2.42 percent) had a SARS-CoV-2 infection as they rang in the New Year.  

Over the course of the year, the fatality rate associated with COVID-19 dropped, at least in part due to earlier diagnosis and advances in treatment. The fatality rate went from 0.77 percent in April to 0.31 percent in December. While this is great news, it still shows that COVID-19 remains much more dangerous than seasonal influenza (which has a fatality rate of 0.08 percent).  

Today, the landscape has changed considerably. Vaccines are now widely available, giving many more people immune protection without ever having to get infected. And yet, the rise of the Delta and other variants means that breakthrough infections and reinfections—which the researchers didn’t account for in their model—have become a much bigger concern.  

Looking ahead to the end of 2021, Americans must continue to do everything they can to protect their communities from the spread of this terrible virus. That means getting vaccinated if you haven’t already, staying home and getting tested if you’ve got symptoms or know of an exposure, and taking other measures to keep yourself and your loved ones safe and well. 

These measures we take now will influence the infection rates and susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 in our communities going forward. That will determine what the map of SARS-CoV-2 infections will look like in 2021 and beyond and, ultimately, how soon we can finally put this pandemic behind us.

Florida grapples with COVID-19's deadliest phase yet

Via The Associated Press: Florida grapples with COVID-19's deadliest phase yet. Excerpt:

MIAMI (AP) — Funeral director Wayne Bright has seen grief piled upon grief during the latest COVID-19 surge. 

 A woman died of the virus, and as her family was planning the funeral, her mother was also struck down. An aunt took over arrangements for the double funeral, only to die of COVID-19 herself two weeks afterward. 

“That was one of the most devastating things ever,” said Bright, who also arranged the funeral last week of one of his closest friends.  

Florida is in the grip of its deadliest wave of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, a disaster driven by the highly contagious delta variant.  

While Florida’s vaccination rate is slightly higher than the national average, the Sunshine State has an outsize population of elderly people, who are especially vulnerable to the virus; a vibrant party scene; and a Republican governor who has taken a hard line against mask requirements, vaccine passports and business shutdowns.  

As of mid-August, the state was averaging 244 deaths per day, up from just 23 a day in late June and eclipsing the previous peak of 227 during the summer of 2020. (Because of both the way deaths are logged in Florida and lags in reporting, more recent figures on fatalities per day are incomplete.)  

Hospitals have had to rent refrigerated trucks to store more bodies. Funeral homes have been overwhelmed.  

Cristina Miles, a mother of five from Orange Park, is among those facing more than one loss at a time. Her husband died after contracting COVID-19, and less than two weeks later, her mother-in-law succumbed to the virus.  

“I feel we are all kind of in a weird dream state,” she said, adding that her children are grieving differently, with one shutting down, another feeling inspired to pass a hard swimming test, and the oldest going about her life as usual.  

Hospitals have been swamped with patients who, like Miles’ husband and mother-in-law, hadn’t gotten vaccinated.  

In a positive sign, the number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 in Florida has dropped over the past two weeks from more than 17,000 to 14,200 on Friday, indicating the surge is easing.  

Florida made an aggressive effort early on to vaccinate its senior citizens. But Dr. Kartik Cherabuddi, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Florida, said the raw number of those who have yet to get the shot is still large, given Florida’s elderly population of 4.6 million.  

“Even 10% is still a very large number, and then folks living with them who come in contact with them are not vaccinated,” Cherabuddi said. “With delta, things spread very quickly.” 

Cherabuddi said there is also a “huge difference” in attitudes toward masks in Florida this summer compared with last year. This summer, “if you traveled around the state, it was like we are not really in a surge,” he said.