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14,797 Coronavirus Deaths, 436,160  Infection Cases in the US, Mostly in New York

as of April 8, 2020

 
The scene outside Elmhurst Hospital in Queens on Monday, April 6, 2020  

USA 435,160 cases, 14,797 deaths

New York: 151,171 cases, 6,268 deaths

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

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US coronavirus deaths pass 14,000, but future projections are better than expected

By Holly Yan, Steve Almasy, Madeline Holcombe and Omar Jimenez

 CNN, Thursday, April 9, 2020 6:40 am ET

 Even though Wednesday was another day that brought a record number of deaths reported from coronavirus in the United States, there was a glimmer of hope as models now have less dire forecasts for the total number of fatalities the country will see by the time the pandemic subsides.

More than 431,000 people in the US have been infected, and more than 14,700 have died.

A record 1,858 deaths were reported in just one day Tuesday, according to Johns Hopkins. On Wednesday there were 1,922 more (April 7-8, 2020).

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters Wednesday that there were 779 coronavirus-related deaths across the state Tuesday. It was the highest number of deaths reported in one day by New York officials. News

Researchers say the peak has yet to come. The US will reach its highest daily number of deaths on or around Sunday, according to modeling by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle.

The projections also suggest the US will reach its peak use of resources -- such as hospital beds and ventilators -- on or around Saturday.

But there's a bit of good news: The modeling shows fewer people will die from coronavirus than previously predicted.

On Tuesday, the IHME estimated about 82,000 people will die from coronavirus disease by August. On Wednesday, that estimate was lowered to 60,415.

White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said at a White House news conference that models are based on what Americans are doing.

"What has been so remarkable, I think, to those of us that have been in the science field for so long," Birx said, "is how important behavioral change is, and how amazing Americans are at adapting to and following through on these behavioral changes."

"That's what's changing the rate of new cases, and that's what will change the rate of mortality going forward," she said.

Cuomo said it was a bit of good news/bad news.

"Our actions have been better than the statisticians believed. So, we can flatten the curve. We are flattening the curve," he told CNN. "We have to maintain it, but the human cost here, the human toll, the suffering, is just incredible. It's just incredible."

The five-day moving average of new cases in the US, which had trended down for one day, according to Johns Hopkins, went back up Wednesday.

Deaths could be higher than reported, CDC says

Many families are grieving for loved ones who often die alone in hospitals.

And the actual number of deaths could be higher than we know.

Some deaths due to Covid-19 "may be misclassified as pneumonia deaths in the absence of positive test results," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The virus has claimed victims from virtually all demographics, including the young and healthy. But data shows black people are dying from Covid-19 at a disproportionately high rate.

While there have been signs that the number of cases in New York and some other hotspots are leveling off, officials are concerned about other cities.

On a conference call with House Democrats, Birx said the Philadelphia and District of Columbia areas are expected to be the new hot spots, according to a source on the call. She said that they also are carefully watching the Houston area, one of the most populous regions in the country.

Large outbreak at jail in Chicago

More than 400 people linked to one detention facility in Chicago have tested positive for Covid-19, officials said, making the Cook County Jail the largest known source of coronavirus infections in the United States outside of health care facilities.

The Cook County Sheriff's office said 251 detainees and 150 staff members have tested positive. Of the detainees sickened in the outbreak, 22 are hospitalized for treatment and 31 others were moved to a recovery facility.

One detainee died of apparent complications of Covid-19, sheriff's officials said, but results of an autopsy are not back yet. The jail has created a quarantine area to keep detainees who are infected from the others at the jail.

The jail complex houses about 4,700 detainees, according to the sheriff's office. Jail officials have previously said they planned to release nonviolent pretrial defendants who do not have the virus.

Millions of Americans are suddenly unemployed

More than 9.9 million US workers have filed for their first week of unemployment benefits as coronavirus cripples the economy.

In New York, the state with the most cases and deaths, officials estimate a loss of $10 billion to $15 billion in revenue. Cuomo announced those who have filed unemployment claims will receive an additional $600 a week to try to make ends meet.

Tennessee has seen a "record spike" in unemployment claims of more than 250,000 in the last three weeks, Gov. Bill Lee said. Louisiana had 277,000 applications between March 1 and April 4, according to Gov. John Bel Edwards.

In Oklahoma, about 135,000 residents filed for unemployment, the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission said.

In West Virginia, Gov. Jim Justice said an additional $600 would be distributed to those who lost their jobs.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed an executive order that allows furloughed employees to receive Covid-19 support payments from their employers to still qualify for unemployment benefits, his office said.

The next weekly report on unemployment claims nationwide will be revealed Thursday.

Blood plasma treatment and vaccine trials move forward

Vaccines typically take years before they're publicly available, but officials are racing to develop one for Covid-19 as quickly as possible.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it might be possible to have a coronavirus vaccine in 12 to 18 months, but some experts say that timeline is risky.

One vaccine trial administered its first dose last month, and now another vaccine trial has started.

Biotechnology company Inovio started a Phase 1 clinical trial this week and estimates that will be finished late this summer, a spokesperson for Inovio told CNN.

"We anticipate rapid enrollment of this initial study," said Dr. Pablo Tebas, an infectious disease specialist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and the study's principal investigator.

"There has been tremendous interest in this vaccine among people who want to do what they can do to help protect the greater public from this pandemic as soon as possible."

A source who was on the call with House Democrats told CNN that officials committed to making all vaccines and tests for the disease available to everyone, including those who cannot afford it.

In the meantime, the US Food and Drug Administration expedited the use of blood plasma treatment for seriously ill patients last month.

This week, Jason Garcia -- a man who recovered from coronavirus -- was told his plasma donation has been distributed so the antibodies he developed can help another patient do the same.

Garcia said doctors told him a patient had since improved.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-coronavirus-deaths-pass-14000-but-future-projections-are-better-than-expected/ar-BB12j0Dr?ocid=spartanntp  

***

With 600 Coronavirus Deaths, New York Leaders Are Hopeful the Crisis Is Peaking and Flattening

April 6, 2020

New York leaders are hopeful coronavirus crisis is peaking, flattening

Ben Guarino, Tim Craig, Devlin Barrett

Washington Post, April 6, 2020

NEW YORK —

The coronavirus body count in New York state held steady Monday for the second consecutive day at about 600 deaths — a once-unthinkable statistic that now gives officials some cautious reason to hope that the pandemic may be cresting there.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) said that regardless of whether his state was seeing the worst of the covid-19 crisis, it was vital for people to stay home to keep downward pressure on the disease’s spread and announced he was doubling the fine for anyone found breaking the rules.

“While none of this is good news, the possible flattening of the curve is better than the increases we have seen,” Cuomo said during a news conference. Two days of data is not nearly enough to identify a trend, but officials said there were other glimmers of hope, including significant declines in the past two days in the number of new people hospitalized, admitted to intensive care units and intubated. 

New York remains the most severe area for the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, with more than 130,000 residents testing positive for the virus, far more than any other state. Officials cautioned that it is impossible to know whether New York has indeed reached the apex or whether the recent numbers are only a lull before worse ones.

“If we are plateauing, we are plateauing at a very high level, and there’s tremendous stress on the health-care system,” Cuomo said. “This is a hospital system where we have our foot to the floor and the engine is at redline, and you can’t go any faster.” 

With approximately 16,000 coronavirus patients in New York hospitals, health-care professionals said Monday their resources are strained but still sufficient to meet demand.

In the NYU Langone hospital system, which includes six inpatient facilities in the metropolitan area, the number of new patients has “appeared to level off over the past few days,” spokeswoman Lisa Greiner said. The facilities have enough ventilators for the current caseload — “every single patient that required a vent received one,” she said.

Northwell Health has 19 hospitals in the region and has treated 3,300 confirmed coronavirus patients. About 1 in 4 of those patients ended up in intensive care, and 20 percent have needed a ventilator to breathe. Northwell is using about 80 percent of its ventilator capacity. “We feel we have what we need, but being at 80 percent, that could slide quickly,” spokesman Terry Lynam said. 

Later Monday, in a move expected to help ease the strain on the city’s health-care facilities, Cuomo said that President Trump had agreed to use the 1,000-bed hospital ship USNS Comfort, which is docked on New York’s West Side, to treat patients with covid-19, the disease the novel coronavirus causes. That’s on top of 4,000 temporary beds being constructed at the nearby Javits Center convention hall — giving New York significant extra capacity to handle the sick.

Initially, it was envisioned that both facilities would treat only non-coronavirus patients, but those plans quickly evolved amid complaints from hospital leaders frustrated that both the Comfort and the Javits Center were nearly empty while the city’s doctors and nurses were being pushed to the breaking point.

The governor warned that, even if this week marks the peak of the crisis, the rules barring nonessential commerce and prohibiting gatherings will have to stay in effect until at least the end of April.

“We have been behind on this virus from day one, and this virus has kicked our rear end,” Cuomo said. “We underestimate this virus at our peril, and we learned that lesson — this is not the time to slack off what we’re doing.”

The world is battling the COVID-19 outbreak that the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic.

As of Monday, the coronavirus had killed 4,758 people in New York state, most of them in the city. More ICUs are being built at emergency hospital sites in and around the city. And while the governor sounded a hopeful note that the extra resources will be enough to give care to all who need it, others emphasized that it’s still too soon to know whether New York has turned the corner.

“It’s too soon to celebrate,” said Stephen S. Morse, an epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “We’ll know later this week if the trend continues, and we should start to see a sustained decrease in the numbers.”

On Long Island, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone (D) said officials there had seen one of the smallest increases in critically ill patients “in a long time now.”

On Monday, 26 new patients were admitted to county hospitals, compared with a week and a half ago when they were seeing about 100 a day, Bellone said.

“If in fact we are reaching that plateau, it means that social distancing is working,” he said. “But that does not mean we take our foot off the pedal now.” He said the worst thing that could happen now would be if “we see some positive news and say, ‘Okay, now we can start adjusting our life and getting back to normal.’ ”

The second-hardest-hit state is neighboring New Jersey, where Gov. Phil Murphy (D) said he’s also seeing early signs that the crisis may soon stabilize.

“While we are not anywhere close to being out of the woods yet, we are clearly on the right path to get there,” he said. The social distancing effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus “is starting to pay off, even with the lag time in getting test results back.”

New Jersey has 41,090 confirmed cases, but the daily increase, which was about 24 percent a week ago, was down to 12 percent on Monday. The state’s death toll stands at 1,003, including Jersey City Councilman Michael Yun, who died over the weekend after contracting the virus, the governor announced.

While officials hoped this week might be the worst New York has to face, they were preparing for even greater losses and the possibility of having to create temporary graves if the current pace overwhelms funeral homes and mortuary services in the city.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) was reluctant Monday to go into much detail about the city’s plan, saying only that officials were prepared to deal with the prospect of burying covid-19 victims where they could be tracked and later exhumed for burial elsewhere once the crisis has passed.

“We may well be dealing with temporary burials,” de Blasio said at a news conference. Historically, the city has used Hart Island as a potter’s field site for burials of those whose families or estates were unable to pay for their interment, but the mayor was tight-lipped about whether that location would be used for those who died of covid-19.

“There will be delays because of the sheer intensity of this crisis,” the mayor said. “We’re going to try to treat every family with dignity. . . . The focus right now is to try to get through this crisis.”

Mark D. Levine, chairman of the New York City Council’s health committee, tweeted Monday that victims might be buried in city parks, but other officials sounded a note of caution.

“We’re not interring anyone in city parks at this time,” said Aja Worthy-Davis, a spokeswoman for the chief medical examiner’s office in New York. The city’s surge plan for influenza pandemics includes a section on temporary burial in parks as a “potential option. But it is not being put into play right now,” she said.

Although the hospital morgues are dealing with high body counts, morgues in the city’s five boroughs, plus the morgues in tents outside Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital and others, have not reached their limits, officials said.

The city also has dispatched about 80 refrigerated trucks to hospitals, each capable of holding 45 to 100 bodies.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/new-york-leaders-are-hopeful-coronavirus-crisis-is-peaking-flattening/ar-BB12eUxt?ocid=spartanntp  

***

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