THE LATEST:
Officials in B.C. will provide the latest details on the COVID-19 pandemic in the province on Monday at 3 p.m.
The last update came Friday when officials announced onenew deathafter the province marked six consecutivedays without a fatality linked to coronavirus.
Health Minister Adrian Dix and Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry saythey have been closely monitoring infections as theprovince rolls out COVID-19 restart plans, which have allowed anarray of restaurants and personal service establishments to reopen.
They saidnewly enhanced guidance for restaurants and pubs is alsoavailable from WorkSafeBC to adjust forsmall clusters of new casesas employees spendmore time together.
The province also said a safe number of patronsis highly dependent on the amount of space within each location, notthe restaurant capacity.
On Thursday Henry said operators will no longer be limited to serving 50 per cent of their normal capacity.
As of Friday,168 people have died from COVID-19 in the province, while there have been 2,709 confirmed cases. 12 people werein hospital with the virus, including three in intensive care.
As cases wane, the Ministry of Health has pulled back on briefings fromHenry and Dix.
They are now happening on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays of each week. The ministry has been releasing a statement update on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Updates have not been provided on weekends.
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Important reminders:
Health officials widely agree the most important thing you can do to prevent coronavirus and other illnesses is to wash your hands regularly and avoid touching your face.
The World Health Organizationsaidmore than 80 per centof COVID-19 infections are estimated to be mild.
As of Sunday, there were 98,787 confirmed and presumptive coronavirus cases in Canada, with 60,272 cases considered recovered or resolved. A CBC News tally of deaths based on provincial data, regional health information and CBC's reporting stood at 8,198.
For a look at what's happening across the country and the world, check theCBC interactive case tracker.
What are the symptoms ofCOVID-19?
Common symptoms include:
But more serious symptoms can develop, including difficulty breathing and pneumonia.
What should I do if I feel sick?
Stay home. Isolate yourself andcall your local public health authorityor 811. Do not visit an emergency room or urgent care centre to get tested.
Find information about COVID-19 from the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.
Non-medical information about COVID-19 is available in B.C. from7:30 a.m.-8 p.m. PT, sevendays a week at 1-888-COVID19 (1-888-268-4319).
What can I do toprotect myself?
More detailed information on the outbreak is available on thefederal government's website.
If you have a COVID-19-related story we should pursue that affects British Columbians, please email us atimpact@cbc.ca
The chiefs of some of Britains leading charities have written to the prime minister to demand a green recovery from the coronavirus crisis, urging him to use economic rescue packages to build low-carbon infrastructure and spur the creation of long-term green jobs.
The group of 57 charities representing 22 million members called for any bailouts to be subject to strict conditions so that companies receiving state help in the Covid-19 crisis would have to meet low-carbon targets, and for all elements of any economic recovery package to be subject to a test to ensure they were in line with the UKs target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050.
They also want ministers to cancel, rather than suspend, the debts of developing countries struggling with the impact of Covid-19 and the climate crisis.
Charities including the Womens Institute, the National Trust, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), Oxfam and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) signed the letter, which comes after weeks in which ministers have made references to the need for a sustainable recovery, but without providing policy details.
We know a green recovery makes economic sense, and is supported here in the UK and overseas by leading businesses, academics, ministers and health representatives, said Tanya Steele, the chief executive of WWF UK, one of the organisers of the letter. What we urgently need to see now, and post-pandemic, is commitments from government on turning this into action.
The campaigners said investing in a green recovery could support at least 210,000 green jobs and bring benefits of 90bn a year, from economic rejuvenation and better health.
The charities include poverty campaigners and faith groups, as well as green pressure groups. Melissa Green, the general secretary of the Womens Institute (WI), said: WI members are clear that post-Covid-19 economic packages need to incorporate robust and ambitious green policies in order to get on track for net zero emissions by 2050 or sooner.
The charities join an increasing number of economists, health professionals, leading climate experts, developing countries and the governments own statutory advisers, who are all calling for a green recovery to lift countries out of recession and on to a low-carbon pathway.
Fossil fuel companies and high emitters such as airlines and carmakers have already benefited from billions in public finance from the recovery package, without green strings attached.
Carbon dioxide emissions, which plunged when lockdowns took effect, had since begun to rebound sharply, research found last week. Experts fear that without strong government interventions, the UK will return to business as usual with high carbon emissions, or that emissions could rise to levels above pre-lockdown levels, if people desert public transport in favour of driving their cars.
The UK is widely seen internationally as holding a particular responsibility for leading the world into a green recovery because the government will host the next vital UN climate summit. Called Cop26, and now postponed by a year to take place in Glasgow in November 2021, the conference is seen as the last chance for nations to get back on track to meet the goals of the Paris agreement and avoid catastrophic climate breakdown.
As host of Cop26, the UK government has an immense responsibility to lead the world to a green and just recovery, said Clara Goldsmith, the campaigns director for the Climate Coalition. This is the only way to build a resilient economic recovery which ensures we keep global heating to no more than 1.5C and supports the most vulnerable. We have one chance and we must not waste it.
Campaigners have been frustrated by the governments lack of any policy detail on the possibility of a green recovery, and the lack of any clear agenda for Cop26.
The best way to show this leadership [needed at Cop26] is to put resilience at the heart of our economic recovery by accelerating the transition to net zero, restoring nature and supporting the most vulnerable at home and overseas, wrote the charity leaders. It is time for decisive action.
The charities laid out a seven-point plan, similar in content to the advice given by economic experts and the Committee on Climate Change, the statutory body that advises ministers on meeting the UKs carbon targets. Their demands include: new public investment in energy efficiency, renewable energy and zero-carbon transport; setting up a climate infrastructure bank; trade deals that support British farming, to ensure greater protection for nature; ending fossil fuel finance, in the UK and overseas; helping to halt the decline of biodiversity around the world.
They also called for a new government committee, led by a minister, to work with civil society groups on delivering a green recovery.
A steep rise in coronavirus cases in Chile has plunged the government into crisis and prompted intense criticism of its management of the pandemic.
Divisions between the government and sectors of the medical community led to the resignation of the health minister, Jaime Maalich, on Saturday, shortly after 234 deaths in 24 hours had been confirmed, the highest daily toll to date. Chile is among the countries with the highest number of daily cases relative to population size.
I want to call for dialogue and cooperation between research centres, the medical union and scientific community, Maalichs successor, Dr Enrique Paris, a former head of Chiles medical union, said. Here begins a new era in which we must hear contrasting opinions.
The pandemic has claimed the lives of 3,101 people who have tested positive for the virus in Chile, but the governments statistics has been repeatedly questioned.
An investigation found on Friday that according to unpublished health ministry data, more than 5,000 people had died when probable coronavirus deaths were incorporated into the total, as per World Health Organization guidelines.
According to government statistics, Chile has confirmed 167,355 cases since its first case on 3 March, the vast majority recorded after the government prematurely espoused a gradual return to normality in April.
While case numbers were still low, an immunity passport scheme was devised, but the government backtracked quickly when the WHO expressed concern over the plans and said there was no proven link between recovery and immunity.
Health system capacity was not the problem in Chile, said Dr lvaro Erazo, a former health minister. But our ability to handle the crisis has been negated by a lacklustre communications strategy that saw the government encourage people to go back to normal, all while the curve was soaring upwards.
The health ministry had also promoted a strategy of dynamic lockdowns, in which quarantines were imposed and lifted strategically across the capital. The policy was unsuccessful because commuter travel between unrestricted regions continued to proliferate the spread of the virus.
Maalich later admitted in a television interview that he had not appreciated the level of poverty and overcrowding in parts of the capital, which partly explained the governments inability to stem the spread of the virus in the poorer southern suburbs. His willingness to implement expert advice was also questioned.
Given the governments unpopularity at the onset of the pandemic, a more inclusive and participatory approach would certainly have been better, said Dr Ximena Aguilera, a member of the governments advisory committee.
The panel of experts was only convened in March when the virus had already arrived in Chile, and the scientific community did not get its wish with regard to the data it wanted published. We must hope that this improves with the change of leadership.
Opposition politicians are considering a constitutional complaint against Maalich, a close friend of the president who survived a cabinet reshuffle a week before his resignation, alleging his complicity in the poor management of the pandemic. If upheld, he could be barred from holding public office for five years.
Santiago has been under quarantine for over a month, and concern has shifted to the cities of Valparaso and Via del Mar on Chiles central coastline, the countrys second largest population centre, which were placed under lockdown on Friday following a steady rise in cases.
Robert F. Bukaty | AP
Robert F. Bukaty | AP
Tourists walk by newly reopened shops, Tuesday, June 9, 2020, in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Many Maine tourists towns have seen a sharp drop in the number of visitors due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The BDN is making the most crucial coverage of the coronavirus pandemic and its economic impact in Maine free for all readers. Click here for all coronavirus stories. You can join others committed to safeguarding this vital public service by purchasing a subscription or donating directly to the newsroom.
36 more cases of the new coronavirus have been detected in Maine, health officials said Saturday.
There have now been 2,757 cases across all of Maines counties since the outbreak began here in March, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Thats up from 2,721 on Friday.
Of those, 2,452 have been confirmed positive, while 305 are likely positive, according to the Maine CDC.
[Our COVID-19 tracker contains the most recent information on Maine cases by county]
No new deaths were announced. The statewide death toll still stands at 100..
So far, 313 Mainers have been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Of those, 29 people are currently hospitalized, with 10 in critical care and four on ventilators, according to the Maine CDC.
Meanwhile, 2,152 people have fully recovered from the virus, meaning there are 505 active and likely cases in the state, according to the Maine CDC.
Heres the latest on the coronavirus and its impact on Maine.
Several indicators of the spread of the coronavirus suggest that the deadly virus has declined in Maine over the past few weeks, although it is still too early to say whether recent large public gatherings might lead to an uptick in cases. Jessica Piper, BDN
Robert Fleury knew he wanted to serve his country when he was a teenager, so he signed up for one of the most remote assignments in World War II tracking the weather for the U.S. Navy in the frigid Aleutian Islands off Alaska. He would later parlay the skills he learned in Quonset huts along the Bering Sea into a decades-long career with the National Weather Service. Like thousands of other veterans and elderly people in nursing homes around the country, Fleury was isolated from his family and friends when he died at 94 in Scarborough from the coronavirus. Patrick Whittle, The Associated Press
With just over a month to go until the July 14 primary election, Maine voters have requested absentee ballots at a higher rate than they did for past primaries, but they still represent only a fraction of the total number of voters expected to participate in the states first election during the coronavirus pandemic. Jessica Piper, BDN
State employees are pushing for more input in how the Maine government gradually returns them to their offices as the states phased reopening continues. Caitlin Andrews, BDN
The life-sized sculptures started out as a quarantine pastime activity for Katie Quirks family. It was something theyd always wanted to do and during the COVID-19 pandemic, theyd finally found time to do it. Cobbling together scrap pieces of wood found in their garage, they built their first sculpture a 7-foot-tall stick-figure parent with a red and yellow striped shirt standing next to a child in a matching outfit, which they proudly displayed along the trails near their Orono home. That idea has inspired a group of friends to start a series of community-wide projects in celebration of Pride Month that may end up becoming a yearly tradition for the town. Nina Mahaleris, The Penobscot Times
As of Saturday evening, the coronavirus has sickened 2,066,993 people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as caused 115,206 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.
Elsewhere in New England, there have been 7,576 coronavirus deaths in Massachusetts, 4,186 in Connecticut, 833 in Rhode Island, 318 in New Hampshire and 55 in Vermont.
Watch: The 102-year-old who survived the Spanish flu and died from COVID-19
Read: All the presidents lies about the coronavirus
Those lessons, however, were long delayedin part because predicting the next pandemic is hard business, and support for infectious-disease preparedness was leaning elsewhere. Both SARS and its far deadlier coronavirus cousin, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), were understood to be threats. But other coronaviruses cause the common cold, and the SARS and MERS outbreaks each burned out in less than a year. When cases of those diseases fell off, public-health responders shifted to other viral emergencies such as Ebola and Zika, and coronavirus research funding dropped sharply.
That left many investigators who had been working on therapies for SARS holding the bageven as laboratories around the world were reporting ominous findings. A number of SARS-like coronaviruses in bats, they had discovered, were only a few simple mutations away from being able to infect human cells.
Whether the world should have heeded the warnings of coronavirus specialists is, of course, a matter of hindsight. But to some experts whose business it is to hunt potential pathogens before they spill over into human populations, the many years spent not girding for a serious coronavirus outbreak were tragicallyand unnecessarilywasted.
We were out there on the ground after SARS, working on coronaviruses with Chinese colleagues in collaboration, said Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a New Yorkbased nonprofit group that took part in a large federally funded effort, called Predict, to hunt for new pandemic viruses in wildlife in 31 countries, including China. That program was famously defunded last fall, just before the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak began.
But we were the only group of western scientists, Daszak added. How can we be the only people looking for these viruses when there was such a clear and present danger?
The coronavirus research community has always been small, friendly, and interactive. A cul-de-sac at the end of the road of virology, said Buchmeier, whos been studying coronaviruses since 1980. Scientists were drawn to the field by a shared fascination: Coronaviruses had evolved strategies unlike any other in the microbial world to protect themselves from genetic errors during replication.
Coronaviruses may induce lethal infections in certain animal species, particularly cats and pigs. But their reputation in human medicine had long been one of being wimpy viruses that cause only mild disease, said Albert Osterhaus, founding director of the Research Center for Emerging Infections and Zoonoses in Hanover, Germany. So when SARS emerged in late 2002, there was initially general disbelief among medical people that a coronavirus could be the basis of such a huge outbreak.
As that epidemic spread, an influx of new researchers crowded the field. More grants were awarded, and funding started to climb. Everyone wanted to know where the virus had come from, said Ralph Baric, a microbiologist at the University of North Carolinas Gillings School of Global Public Health. Initial findings pointed to wild civets and raccoon dogs sold for meat and pelts, respectively, in Chinese markets. Later evidence began to implicate horseshoe bats as the original source of the infections. Some researchers whose pre-SARS careers had been grounded in basic coronavirus biology began working on therapies and vaccinesand they made steady progress for several years.
Oregon on Saturday recorded another in a string of recent high single-day counts for new coronavirus cases -- 158 -- bringing the states total to 5,535 as one more person died from the infection.
The states death toll from the disease now stands at 174. An 87-year-old man from Umatilla County was the latest person to succumb to COVID-19. The man fell ill May 30 and died June 11 at St. Anthony Hospital in Pendleton, the Oregon Health Authority reported.
The 158 new confirmed and presumptive coronavirus cases were reported in the last 24 hours. Its the second-highest daily count since Oregons outbreak began Feb. 28. The top four daily counts all have come this week, including 178 new cases Thursday, 146 new cases Sunday, 142 new cases Friday and 114 new cases Monday. Before this week, the highest daily count came April 4 at 100.
Public health officials attribute the increase in cases to more testing, workplace outbreaks and increased tracing of people exposed by those with known coronavirus infections.
Track the county-by-county trends as Oregon reopens with these charts.
The newest batch of cases were in 17 of Oregons 36 counties with Multnomah, Clackamas, Washington, Marion, Hood River, Umatilla and Lincoln counties reporting double-digit increases:
Clackamas (17), Columbia (1), Hood River (10), Jackson (3), Jefferson (2), Lane (3), Lincoln (14), Linn (1), Malheur (1), Marion (21), Morrow (1), Multnomah (47), Polk (7), Umatilla (13), Union (2), Wasco (1), Washington (14).
Coronavirus in Oregon: Latest news | Live map tracker |Text alerts | Newsletter
County case totals: Two counties -- Multnomah and Marion -- have more than 1,000 coronavirus cases each. Seven counties -- Washington, Clackamas, Deschutes, Lincoln, Linn, Umatilla and Polk -- have reported 100 coronavirus cases or more. Gilliam and Wheeler have reported none.
Heres the overall count -- confirmed and presumptive cases -- by county: Baker (1), Benton (63), Clackamas (472), Clatsop (46), Columbia (21), Coos (32), Crook (8), Curry (7), Deschutes (137), Douglas (29), Grant (1), Harney (1), Hood River, (81), Jackson (81), Jefferson (67), Josephine (23), Klamath (48), Lake (4), Lane (88), Lincoln (198), Linn (125), Malheur (34), Marion (1,155), Morrow (14), Multnomah (1,487), Polk (124), Sherman (1), Tillamook (6), Umatilla (170), Union (14), Wallowa (4), Wasco (39), Washington (863) and Yamhill (91).
Oregons Latino population has been disproportionately hit hard by the coronavirus. Though Latinos make up 13% of the states population, they represent at least 34% of all positive cases.
Death toll: At least 174 people have died from the virus. They are from 13 counties -- 67 people from Multnomah, 30 from Marion, 19 from Washington, 14 from Clackamas, 12 from Polk, nine from Linn, eight from Yamhill, five from Benton, four from Umatilla, three from Lane and one each from Josephine, Malheur and Wasco.
Their ages ranged from 36 to 100. Among them, 103 men have died and 71 women have died. All but four had underlying medical conditions.
The breakdown of deaths by age: ages 30-39 (1), ages 40-49 (3), ages 50-59 (8), ages 60-69 (37), ages 70-79 (48), ages 80-plus (77).
[Read about Oregon coronavirus deaths. Help us learn more.]
Senior care homes: More than half of all coronavirus deaths in Oregon 92 are associated with a care center, a newsroom analysis of state data shows. More than 630 senior care home residents, staff and close contacts from more than 70 nursing, assisted and retirement homes have contracted COVID-19. One senior care home worker has died since the start of the Oregon epidemic, state data show. Officials did not say where the person worked or when they died.
Workplace outbreaks: At least 883 coronavirus infections are linked to workplace outbreaks identified by The Oregon Health Authority. Among them: The Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem (167), Pacific Seafood in Newport (127) and Townsend Farms in Fairview (56).
The Oregon Health Authority is no longer updating test, hospitalization and demographic data on weekends, so the numbers below are current as of Friday.
A total of 4,376 people received coronavirus test results Friday, down from the Thursdays count 5,038, according to figures published on the Oregon Health Authoritys website.
So far, more than 166,000 Oregonians have been tested for the illness since the state confirmed its first case on Feb. 28.
Oregons positive test rate for COVID-19 was 3.1% Friday, far below the 12% national average.
Ages: Cases are so far spread about evenly among people in their 20s (18%), people in their 30s (17%), people in their 40s (17%) and people in their 50s (16%).
The breakdown: 0-9 (114), ages 10-19 (262), ages 20-29 (954), ages 30-39 (935), ages 40-49 (920), ages 50-59 (877), ages 60-69 (627), ages 70-79 (401), ages 80-plus (282).
Gender, as of Friday: 2,772 cases are among women, or 52%, and 2,599 or 48%, are among men.
Hospitalizations: At least 875 of the states COVID-19 patients, or 16%, have been hospitalized at some point during their illness, according to the health authority.
Most -- at least 648 -- have been 50 or older.
The hospitalizations breakdown by age: 0-9 (7), ages 10-19 (4), ages 20-29 (43), ages 30-39 (67), ages 40-49 (106), ages 50-59 (156), ages 60-69 (189), ages 70-79 (177), ages 80-plus (126).
As of Friday, 69 people with confirmed coronavirus cases were hospitalized, including 36 in intensive care and 14 on ventilators.
Recoveries: At least 2,396 COVID-19 patients have recovered from the illness, or 44.5%, the health authority said.
Nationwide: Confirmed coronavirus cases have surpassed 2 million. The death toll has grown to more than 114,000 people.
-- Fedor Zarkhin; 503-221-8375
fzarkhin@oregonian.com
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People rest inside social distancing markers at Domino Park in the Brooklyn borough of New York in late May. Stay-at-home orders in New York helped to lower the state's "reproduction number," which estimates how many people one sick person could infect with the coronavirus. Michael Nagle/Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images hide caption
People rest inside social distancing markers at Domino Park in the Brooklyn borough of New York in late May. Stay-at-home orders in New York helped to lower the state's "reproduction number," which estimates how many people one sick person could infect with the coronavirus.
Just weeks after parts of the U.S. began reopening, coronavirus infections are on the upswing in several states, including Arizona, Utah, Texas and Florida. Dramatic increases in daily case counts have given rise to some unsettling questions: Is the U.S. at the start of a second wave? Have states reopened too soon? And have the recent widespread demonstrations against racial injustice inadvertently added fuel to the fire?
The short, unpleasant answer to the first question is that the U.S. has not even gotten through the current first wave of infections. Since peaking at around 31,000 average new daily cases on April 10, new daily cases dropped to around 22,000 on average by mid-May and have stayed almost steady over the last four weeks. Nationwide more than 800 people continue to die day after day.
Prominent forecasters are predicting a slow but steady accumulation of additional deaths between now and Oct. 1 more than 56,000 by one estimate, around 90,000 by one another.
"We really never quite finished the first wave," says Dr. Ashish Jha, a professor of global health at Harvard University. "And it doesn't look like we are going to anytime soon."
That said, forecasters say, we could still be due for a true second wave later in the year, citing growing evidence that colder weather could lead to a surge in coronavirus cases.
Why we're stuck
So why is the U.S. stuck in a coronavirus plateau despite months of widespread social distancing? To explain, it helps to get a bit technical. The key indicator at issue is what's called the "reproduction number" of the coronavirus or the R for short essentially a proxy for how powerfully infection is spreading in your community. It tells you, for each individual who is infected, how many other people this person will go on to infect. When the reproduction number is above 1, case counts will spiral upward exponentially. When it gets to well below 1 and stays there, outbreaks subside.
For example, if the reproduction number is 2, then one person goes on to infect two others. Those two people go on to infect four others. Those four go on to infect eight, then 16 and so on. If you assume, say, a six-day interval between each new round of infections in just over a month, that one initial person will have launched a chain that has infected 127 people.
Most estimates are that early this year, when no measures were being taken to keep the coronavirus in check, the reproduction number in the U.S. was above 2.
The stay-at-home measures and other social distancing efforts that states undertook this spring served to push the reproduction number to slightly below 1 to 0.91, according to an estimate by Youyang Gu, an independent modeler whose work is highly regarded by prominent epidemiologists.
This halted the upward spiral of cases. But because the reproduction number was still so close to 1, the curve of new infections never really bent sharply downward. Essentially most of the U.S. reached a kind of steady state with each infected person passing the virus on to one new person in a regular drip-drip of new infections and new deaths.
Now that states have opened up, the reproduction number has started to creep back up above 1. According to Gu's analysis, that is now the case in more than two-thirds of the states.
So far, at least, the reproduction number has been hovering at just above 1. Assuming that remains the case, the U.S. won't see the kind of runaway run-up in cases that was so alarming in New York. But it does mean cases and deaths will continue to accrue steadily.
"If things stay basically status quo and we continue doing what we're doing, we're going to continue seeing 25,000 to 30,000 additional deaths a month for the foreseeable future," Jha says.
Parkland Memorial Hospital employees give instructions to a man and a woman on how to self-administer a test for the coronavirus at a Dallas walk-up facility. Texas saw a surge in cases within the past week. Tony Gutierrez/AP hide caption
Parkland Memorial Hospital employees give instructions to a man and a woman on how to self-administer a test for the coronavirus at a Dallas walk-up facility. Texas saw a surge in cases within the past week.
Grim as it is, even this picture may be overly rosy, Jha adds. "I'm worried that the idea that we're going to stay flat all summer is a very optimistic view of what is going to happen over the next three months," he says.
To maintain a reproduction number that's just over 1, or better yet, push it back to just under 1, even in the midst of further re-opening "would take a lot of work," Jha says. "You'd have to have really substantially ramped-up testing and isolation [of new cases]." There's also evidence emerging that widespread use of masks by people when they are out in public could help, Jha notes. Unfortunately, he says, it is hard to envision the U.S. adopting any of these practices to a sufficient degree "based on where we are today."
The seasonal effect
It gets worse. On Thursday, Chris Murray, the head of the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation forecasting team, pointed to growing evidence that the coronavirus will spread more easily as the weather turns cold.
Murray's team analyzed the pattern of the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S. to date. They found that the drop in the reproduction number since early spring can't be entirely explained by obvious contributing factors such as people's reduced mobility or mask wearing or better testing. And when the team looked for additional variables that could explain the change, it found a strong correlation with warming weather.
This finding doesn't shed light on why transmission may be reduced in the warmer months. (For example, could it be that coronavirus droplets don't hang in warmer air for as long? Is it simply that people spend less time mingling with each other indoors?) But Murray says that "as time goes by, the evidence is accumulating that it is a very strong predictor of transmission."
The effect is not strong enough to make the virus completely disappear over the summer. But it does mean, Murray says, that come autumn transmission will likely pick up.
"We start to see a powerful increase that will be driven by seasonality starting in early September and these numbers will intensify through till February," Murray says. "So seasonality will be a very big driver of the second wave."
Restaurants have opened up in cities across the country. As more people intermingle, coronavirus modelers say that any steps to mitigate risk such as social distancing or mask wearing can have an impact on the spread of the virus. Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
Restaurants have opened up in cities across the country. As more people intermingle, coronavirus modelers say that any steps to mitigate risk such as social distancing or mask wearing can have an impact on the spread of the virus.
He adds though, that this does not take into account actions that could mitigate the impact. "Clearly what individuals choose to do can moderate the forecast," he says, noting that widespread mask use and avoidance of social contact with people outside one's household could help.
Parsing the effects of protests
Even as many public health experts cheered the anti-racism protests and the possibility that lives could ultimately be saved if demonstrations result in policy changes that reduce racial inequities some wondered at the extent to which these would come at a cost of increased deaths from COVID-19.
But calculating just how many additional deaths the demonstrations might lead to is difficult. There is no accurate count available of the number of participants, let alone their ages which appear to skew young, suggesting the vast majority of those infected would not experience bad outcomes.
Also with little prior research on this particular form of intermingling, it's hard to say how much infection results from it. Though many people have been standing and marching in close quarters, being outdoors mitigates the effect of crowding, as does mask use.
But the biggest determinant of how many deaths ultimately result is what happens in the aftermath of the demonstrations, says Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at Harvard.
"Some transmissions will almost certainly happen at the protests and the question is whether those lead to a lot of cases down the line or a relatively small number of cases down the line," he explains. Do those who are infected at marches go back into an environment where there's a high level of ongoing transmission or a low level?
"How much transmission happens later on," Lipsitch adds, "is far more dependent on our actions as a society and whether we can suppress transmission around the country than on how many people go to the protests."
In other words, perhaps the better question is not, will the demonstrators cause a spike in COVID-19 infections? But rather will all of us the public and our leaders behave in a way that keeps the reproduction number low and ensures that these marches and any improvements to racial equality they achieve don't come at a price of many more COVID-19 deaths.
Editors note: The Salt Lake Tribune is providing free access to critical stories about the coronavirus. Sign up for our Top Stories newsletter, sent to your inbox every weekday morning. To support journalism like this, please donate or become a subscriber.
We should definitely care about the number of people infected, the hospitalizations and those who have been sick for weeks, but tracking deaths is the starkest way to measure COVID-19s toll on humanity.
That hasnt been as easy as some would expect. And talking about death counts often opens up a whole line of questioning.
How many more people are dying now than otherwise would in a more normal year? Because the virus attacks the elderly and those with preexisting conditions, would those deaths have happened anyway?
As of Saturday, 139 people have died of the virus in Utah, according to the Utah Department of Healths tallies, and more than 115,000 nationwide. How accurate are those counts?
Finally, we know that the disease has made an impact on nearly every aspect of society. Some of those can be deadly: people may put off going to the hospital fearing they would contract the virus there, people might die by suicide at a higher rate because of the isolation caused by social distancing, traffic accidents and homicides might have gone up or down in these unusual times.
Ive wanted to dig into these questions since March, but havent felt really confident in the data until this week. Thats when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uploaded its latest death reports, which include weekly death tallies separated by cause through May. With that, and a few other sources, we can get an early picture of how this pandemic has really impacted deaths in Utah and nationwide.
First, the caveats: most of the data in this article comes from CDC provisional reports. That means the data hasnt been double-checked yet, and much of the data from recent weeks is unknown. In addition, we should note that the CDC typically estimates that 20% to 30% of death certificates are filled out incorrectly or incompletely.
Still, the CDCs data confirms information we already have and new stats to consider. So with this in hand, lets take a shot at answering those questions.
How are coronavirus deaths tracked?
Every time someone dies in America, a physician, coroner or medical examiner has to fill out a death certificate. For example, heres how the CDC recommends a doctor fill out the death certificate for someone who experienced pneumonia for 10 days as a result of COVID-19.
The highest line item is the immediate cause of death. And in this case, the doctor would put acute respiratory distress syndrome, which the person suffered from for two days. Thats the condition that caused the person to take their last breath. But the thing that first caused the sequence of events is called the underlying cause of death, and typically, thats the thing we care about most. If someone is stabbed, bleeds out and dies, we typically chalk the death up to stabbing and not loss of blood. When COVID-19 is listed on a death certificate, 95% of the time it is listed as the underlying cause of death.
Doctors can put COVID-19 on the form without a positive test, if thats their best guess. For example, if someone had significant exposure to a confirmed COVID-19 case, then died of COVID-19 symptoms, doctors are instructed to put Probable COVID-19 on the form. These are usually tallied with the confirmed coronavirus deaths. In Utah, public health leaders say they test people after they die in an attempt to catch all cases of the virus.
Then, doctors must list any significant conditions that played a role in the death in Part II of the form. That is where heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, or any other contributing factors are placed. Any number of conditions can be put here, but only the ones that played a role in the death in the doctors informed opinion.
These certificates are sent to the National Center of Health Statistics. Because these stats rely on manual entry, they typically lag a few weeks behind the daily coronavirus reports we hear from the counties and states. Some states even take a couple of months to report their data, but Utah is generally relatively quick about it.
How many excess deaths have occurred in Utah and the U.S.?
With the death certificates, the CDC can count the number of deaths in any given week and in any given state and compare them to how many deaths they expected to see the difference is called excess deaths. The CDC uses a well-established method called Farringtons algorithm to estimate death counts using data from recent years to provide an average guess, as well as a 95% confidence interval for that guess.
Overall, there have been a huge number of excess deaths in the United States. From Feb. 1 to May 30, there were an estimated 140,023 extra deaths in the nation.
In Utah, the situation is significantly better than it is in most states. According to the CDCs data, Utahs total number of deaths over the same timeframe was 252 more than expected. However, that number is just inside the confidence intervals margin of error: it is possible, but unlikely, that the extra deaths are a result of a misestimate of the expected number. Only 11 states had a lower excess death number.
Utahs overall death rate is also very low compared to the rest of the nation, ranking 45th in terms of deaths per capita. In terms of case fatality rate, the number of deaths divided by the number of positive cases, Utah is No. 1: only 1% of Utahns who tested positive have died so far. As weve discussed before, Utah has had a higher testing rate than many other states, and its population is younger and healthier than most, which likely plays a big role in a lower death rate.
How many of those excess deaths are due to COVID-19?
The CDC separates the underlying causes of natural death into these categories: cancer, heart diseases, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimers disease, influenza and pneumonia, chronic lower respiratory diseases, kidney diseases, COVID-19, and an other/unknown category.
In the U.S. as a whole, the CDC estimates that between 20,665 and 45,955 of these extra deaths between Feb. 1 and May 30 were caused by something other than COVID-19. Yet, most of these were in the states hardest hit by the pandemic. For example, New York City saw heart attack deaths spike: it is likely that people experiencing a heart attack were less likely to rush to the hospital, and so drastically more of them died.
The good news is that there isnt evidence of similar spikes in the Utah data. Typically, 77 people die every week of diseases of the heart in Utah, according to the CDC, but during the pandemic, 79 people died every week. It wasnt a major difference.
The same is true for other common causes of death, like cancer, diabetes, Alzheimers and strokes. Even for pneumonia or chronic lower respiratory diseases, conditions you can imagine a coroner substituting for COVID-19, the death counts havent changed in Utah the pre- and post-pandemic averages are extremely close, within one or two deaths per week.
What accounts for the other deaths?
Through May 30, Utah had 112 COVID-19 deaths. That explains a big chunk of the 252-ish excess deaths found in the CDC data, but not all of them. If other causes arent spiking, what explains the rest of the increase?
Utah does have a bunch of deaths from April 12 to May 30 in that other/unknown category 169, in fact. In typical times, these unknown deaths are usually updated later to be either deadly accidents requiring investigation or drug overdoses requiring toxicology reports. However, because each death involving COVID-19 has to be manually entered, its possible that some of these are related to the virus. Its also possible that they will be assigned to other causes, and there has just been a delay in categorizing them. In the coming months, well have to watch to see where these deaths get distributed.
Each death is also labeled Natural or not the latter category including homicides, suicides, and accidents. The vast majority of deaths are natural. In the early part of the pandemic, Utahs rate of non-natural deaths declined from 43 per week on average to 36 per week on average.
Some expect a big leap in suicides in Utah, but I dont see evidence of it in this data. For one, suicides are rarely even temporarily labeled as unknown in the death certificate system: theyre reflected in the non-natural data quickly.
And with other aspects of non-natural deaths, we didnt see much change. Crime rates in Utah didnt really decrease during the pandemic compared to the past couple of years, so theres not much change in homicide. And interestingly, car accident fatalities have actually been up this year in Utah, despite having fewer cars on the road. If total non-natural deaths have fallen or stayed stagnant, and other large components have either stayed stagnant or risen a little, its hard to argue that one unknown component, suicides, have risen significantly.
Theres also been no big jump in non-natural deaths nationwide in the past three months, even with deaths from unknown causes potentially taken into account.
In Utah, the average age of those who have died from the coronavirus is 73.9 years, according to the Utah Department of Health. So far, 72.7% of deaths have been from those over 65 years old; 82% of the dead have had at least one preexisting condition. Utahs male to female split hasnt been very wide: 54% of Utahs deaths have been male, 46% have been female.
Understandably, people see these numbers, compare them to life expectancy numbers the average life expectancy in the U.S. is 78 years and figure that COVID-19 is largely killing those who were near death anyway. But most old people have one preexisting condition or another, and once people make it to their 70s, most live quite a while longer. Remember that life expectancy is driven down by people who die when they are relatively young.
One University of Glasgow study took into account the age and preexisting conditions of the dead in the United Kingdom and found that, on average, coronavirus deaths were cutting 13 years off of the life of male victims and 11 years of life off female ones.
The other interesting disparity is that while 51% of Utahs coronavirus cases have come in Salt Lake County so far, 66% of the deaths have come in the county. Theres no disparity in percentage of elderly in Salt Lake County compared with the rest of the state, nor in the numbers of those with preexisting conditions, so its not immediately clear why the death count would be higher in Salt Lake County. However, there have been well-documented outbreaks in some of Salt Lake Countys long-term care facilities in particular, which might explain the difference.
So yes, there are still questions to be answered, with more concrete data to come. But now three months into this crisis, were starting to get a clearer picture on the total effect the virus has had on peoples lives and unfortunately, the end of them.
Andy Larsen is a Tribune sports reporter who covers the Utah Jazz. During this crisis, he has been assigned to dig into the numbers surrounding the coronavirus. You can reach Andy at alarsen@sltrib.com or on Twitter at @andyblarsen.
When I was 8 years old, just about all I could think of was how I was going to die that day.
No, I didn't grow up in the middle of a war zone, though many others on the other side of the world were living through that kind of nightmare in 1996.
I was born and raised in a safe, small town in Idaho where murder was a rarity. It wouldn't be a gun, a child predator, or a car accident that killed me, I figured.
Instead, because I had a significant form of anxiety that neither I nor my parents recognized at the time obsessive compulsive disorder I was convinced that some kind of microscopic creature would be absorbed through my hands and infect every living cell in my body. Maybe it would be bacteria, I thought, or parasites. Or a virus.
That pencil I borrowed from my second-grade classmate? It had to be totally infested. The handle on the drinking fountain? Crawling with germs.
When I took out the trash or cleaned our cat's litter box, my mind raced to strategize which hand I would use to turn on every light switch, open and close each door and carefully lift the lid on the garbage can to minimize my exposure to any kind of contamination.
I got good at using my feet, elbows and any other part of my body that lacked opposable thumbs to avoid touching what I deemed to be the life-threatening surfaces of everyday objects.
Now, 23 years later, those skills that only the most generous would have called "eccentric" in pre-pandemic times are actually useful as I try to keep myself and my immunocompromised housemate my girlfriend safe.
I worry that, to my girlfriend, I look like a frazzled conspiracy theorist as though I'm tracking links and clues on a corkboard filled with pins and ribbons, meticulously tracing every step.
James Dawson
But those skills come at a cost as I try to balance the need to frequently sanitize our home with the need to keep anxiety-driven compulsion at bay.
One in 40 adults and 1 in 100 children in the United States cope with OCD on a daily basis, according to the National Institutes of Mental Health
There are different flavors of OCD with different degrees and different types of obsessions and compulsions, including what people may have seen on the A&E TV show Hoarders. Those who militantly organize their surroundings also might have a touch of it.
One of my symptoms has always been an extreme and focused aversion to contamination, a characteristic I share with an estimated 40% of those who develop OCD, according to Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, a psychiatrist and director of Stanford University's OCD clinic.
As a child, touching anything I thought was covered with germs canceled out the use of that hand until I had a chance to scour it with soap and water. Until then I would hold my hand as far as possible from my torso.
If I didn't perfectly perform these draconian mental gymnastics, I knew without a doubt I was going to die. Maybe not immediately, but probably within a day or two, I thought.
Logic, which seems like it would be the panacea for irrational fears, is actually cruelly twisted back at you with OCD. No matter how much you reassure yourself that the hellscape you dreamed up in your head isn't real, the condition amplifies your fears until you perform whatever fantastic ritual you've created for yourself to alleviate the anxiety.
By the time I turned 9 with cognitive behavioral therapy, persistent practice, as well as a lot of patience and support from my parents I learned to accept the invasive, persistent thoughts for what they were. Just thoughts. Medication also helps cut my base-level anxiety, and it limits the scope of an occasional panic attack.
Today, my OCD is classified as mild to moderate, which means I'm not crippled by anxiety, at least most of the time.
I haven't had a major contamination relapse since 2008 when I was in college. I was convinced for months back then that I needed to always keep whatever food I ate or drank within sight, because I thought it would magically be dosed with LSD. Let's be real, no one would be that generous with their stash.
(That episode ended after I finally got the help of a new therapist after not having seen one for more than a decade).
It's not uncommon for people with well-controlled OCD to experience a small lapse in compulsive behaviors when under great pressure or stress, psychiatrists find, though for many people, full-blown relapses are, as in my case, rare after successful treatment.
Still, the pandemic has been challenging for a lot of us.
Cases of COVID-19 began to spring up in Idaho, where I live, in mid-March. Since then, thousands more cases have appeared.
As we learned the details of how some patients died alone, gasping for air, choking on fluid that fills their lungs like a lock system in a dam I could feel my anxiety rise.
I've been lucky enough to be able to work from home. But I'm suddenly finding my cleaning regimen taking up a not-so-insignificant part of my day.
In the home I share with my girlfriend, I take every precaution I can to maintain a contamination-free zone in the house, just as CDC guidelines recommend, though sometimes I go a little overboard.
High-touch objects such as door knobs, light switches, remotes, faucets and countertops are all disinfected multiple times per day. When a package gets delivered, I handle it like a live grenade. It, too, must be zapped of any trace of this disease that could sneak into our house.
I know where every object in this house has been, whether I've touched it with a finger that has grazed a doorknob that was nicked by the grocery bags that were left on our doorstep, and whether I've recently doused that surface with rubbing alcohol to kill any possible trace of the coronavirus that might have crept in while I wasn't paying attention.
If the gallon and a half of hand soap doesn't run out first, the hand lotion will.
I worry that, to my girlfriend, I look like a frazzled conspiracy theorist as though I'm tracking links and clues on a corkboard filled with pins and ribbons, meticulously tracing every step.
That's not how she sees me, she says. But for her own mental health, she has been leaving the cleaning up to me.
It's stressful for her, too. She knows I don't trust her to decontaminate any delivery or package we receive (and I feel guilty admitting that's true).
While her mind is consumed with concern over the rising global death toll and whether there's any end in sight, my mind is also managing dozens of little internal clocks ticking down the hours, minutes and seconds until every microbe will die on the mail pile or on the cloth seat in my car.
There's a thin line between being hypervigilant and succumbing to my deeper obsessions and compulsions so far I've managed to stay on the right side of that line.
My therapist, who will tell me if I've crossed it, is still accessible by video call, thankfully. I've taken up exercising on our back porch to burn off some of my anxious energy, and that helps.
I've planted my garden full of lettuce, spinach, arugula, fancy purple carrots and radishes. Smelling the rich soil and seeing the vibrant colors of my vegetables transports me away from the day's news and body count.
Heading back inside, I'll think about how delicious all these things I've grown will be to eat in a month or two. But sometimes another thought breaks through, with a slight sense of dread: "Did I wash my hands?"
James Dawson is writer and reporter for Boise Public Radio.
Although we do not yet know the effect of more recent events on the course of the pandemic, or what exactly will happen in the coming weeks and months, the list of culprits will likely be even longer than that.
If the virus wins, it may also be because Derek Chauvin kept his knee on George Floyds neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds as Floyd was pleading for his life, setting off protests thatas righteous as they arecould well result in mass infections.
If the virus wins, it may also be because 1,200 public-health experts obfuscated the mortal risk that these mass protests would pose to the most vulnerable among us by declaring not only (as would be reasonable) that they supported them as citizens, but also (which is highly implausible) that they had determined, as scientists, that they would actively serve the national public health.
If the virus wins, it may also be because so many states moved to reopen before getting the pace of infections under control.
If the virus wins, it may also be because the right-wing-media echo chamber is starting to downplay the risk that a second wave poses to Americans.
If the virus does win, then, it is because American elites, experts, and institutions have fallen shortand continue to fall shortof the grave responsibility with which they are entrusted in ways too innumerable to list.
About a month ago, I started to write a very different article. Is it possible, I wondered, that with the benefit of hindsight, this cruel period will seem rather more heroic than is obvious to its contemporaries? One thing is clear: If we had let the virus rip through the population unchecked, the consequences would have been unspeakable. But ifa big ifwe manage to contain the pandemic, and avert millions of deaths, it would constitute one of the greatest achievements in human history.
Hoping to publish the article in The Atlantic, I kept waiting for the situation in the United States to recover sufficiently to justify my guarded optimism. But that moment never arrived. Now it feels more remote than ever.
Read: Americas patchwork pandemic is fraying even further
We were on the brink of doing something incredible. And much of the credit for that would have gone to the many ordinary citizens who lived up to their moral responsibility in an extraordinary moment.
Scientists have desperately searched for a vaccine. Despite the real risks to their health, doctors, nurses, cooks, cleaners, and clerical staff have reported for duty in their hospitals. Suddenly declared essential, workers who have long enjoyed little respect and low wages helped to keep society afloat.
For the rest of us, the order of the day was simply to stay at home and slow the spread. It was a modest task, which made it all the more galling that some people fell short. But this nitpick obscures how many people did do what they could to get us all through the crisis: They checked in with their relatives and cooked for the elderly. They took to their balconies to thank health-care workers or sang songs to cheer up the neighbors. By and large, they stayed at home and slowed the spread.
Thanks to the effort of millions of people, we were close to a great success story. But because of the failures of Trump and Chauvin, of the CDC and the WHO, of public-health experts and Fox News hosts, we are, instead, likely to give upand tolerate that hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens will die needless deaths.
Pandemics reveal the true state of a society. Ours has come up badly wanting.
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