As states continue to reopen, the Washington Post warns that areas in the South that are rapidly relaxing COVID-19 restrictions will see a second wave of infections over the next month, if a model created by PolicyLab at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia is correct.
While most areas in the country should avert a second wave in the near future if residents keep social distancing as lockdowns are lifted, Dallas, Houston, southeast Florida, all of Alabama and other regions are at risk of a resurgence, according to the model.
Other areas seeing escalating numbers of cases are also in danger, including the counties of Crawford, Iowa; Colfax, Nebraska; and Texas, Oklahoma; and the city of Richmond, Virginia, the model shows.
Today the United States has 1,562,714 COVID-19 cases; 93,863 people have died, according to the Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker.
Reopening in several states
President Donald Trump visited a Michigan Ford plant, after yesterday threatening to withhold federal funding from the state for acting to enable voting by mail in the pandemic, the New York Times reports. Governor Gretchen Whitmer eased the state's lockdown orders today, allowing as many as 10 people to gather, stores to see customers by appointment, and medical and veterinary workers to perform some procedures.
Today New York Governor Andrew Cuomo cancelled in-class summer school after 157 children in that state came down with a severe inflammatory syndrome similar to Kawasaki disease thought to be related to the coronavirus. He may cancel summer day camps as well, according to Bloomberg News.
Some Catholic and Lutheran churches in Minnesota say they will resume in-person services next week, in defiance of Governor Tim Walz's order yesterday continuing to prohibit gatherings of more than 10 people while easing restrictions on some businesses, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press. A Walz spokesperson said the governor and Minnesota Department of Health officials will meet with the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis this week.
In Ohio, Lt. Governor Jon Husted announced today that wedding venues and catering and banquet centers can reopen Jun 1, under guidelines similar to those for restaurants, CNN reports. Skills training for all sports, including contact sports, can resume May 26.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott today lifted air travel restrictions, including mandatory quarantines for travelers coming from other states, and announced a phased reopening of drivers license offices in June, the El Paso Times reports.
Study: Early action could have averted many cases, deaths
If the United States had implemented social distancing and other COVID-19 public health measures just a week earlier in the pandemic, nearly 704,000 infections and 36,000 deaths could have been prevented as of May 3, according to a Columbia University modeling study that was not subject to peer review.
President Donald Trump issued orders to limit travel, avoid large gatherings, and close schools on Mar 16, and Cuomo ordered a New York City lockdown on Mar 22.
Published yesterday on the medRxiv preprint server, the study found that if the measures had been adopted 2 weeks earlier, on Mar 1, an estimated 961,000 cases could have been prevented, saving 54,000 lives, a reduction of 83%.
Had interventions begun 1 week earlier, they could have prevented 210,000 cases and 17,500 deaths in New York City alone. And 246,000 cases and 20,427 deaths could have been avoided had measures begun 2 weeks earlier. "Our findings underscore the importance of early intervention and aggressive response in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic," the authors wrote.
Economy continues to falter
Today Richard Clarida, vice chair of the Federal Reserve, said there is "extraordinary uncertainty" about the recovery of the US economy amid the pandemic, according to the New York Times.
In a speech to New York business groups, he said "The coronavirus pandemic poses the most serious threat to maximum employment and, potentially, to price stability that the United States has faced in our lifetimes," adding that the situation will become clearer in the fall.
Meanwhile, John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said that the pandemic puts "a large question mark" over how industries will move forward, the newspaper reported. “It's impossible to know exactly how and when workers and businesses will be fully back to work and when consumers will return to the businesses that are open," he said.
The economic fallout from the pandemic led Americans to file about 2.4 million new unemployment claims in the week ending May 16, down 249,000 from the previous week, according to a Department of Labor news release today.
The advance seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 17.2% for the week ending May 9, up 1.7% from the week before.
Also today, Larry Kudlow, Trump's top economic advisor, told the Washington Post that extending unemployment benefits could dissuade people from returning to work, restarting the economy. "I do not believe more government spending will give us a strong and durable recovery," he said.
CDC giving inaccurate picture, report says
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and some states are combining the results of viral and antibody coronavirus tests, producing a distorted characterization of the pandemic that governors are using as a basis for restarting their economies, says a report today in The Atlantic.
By conflating results of tests that diagnose current infection (viral) and those that indicate whether a person has ever had COVID-19 (antibody), the magazine says that the CDC and states are exaggerating the country's ability to test people with the novel coronavirus.
The CDC confirmed that it is blending data in this way, the report says. Pennsylvania, Texas, Georgia, and Vermont are doing the same thing. Virginia and Maine also did this for a time but now separate their data.
Mixing data from the two tests clouds the ability to understand the meaning of positive tests and other important information about the country's pandemic response, the report says.
Group issues nursing home guidelines
The American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) today released a document detailing how state public health officials can help ensure an adequate workforce at nursing homes and assisted-living facilities during the pandemic, the organization said in a press release.
The Long Term Care Workforce Roadmap for Governors and States offers tips for increasing numbers of clinical and support staff, keeping healthcare workers safe, getting to work and staying safe in the community, and supporting facilities caring for COVID-19 patients.
"Governors must take immediate action to help protect those currently on the frontlines and take proactive steps to recruit, train and deploy additional caregivers to ensure that residents continue to receive the daily care they need in our facilities," said Mark Parkinson, AHCA/NCAL president and chief executive officer. "This is an 'all-hands-on-deck' situation."
US to give AstraZeneca $1.2 billion for vaccine
The United States has pledged up to $1.2 billion to AstraZeneca to manufacture the University of Oxford's coronavirus vaccine, according to Bloomberg.
The pharmaceutical giant says that it will deliver 300 million doses of the vaccine to the United States as early as October.
The funding is part of the Trump Administration's Operation Warp Speed effort to ensure vaccines for the United States, according to a news release from the Department of Health and Human Services. The country has previously pledged money to Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, and Sanofi for their vaccine-development projects.
Meanwhile, a Reuters/Ipsos poll published today has found that a quarter of Americans have little or no interest in getting vaccinated against COVID-19. Its credibility interval is plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Octagam 10% to enter phase 3 trial
The Food and Drug administration has approved Octapharma USA's investigational new drug application for a phase 3 trial of its Octagam 10% drug for patients with severe COVID-19, according to a company press release.
The study will start immediately at about 10 US sites, with the goal of enrolling about 54 adult coronavirus patients requiring supplemental oxygen.
The primary goal is to determine if high-dose Octagam 10% (intravenous immunoglobulin) can slow or halt respiratory deterioration in patients with severe COVID-19. It will also demonstrate whether it can improve lung function and quality of life and influence metabolic factors.
Patients will be randomly assigned to receive either Octagam 10% or a placebo and be monitored for about 33 days. Headquartered in Switzerland, Octapharma said it expects results by fall.
