The top federal COVID-19 tracking team says key pandemic intensity indicators improved last week.
The U.S. death rate increased slightly, but the number of new cases fell, and the percentage of people tested who actually had the virus that causes COVID-19 also fell, according to the White House COVID-19 Team Data Strategy and Execution Workgroup.
At the same time, as coronavirus case counts soar in each of these four nations, publics are largely split on whether their country has done a good job handling the outbreak. Ideology plays a role in people’s assessments of their national coronavirus response, but this rings especially true in the U.S. and UK, where those on the political left are more critical. Those who feel better about their nation’s economic situation are more likely to give positive reviews of how the virus has been handled thus far.
The Yu Group at UC Berkeley Statistics / EECS / CCB is working to help forecast the severity of the epidemic for individual counties and hospitals in the US. We develop interpretable models (updated daily) and curate data to predict the trajectory of COVID-19-related deaths. This website provides access to those predictions, in the form of interactive visualizations. We are collaborating with Response4Life to blunt the effect of COVID-19 through the production and appropriate distribution of PPE, medical equipment, and medical personnel to healthcare facilities across the United States.
For hospital level prediction, please go to our hospitalization prediction page where one can upload data for a specific hospital and download prediction results for the given hospital. The uploaded data will only be temporarily used for prediction and will not be collected.GITHUB
Both employers and households will find it easier to leave major job centers as technologies made commonplace by the COVID-19 pandemic have led to a rethinking of the geography of work, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.
The study draws on survey data projecting that a third of workers could be permanent telecommuters by the end of 2021 and discusses implications of these trends for transportation, municipal finance, and wealth migration. While worst-case scenarios could bring a level of disinvestment in places like New York City not seen since the 1970s, even a mid-range scenario suggests a significant relocation of jobs and potentially wealth.
Cases and hospital admissions in Israel are falling steeply among vaccinated age groups in the first clear sign worldwide that Covid-19 jabs are preventing illness following a mass inoculation campaign.
Daily case rates among people aged 60 and above have fallen by 46 per cent relative to their mid-January peak, compared with a much smaller decline of 18 per cent among under-60s, according to analysis by a team from the Weizmann Institute of Science near Tel Aviv.
Author(s): John Burn-Murdoch in London and Mehul Srivastava
Vaccination drives hold out the promise of curbing Covid-19, but governments and businesses are increasingly accepting what epidemiologists have long warned: The pathogen will circulate for years, or even decades, leaving society to coexist with Covid-19 much as it does with other endemic diseases like flu, measles, and HIV.
The ease with which the coronavirus spreads, the emergence of new strains and poor access to vaccines in large parts of the world mean Covid-19 could shift from a pandemic disease to an endemic one, implying lasting modifications to personal and societal behavior, epidemiologists say.
“Going through the five phases of grief, we need to come to the acceptance phase that our lives are not going to be the same,” said Thomas Frieden, former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “I don’t think the world has really absorbed the fact that these are long-term changes.”
To a large extent, the risky traffic safety behaviors observed in Q2 continued in Q3. Frequency of triptaking continued to be lower, and a greater percentage of people stayed home in Q3 2020 compared to Q\3 2019. Ejection rates remained elevated compared to the same period a year earlier. New data on seat belt use among seriously injured drivers and passengers suggests that the belt use rate among those in serious crashes decreased in the early phases of the public health emergency at the study sites, but that rate may now be rebounding. The data also suggested that alcohol- and other drug-positive drivers and passengers who were seriously or fatally injured were much less likely to wear a seat belt than their counterparts who tested negative for all the drugs included in the study.
Speed data from the NPMRDS shows higher speeds in urban roadways across roadway types in Q3 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. Further, the greater speed dispersion in rural areas observed in Q2 continued in Q3 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.
Regarding alcohol and other drug prevalence among seriously and fatally injured drivers at the five trauma center study sites, more than 29% in the most recent period (July 19 to September 30) had measurable alcohol in their systems, with over 26% testing positive for the presence of cannabinoids and over 13% positive for opioids. In the same period, the percentage of drivers testing positive for at least one category of drugs remained above 60%, with nearly 25% testing positive for multiple categories of drugs. These observed increases in alcohol and other drug prevalence relative to before the public health emergency are consistent with the reported data that showed increases in marijuana and alcohol sales and consumption during the public health emergency. Overall, these data sets continue to have great potential to improve our understanding of the prevalence of drugs and alcohol among different types of seriously and fatally injured road users, as well as how prevalence may be changing over time during the public health emergency.
During the first wave of the pandemic — from March 15 to May 31 — there was a significant decrease in screening for three major cancers in Ontario compared to the same period in 2019, according to Ontario Health:
A 97 per cent decrease in screening for mammograms through the Ontario Breast Screening Program.
An 88 per cent decrease in Pap tests through the Ontario Cervical Screening Program.
A 73 per cent decrease in fecal tests through ColonCancerCheck.
Alberta Health says the number of Albertans diagnosed with cancer decreased by 23 per cent for the period of March to September 2020 as compared to the same period in 2019.
The rapid development of an effective COVID-19 vaccine provides hope that the pandemic might be brought to an end, but as societies roll out vaccines and begin to open up, policymakers face difficult questions about how to best verify individuals’ vaccine records. Building vaccine record verification (VRV) systems that are robust and ethical will be vital to reopening businesses, educational institutions, and travel. Historically, such systems have been the domain of governments and have relied on paper records, but, now, a variety of non-profit groups, corporations, and academic researchers are developing digital verification systems. These digital vaccine passports include the CommonPass app developed by the World Economic Forum to verify COVID-19 test results and vaccine status, as well as similar systems several major tech companies are actively exploring.
VRV systems present both opportunities and risks in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. They offer hope of more accurate verification of vaccine status, but they also run the risk of both exacerbating existing health and economic inequalities and introducing significant security and privacy vulnerabilities. To mitigate those risks, we propose a series of principles that ought to guide the deployment of VRV systems by public health authorities, policymakers, health care providers, and software developers. In particular, we argue that VRV systems ought to align with vaccine prioritization decisions; uphold fairness and equity; and be built on trustworthy technology.
Author(s): Baobao Zhang, Laurin Weissinger, Johannes Himmelreich, Nina McMurry, Tiffany Li, Naomi Schinerman, and Sarah Kreps
President Joe Biden’s administration is reorganizing federal pandemic management efforts. The tracking team has left out its usual list of observations and recommendations.
In place of the weekly notes, the team has included a statement indicating that, “The weekly State Profile Reports are currently under review. The format and content may change in coming reports.”
The weekly reports have distilled current knowledge about COVID-19 trends that could shape benefits costs for every life and health product, including annuities, and efforts to ease pandemic-related social distancing rules.
One question is whether the new COVID-19 vaccination program will have any early effect on the pandemic intensity level.
Numbers belatedly released by the Cuomo administration last week pushed New York’s COVID-19 mortality rate in nursing homes from 35th to 13th highest in the U.S., an Empire Center analysis shows.
The new total of almost 13,000 deaths amounts to 14 percent of New York’s pre-pandemic nursing home population, which is 2 points above the national average (see chart).
White people received more than half of all vaccinations against COVID-19 during the first month of the rollout, according to data released Monday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Just over 5% of the nearly 13 million people who received the shot between Dec. 14 and Jan. 14 people vaccinated against the coronavirus in the U.S. so far have been Black, and just under 12% were Hispanic, the data shows.
