This is our daily update of breaking COVID-19 news for Friday, August 14, 2020. Previous daily updates can be found here, en up-to-date statistics are here.
New York City is in Phase 4 of resume no, which includes zoos, botanical gardens, and professional sports (without fans). A look at prepared for the spread of coronavirus is here, and if you have ongoing questions about the virus, here’s us regularly updated coronavirus FAQ. Here are some local and state hotlines for more information: NYC: 311; NY State Hotline: 888-364-3065; NJ State Hotline: 800-222-1222.
Here is the latest:
From the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, experts often referred to the outbreak of influence from 1918 as the so-called “mother of all pandemics.” With the lack of modern medical interventions and unequal social distancing and quarantine measures, the disease was found to be the deadliest in the modern era, resulting in the deaths of 50 million people, including 675,000 Americans.
Somewhere, while the 1918 flu pandemic drummed up as a tragic benchmark, it did not seem likely to address its seriousness.
Now, a study published this week in the medical journal JAMA Network Open finds that the cause of death in New York City this past spring came closer than that of the peak of the 1918 flu pandemic, specifically 70 percent as large.
Between March 11 and May 11, nearly 33,500 people died in New York City. Using a population of 8.3 million, that comes out to an incident rate of 202.08 deaths per 100,000 person-months. However, the corresponding calculation for October and November, the peak of the city’s outbreak, the researchers calculated an incident rate of 287.17 deaths per 100,000 person-months.
Researchers also compared these deaths with those of the previous three years and found that in 2020 the figure was four times higher, while in 1918 it was almost three times higher. In other words, the coronavirus pandemic had a more dramatic impact on the city’s cause of death than that of the 1918 flu.
This is the opposite of what was expected given the medical advances, including the use of antibiotics, and public health interventions that exist today compared to a century ago.
As of Friday, the U.S. has more than 5.2 million infections, including more than 167,000 killed by the virus.
After once being the epicenter of the pandemic, New York City has now seen the number of daily confirmed cases fall below 100 in recent days. At its peak in April, there were more than 6,300 infections in a day.
The authors of the JAMA study said that by “showing the unusual magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic,” they hope to encourage “more cautious policies” to help reduce and prevent the spread of the virus. hospitals in the weeks to come are overwhelmed. .
On Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the expert at the summit of infectious disease, expressed his concern about the continuing flow in parts of the country, brought on by rapid reopening and a lack of compliance with safety protocols such as social distance and mask wear.
“Bottom line is, I’m not happy with how things are going,” he said, later attributing the uneven response to the country’s political division.
Others have accused President Donald Trump, who has downplayed the virus several times, urged states and schools to reopen, and long resisted wearing a mask.
Seeking to capitalize on Trump’s misdeeds regarding the pandemic, former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has called for a nationwide mask mandate requiring all Americans to wear masks in public institutions.
He said the measure could save the lives of at least 40,000 people.
“Every American should wear a mask when they are at least outside for the next three months,” Biden said Thursday, speaking with reporters in Delaware. “Every governor must have the mandate.”
To date, more than 30 states, including New York, have a mask requirement.
Trump, who has ignored public health experts and once dangerously proposed giving an infection of disinfectants to cure the virus, called Biden’s proposal “anti-scientific.”
