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Winter 2021 COVID 19

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Winter 2021 COVID 19

20 Million

January 1, 2021: NPR reported that the United States had recorded its 20 millionth confirmed coronavirus case since the beginning of the pandemic.

That figure was according to numbers from Johns Hopkins University, which reported 20,037,736 cases and 346,687 deaths in the U.S. at the time of publication on Friday, January 1. Over 83 million coronavirus cases had been confirmed worldwide.

The U.S. had reached 10 million cases on November 9. In less than two months, the country had doubled its total number of infections.

The nation accounts for nearly a quarter of all infections in the world and a fifth of all deaths.

1,834,663 COVID Deaths Worldwide

January 1, 2021: 84,362,526 cases; 1,834,663 deaths worldwide

356,445 COVID Deaths USA

January 1, 2021: 20,617,346 cases; 356,445 deaths in the United States,

Winter 2021 COVID 19

COVID numbers accurate

January 3: US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said he had “no reason to doubt” the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid-19 death toll, contradicting President Donald Trump’s claim that the agency has “exaggerated” its numbers.

“From a public health perspective, I have no reason to doubt those numbers,” Adams told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” when asked about Trump’s claim.
“And I think people need to be very aware that it’s not just about the deaths, as we talked about earlier,” he added. “It’s about the hospitalizations, the capacity. These cases are having an impact in an array of ways and people need to understand there’s a finish line in sight, but we’ve got to keep running toward it.”
Earlier in the day, Trump had claimed on Twitter that the number of cases and deaths of the “China Virus is far exaggerated” because of the CDC’s “ridiculous method of determination” compared to other countries, which “report, purposely, very inaccurately and low.” [CNN article]
Winter 2021 COVID 19

1,860,354 COVID Deaths Worldwide

January 4, 2021: 86,095,659 cases; 1,860,354 deaths worldwide

362,123 COVID Deaths USA

January 4, 2021: 21,353,051 cases; 362,123 deaths in the United States,

Slow Rollout

January 5: inoculation efforts in many countries rolled out slower than promised, even as the count of new infections soared and record numbers flood hospitals, placing a double burden on health care providers who had also been tasked with leading the vaccination push.

And a more contagious variant spreading widely in England and detected in dozens of other countries threatened to give the virus an even greater advantage. [NYT article]

Winter 2021 COVID 19

On  January 7, 2021, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the United States’ top infectious disease specialist, said in a radio interview, “We believe things will get worse as we get into January.”

On January 8, 2021, the United States broke its single-day record for new coronavirus cases for the second consecutive day with more than 300,000 cases.

It was the first time the country had crossed the 300,000-case mark, according to a New York Times database. Hospitalizations were also at a near-record high — 131,889, according to the Covid Tracking Project — and officials across the nation reported more than 3,890 new deaths the same day, the third-highest daily tally of the pandemic. [NYT article]

Winter 2021 COVID 19

1,921,119 COVID Deaths Worldwide

January 8, 2021: 89,343,185 cases; 1,921,119 deaths worldwide

362,123 COVID Deaths USA

January 8, 2021: 22,461,696 cases; 378,204 deaths in the United States,

Winter 2021 COVID 19

January 12, 2021: 4,218 deaths were reported across the United States, according to a New York Times database, a number once unimaginable.

The death count, which set another daily record, represented at least 1,597 more people than those killed in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The U.S. death toll, already the world’s highest by a wide margin, was at that point about 20,000 shy of 400,000 — only a month after the country crossed the 300,000 threshold, a figure greater than the number of Americans who died fighting in World War II.

Winter 2021 COVID 19

1,968,914 COVID Deaths Worldwide

January 12, 2021: 91,995,859 cases; 1,968,914 deaths worldwide

389,621 COVID Deaths USA

January 12, 2021: 23,369,732 cases; 389,621 deaths in the United States,

Winter 2021 COVID 19

Biden President

January 20, 2012: President Biden signed an executive order appointing Jeffrey D. Zients as the official Covid-19 response coordinator who will report to the president, in an effort to “aggressively” gear up the nation’s response to the pandemic.

The order also restored the directorate for global health security and biodefense at the National Security Council, a group President Trump had disbanded.

Though it is not a national mask mandate, which would most likely fall to a legal challenge, Biden required social distancing and the wearing of masks on all federal property and by all federal employees.

He also started a “100 days masking challenge” urging all Americans to wear masks and state and local officials to implement public measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Biden also reinstated ties with the World Health Organization after the Trump administration had chosen to withdraw the nation’s membership and funding last year. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci would head the U.S. delegation to the organization’s executive board and jumped into the role with a meeting this week. [NYT article}

Winter 2021 COVID 19

2,081,857 COVID Deaths Worldwide

January 20, 2021: 97,287,117 cases; 2,081,857 deaths worldwide

415,905 COVID Deaths USA

January 20, 2021: 24,999,070 cases; 415,905 deaths in the United States,

Winter 2021 COVID 19
January 21, Biden’s first full day

President Biden, pledging a “full-scale wartime effort” to combat the coronavirus pandemic, signed a string of executive orders and presidential directives  aimed at combating the worst public health crisis in a century, including new requirements for masks on interstate planes, trains and buses and for international travelers to quarantine after arriving in the United States.

“History is going to measure whether we are up to the task,” Mr. Biden declared in an appearance in the State Dining Room of the White House, with Vice President Kamala Harris and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, his chief Covid-19 medical adviser, by his side.

In a 200-page document called “National Strategy for the Covid-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness,” the new administration outlines the kind of centralized federal response that Democrats have long demanded and President Donald J. Trump refused. [NYT article]

Winter 2021 COVID 19

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December 2020 COVID 19

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December 2020 COVID 19

In November, voters had legitimately elected Joe Biden to be President.  Without any actual evidence, President Trump continuously  and baselessly claimed voter fraud despite State election officials’ diligent recount evidence to the contrary and judges’s tossing the dozens of President Trump’s lawyers challenges.

President Trump’s obsessive fixation on his defeat exacerbated his continued lackluster response to the worsening COVID-19 pandemic catastrophe.

December 2020 COVID 19

In US Earlier Than Thought

December 1: according to a new government study, the coronavirus was present in the U.S. weeks earlier than scientists and public health officials previously thought, and before cases in China were publicly identified,

The virus and the illness that it causes, COVID-19, was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, but it wasn’t until January 19 that the first confirmed COVID-19 case, from a traveler returning from China, was found in the U.S.

However, new findings published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases suggested that the coronavirus had infected people in the U.S. even earlier.

“SARS-CoV-2 infections may have been present in the U.S. in December 2019, earlier than previously recognized,” the authors said.   [NYT article]

1,477,230 COVID Deaths Worldwide

December 1: 63,750,408 cases worldwide; 1,477,230 deaths worldwide

274,386 COVID Deaths USA

December 1:  13,923,758 cases in the USA; 274,386 deaths in the USA.

Advisory Committee Recommendations

December 2: the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, an independent panel advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, voted to recommend that residents and employees of nursing homes and similar facilities be the first people in the United States to receive coronavirus vaccines, along with health care workers who are especially at risk of being exposed to the virus.

The panel voted 13 to 1 during an emergency meeting to make the recommendation. The director of the C.D.C., Dr. Robert R. Redfield, was expected to decidequickly whether to accept it as the agency’s formal guidance to states as they prepared to start giving people the shots as soon as within two weeks.

“We are acting none too soon,” said Dr. Beth Bell, a panel member and global health expert at the University of Washington, noting that Covid-19 would kill about 120 Americans during the meeting alone. [NYT article]

December 2020 COVID 19

The UK First

December 3: the NYT reported that Britain gave emergency authorization to Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, leaping ahead of the United States to become the first Western country to allow mass inoculations against a disease that had killed more than 1.4 million people worldwide.

US Single-Day Record

December 3: the United States  recorded its single-worst daily death toll since the pandemic began, and on a day when Covid-19 hospitalizations also hit an all-time high, the pace of loss showed no signs of slowing any time soon.

Not since spring, during the pandemic’s first peak, were so many deaths reported. The high point then was 2,752 deaths on April 15. On this date, it was at least 2,760.

Hospitalizations from the virus topped 100,000 — more than double the number at the beginning of November. That was a clear indicator of what the days ahead may look like, experts say.

“If you tell me the hospitalizations are up this week, I’ll tell you that several weeks down the road, the deaths will be up,” said Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. [NYT article]

December 2020 COVID 19

December 4: the United States finished one of the very worst weeks since the coronavirus pandemic had began nine months ago.

On December 4, a national single-day record was set, with more than 226,000 new cases. It was one of many data points that illustrated the depth and spread of a virus that had killed more than 278,000 people in this country, more than the entire population of Lubbock, Texas, or Modesto, Calif., or Jersey City, N.J.

“It’s just an astonishing number,” said Caitlin Rivers, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “We’re in the middle of this really severe wave and I think as we go through the day to day of this pandemic, it can be easy to lose sight of how massive and deep the tragedy is.” [NYT story]

December 2020 COVID 19

1,527,144 COVID Deaths Worldwide

December 5: 66,358,071 cases worldwide; 1,527,144 deaths worldwide

285,668 COVID Deaths USA

December 5:  14,775,308 cases in the USA; 285,668 deaths in the USA.

December 2020 COVID 19

December 8: Britain’s National Health Service delivered its first shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, opening a mass vaccination campaign with little precedent in modern medicine and making Britons the first people in the world to receive a clinically authorized, fully tested vaccine.  [NYT story}

December 2020 COVID 19

1,553,081 COVID Deaths Worldwide

December 8: 68,047,740 cases worldwide; 1,553,081 deaths worldwide

290,474 COVID Deaths USA

December 8:  15,370,339 cases in the USA; 290,474 deaths in the USA.

December 2020 COVID 19

December 9: the NYT reported that federal data showed more than a third of Americans lived in areas where hospitals were running critically short of intensive care beds

Hospitals serving more than 100 million Americans reported having fewer than 15 percent of intensive care beds still available as of last previous week, according to a Times analysis of data reported by hospitals and released by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Many areas were even worse off: one in 10 Americans — across a large swath of the Midwest, South and Southwest — lived in an area where intensive care beds are either completely full, or fewer than 5 percent of beds are available. At these levels, experts say maintaining existing standards of care for the sickest patients may be difficult or impossible.

“There’s only so much our frontline care can offer, particularly when you get to these really rural counties which are being hit hard by the pandemic right now,” said Beth Blauer, director of the Centers for Civic Impact at Johns Hopkins University.

December 2020 COVID 19

December 11: the Food and Drug Administration authorized Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use, clearing the way for millions of highly vulnerable people to begin receiving the vaccine within days.

The authorization was an historic turning point in a pandemic that had already taken more than 290,000 lives in the United States. With the decision, the United States became the sixth country — in addition to Britain, Bahrain, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Mexico — to clear the vaccine. Other authorizations, including by the European Union, were expected within weeks. [NYT article]

December 2020 COVID 19

1,607,590 COVID Deaths Worldwide

December 12: 71,797,890 cases worldwide; 1,607,590 deaths worldwide

303,600 COVID Deaths USA

December 12:  16,359,904 cases in the USA; 303,600 deaths in the USA.

December 2020 COVID 19

December 14: the first shots were given in the American mass vaccination campaign against the coronavirus pandemic, which had killed more people in the United States — over 300,000 — than in any other country and had taken a particularly devastating toll on people of color. [NYT story]

1,627,068 COVID Deaths Worldwide

December 14: 73,149,501 cases worldwide; 1,627,068 deaths worldwide

307,874 COVID Deaths USA

December 14:  16,915,194 cases in the USA; 307,874 deaths in the USA.

December 2020 COVID 19

December 15: NPR reported that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the first coronavirus test that people will be able to buy at a local store without a prescription and use for immediate results at home to find out if they’re positive or negative.

The test would cost about $30 and be available by January, according to the Australian company that makes it, Ellume.

December 2020 COVID 19

Employers/Vaccinations

December 2020 COVID 19

December 16:  the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission  [EEOC] issued guidelines regarding COVID vaccinations and employers. The guidance said that employers can require workers to get a Covid-19 vaccine and bar them from the workplace if they refuse/ [NYT article]

Moderna Vaccine

December 18: the Food and Drug Administration authorized the coronavirus vaccine made by Moderna for emergency use, allowing the shipment of millions more doses across the nation and intensifying the debate over who will be next in line to get inoculated. [NYT article]

1,683,882 COVID Deaths Worldwide

December 19: 76,131,763 cases worldwide; 1,683,882 deaths worldwide

320,845 COVID Deaths USA

December 19:  17,888,353 cases in the USA; 320,845 deaths in the USA.

December 2020 COVID 19

COVID variant

December 21: the NYT reported that, Britain, struggling to contain an outbreak of what officials said was a more contagious variant of the coronavirus, found itself increasingly isolated  as nations raced to ban travelers from the country, suspending flights and cutting off trade routes.

France imposed a 48-hour suspension of freight transit across the English Channel, leaving thousands of truck drivers stranded in their vehicles  as the roads leading to England’s ports were turned into parking lots.

1,748,571 COVID Deaths Worldwide

December 24: 79,722,398 cases worldwide; 1,748,571 deaths worldwide

337,066 COVID Deaths USA

December 24:  19,111,326 cases in the USA; 337,066 deaths in the USA.

December 2020 COVID 19

Variant Precautions 

December 24:  as a new highly transmissible variant of the virus appeared first in Britain, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the United States would require all airline passengers arriving from Britain to test negative for the coronavirus within 72 hours of their departure.

The rule would apply to Americans as well as foreign citizens, and would require passengers to show proof of a negative result on a genetic test, known as a P.C.R., or an antigen test.

1,764,393 COVID Deaths Worldwide

December 26: 80,709,594 cases worldwide; 1,764,393 deaths worldwide

339,921 COVID Deaths USA

December 26:  19,433,847 cases in the USA; 339,921 deaths in the USA.

December 2020 COVID 19

EU Rollout

December 27: the NY Times reported that the European Union began a COVID vaccination campaign to  inoculate more than 450 million people across the EU.

Variant

December 28: Colorado, state officials said that a case of the new coronavirus variant, initially seen in the United Kingdom, was found marking the first time the variant had been officially documented in the United States.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said that the man who tested positive was in his 20s, had not been traveling and was currently isolating.

“The individual has no close contacts identified so far, but public health officials are working to identify other potential cases and contacts through thorough contact tracing interviews,” the statement said. [NPR story]

1,799,946 COVID Deaths Worldwide

December 29: 82,464,719 cases worldwide; 1,799,946 deaths worldwide

346,579 COVID Deaths USA

December 29:  19,977,704 cases in the USA; 346,579 deaths in the USA.

December 2020 COVID 19

UK/AstraZeneca

December 30: health officials in the U.K. authorized the AstraZeneca-Oxford University COVID-19 vaccine giving the nation a second option for inoculation against the coronavirus.

The government said it would begin rolling out the inexpensive and easy-to-store vaccine beginning January 4, 2021. It ordered 100 million doses — enough to vaccinate 50 million residents, or three-quarters of the country’s population.

The government had already given first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to more than 600,000 Britons. [NPR article]

December 2020 COVID 19

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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

 

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