For the fifth time in the last eight days, the U.S. hit a record for new cases of COVID. On July 1, the U.S. broke the 50,000 barrier, registering 52,609 new cases. Only ten states are not showing increases in new cases, eight in the Northeast plus Nebraska and South Dakota. COVID deaths that peaked in mid-April around 2,300/day, and dropped consistently to around 600, have now stopped dropping in the last two weeks.
Meanwhile, Adm. Brett Giroir, Assistant Secretary for Health, has been working with the state health departments in Texas, Florida and Louisiana on what he terms “blitz testing.” In a welcome, initial effort to break the string of defeats, Giroir wants to identify the hot-zone communities in the three states where dramatic increases of new cases appear among the under-35 age categories. Minimally, the logjam of testing, which results in delays in identifying cases, is to be broken. Hopefully, this would a first step in more effective tracing of contacts, isolation and containment.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may not be fully on board. He has insisted on the unabated opening up of the economy with such pithy observations: “You can’t control — they’re younger people. They’re going to do what they’re going to do.”
Next door, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, COVID parties have broken out amongst the students. Known COVID-infected individuals are invited to parties, the partiers throw money into a pot, and the first to prove that they got infected wins the pot. Tuscaloosa fire chief Randy Smith presented the raw report to the city council, and the details have been confirmed by both individual doctors and the state health authorities.
Within three weeks, the city of Beijing wiped out the recent threatened COVID invasion at their massive Xinfadi wholesale market. On July 1, only 1 new case was reported in the Chinese capital. Over the last three weeks, China tested 7 million Beijing residents, enforced strict quarantines in a targeted area of Beijing, and prevented any deaths. Zhang Wenhong, the Director of Infectious Diseases at Shanghai’s Huashan Hospital told CCTV: “Beijiing has set a clear example that China will ward off a new wave of infections – domestic or imported – through a prompt and refined epidemic control response.”
Finally, on July 1 JAMA Internal Medicine carries a study, giving strong reasons for the conclusion that for the year 2020, there are 27,000 more COVID deaths than are officially counted. Researchers employ the standard technique for “excess deaths” used historically in analyzing the flu. They took an average for all the deaths from illness for several years prior to 2020 years, for the period from March 1-May 30. Then, 2020 is shown to have 122,300 excess deaths compared to previous years, whereas the figure of COVID deaths for that period in 2020 was officially 95,235. The extra deaths of 27,065, if all attributed to COVID, would represent a 28% higher figure. This is borne out regionally, as Texas, Arizona and California showed excess deaths of 55%, 53%, and 41%, respectively, while smaller central U.S. and northern New England states were significantly below the 28% figure. JAMA noted that the likely undercounting of COVID deaths early on was due, in part, to such unpreparedness as a lack of testing capacity.