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November 2020 COVID 19

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November 2020 COVID 19

November 2020 COVID 19

November 2020 COVID 19

November 2: Dr. Deborah L. Birx, who had carefully straddled the line between science and politics as she helped lead the Trump administration’s coronavirus response, delivered a stark private warning telling White House officials that the pandemic was entering a new and “deadly phase” that demanded a more aggressive approach.

The warning, contained in a private memo to White House officials as the nation’s daily coronavirus caseload had broken records and approached 100,000, amounted to a direct contradiction of President Trump’s repeated — and inaccurate — assertions that the pandemic is “rounding the corner.”

In the memo, Dr. Birx suggested that Mr. Trump and his advisers were spending too much time focusing on preventing lockdowns and not enough time on controlling the virus. [NYT article]

1,213,324 COVID Deaths Worldwide

November 3: 47,434,036 case worldwide; 1,213,324 deaths worldwide

237,009 COVID Deaths USA

November 3:  9,568,275 cases in the USA; 237,009 deaths in the USA.

November 2020 COVID 19
COVID Advisory Panel

November 9: President-elect Joe Biden named Dr. Rick Bright, a former top vaccine official in the Trump administration who submitted a whistle-blower complaint to Congress, as a member of a Covid-19 panel to advise him during the transition.

Biden had already revealed the three co-chairs of the panel: Dr. Vivek Murthy, a surgeon general under former President Barack Obama, who has been a key Biden adviser for months and is expected to take a major public role; David Kessler, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration for the first President George Bush and President Bill Clinton; and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, a professor of public health at Yale University.

The panel also included Dr. Zeke Emanuel, an oncologist and the chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Emanuel is the brother of Rahm Emanuel, who served in the Obama administration, and has been a high-profile advocate of a more aggressive approach to the virus; Dr. Luciana Borio, a vice president at In-Q-Tel; Dr. Atul Gawande, a professor of surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Dr. Celine Gounder, a clinical assistant professor at the N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine; Dr. Julie Morita, the executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Dr. Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota; Loyce Pace, the executive director and president of Global Health Council; Dr. Robert Rodriguez and Dr. Eric Goosby, both professors at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine.

Vaccine progress

November 9: drug maker Pfizer announced that an early analysis of its coronavirus vaccine trial suggested the vaccine was robustly effective in preventing Covid-19

Eli Lilly

November 9: the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization of a Covid-19 antibody treatment made by Eli Lilly that is similar to a therapy given to President Trump shortly after he contracted the coronavirus.

The decision, announced by the agency, was likely to be seen as a valuable tool to treat patients with Covid-19 at a time when the pandemic was raging across the United States, hospitals were overwhelmed and doctors had few options to treat the disease. [NYT article]

1,213,324 COVID Deaths Worldwide

November 9: 51,041,400 case worldwide; 1,266,079 deaths worldwide

243,857 COVID Deaths USA

November 9:  10,319,131 cases in the USA; 243,825 deaths in the USA.

November 2020 COVID 19

Frightening New Highs

November 12: Covid-19 hospitalizations in the United States hit an all-time high of 61,964 and new daily cases passed 139,000 for the first time, as the raging pandemic continued to shatter record after record and strain medical facilities.

The number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus, tallied by the Covid Tracking Project, had more than doubled since September, and exceeded the peak reached early in the pandemic, when 59,940 hospitalized patients were reported on April 15. A second peak in the summer fell just short of matching that record.

Those spikes in April and July lasted only a few days and quickly subsided, but as winter approaches experts did not expect that this time. [NYT story]

November 2020 COVID 19

1,304,938 COVID Deaths Worldwide

November 13: 53,467,371 case worldwide; 1,304,938 deaths worldwide

248,835 COVID Deaths USA

November 13:  10,918,789 cases in the USA; 248,835 deaths in the USA.

November 2020 COVID 19

November 16: the New York Times reported that drugmaker Moderna announced that its coronavirus vaccine was 94.5 percent effective, based on an early look at the results from its large, continuing study.

Researchers said the results were better than they had dared to imagine. But the vaccine will not be widely available for months, probably not until spring.

November 2020 COVID 19

1,326,589 COVID Deaths Worldwide

November 16: 54,953,213 case worldwide; 1,326,589 deaths worldwide

251,901 COVID Deaths USA

November 16:  11,367,214 cases in the USA; 251,901 deaths in the USA.

November 2020 COVID 19

November 18: NPR News announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had approved the first COVID-19 diagnostic at-home self-test provided rapid results.

The Lucira COVID-19 All-In-One Test Kit was a molecular single-use test the company said on its website.

“While COVID-19 diagnostic tests have been authorized for at-home collection, this is the first that can be fully self-administered and provide results at home,” FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said in a statement.

November 2020 COVID 19

November 21: as cases across the country continued to rise, the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization for the experimental antibody treatment given to President Trump shortly after he had tested positive for the coronavirus, giving doctors another option to treat patients

The treatment, made by the biotech company Regeneron, was a cocktail of two powerful antibodies that had shown promise in early studies at keeping the infection in check, reducing medical visits for patients who get the drug early in the course of their disease.

On November 9, the FDA had given emergency approval to Eli Lilly for a similar treatment. [NYT article]

1,326,589 COVID Deaths Worldwide

November 22: 58,764,574 case worldwide; 1,390,454 deaths worldwide

261,932 COVID Deaths USA

November 22:  12,471,316 cases in the USA; 261,932 deaths in the USA.

November 2020 COVID 19

> One Million

November 25: for the first time since the coronavirus outbreak hit the United States, the country added more than one million cases in each of the past two consecutive weeks. Covid deaths, which lag reported cases by weeks, were also at a level not seen since the spring.

Some epidemiologists projected that the number of deaths in the coming weeks would exceed the spring peak, in spite of improved treatment. [NYT article]

November 2020 COVID 19

1,417,840 COVID Deaths Worldwide

November 25: 60,240,006 case worldwide; 1,417,840 deaths worldwide

265,986 COVID Deaths USA

November 25:  12,958,805 cases in the USA; 265,986 deaths in the USA.

November 2020 COVID 19

Previous and subsequent COVID-19 posts