COVID-19 Compilation: Part 38 - December 13-19, 2020
On March 14th, I began posting COVID-19 updates to my facebook page, regarding the status of the COVID-19 pandemic. I have used data from worldometer as a primary source for daily and cumulative data, with frequent supplementation from various national and local sites.
Notables this week:
- New USA and World daily and weekly record highs for cases and deaths
- Many USA states hardest hit by the November surge, have started seeing steep declines in cases
- The Pfizer / BionTech vaccine started rolling out in the USA
- The Moderna vaccine gained FDA approval in the USA
This blog post compiles the period of December 13th through 19th. see https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ for more
DECEMBER 13
| Today's counts | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Total Cases | Cases Today | Total Deaths | Deaths Today |
| World | 72.67 million | 553,705 | 1.619 million | 7,968 |
| USA | 16.74 million | 192,978 | 306,470 | 1,388 |
As usual, numbers are lower on Sunday.
The USA 7-day rolling average for cases hit an all-time high of 218,546 today, and the rolling average for deaths hit an all-time high of of 2,518. The worldwide 7-day rolling averages for both cases and deaths declined today.
DECEMBER 14
| Today's counts | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Total Cases | Cases Today | Total Deaths | Deaths Today |
| World | 73.20 million | 533,034 | 1.628 million | 8,730 |
| USA | 16.94 million | 199,732 | 308,092 | 1,622 |
The big news today, of course, was the start of the US rollout of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. A second vaccine, by Moderna may be approved later this week. There are presently more than 50 vaccines in human trials.
About 2.9 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine are being shipped to 636 sites across the USA. The vaccine requires a second dose 21 days after the first, so this is enough to vaccinate 1.45 million people.
DECEMBER 15
| Today's counts | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Total Cases | Cases Today | Total Deaths | Deaths Today |
| World | 73.81 million | 595,229 | 1.641 million | 12,717 |
| USA | 17.15 million | 201,721 | 311,090 | 2,998 |
The 7-day rolling average for deaths hit a new high in the USA today at 2,531; 20 states have set new single day highs this month.
DECEMBER 16
| Today's counts | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Total Cases | Cases Today | Total Deaths | Deaths Today |
| World | 74.54 million | 725,890 | 1.655 million | 13,579 |
| USA | 17.40 million | 250,173 | 314,651 | 3,561 |
Per worldometer, there were 61,569 new cases in California today. That is not a typo.
- There were 6 states with more than 10,000 new cases today.
- There were 11 states with more than 100 deaths today.
From an article today at PolitiFact:
"Every year, PolitiFact editors review the year’s most inaccurate statements to elevate one as the Lie of the Year. The "award" goes to a statement, or a collection of claims, that prove to be of substantive consequence in undermining reality...
"PolitiFact’s 2020 Lie of the Year: claims that deny, downplay or disinform about COVID-19."
The latest iteration of the CDC Excess Death Counts. Per the CDC, there have been between 291,208 and 400,791 excess deaths in the United States due to COVID-19 since February 1, 2020. Note that the CDC data can be several weeks in arrears, so most of the current spike in deaths is not represented in the graphs below.
"Every year, PolitiFact editors review the year’s most inaccurate statements to elevate one as the Lie of the Year. The "award" goes to a statement, or a collection of claims, that prove to be of substantive consequence in undermining reality...
"PolitiFact’s 2020 Lie of the Year: claims that deny, downplay or disinform about COVID-19."
DECEMBER 17
| Today's counts | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Total Cases | Cases Today | Total Deaths | Deaths Today |
| World | 75.28 million | 738,913 | 1.668 million | 13,106 |
| USA | 17.63 million | 237,872 | 318,051 | 3,400 |
The latest iteration of the CDC Excess Death Counts. Per the CDC, there have been between 291,208 and 400,791 excess deaths in the United States due to COVID-19 since February 1, 2020. Note that the CDC data can be several weeks in arrears, so most of the current spike in deaths is not represented in the graphs below.
 |
| CDC Excess Death Counts and worldometer totals, accumulative and by week |
DECEMBER 18
| Today's counts | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Total Cases | Cases Today | Total Deaths | Deaths Today |
| World | 75.99 million | 717,261 | 1.680 million | 12,387 |
| USA | 17.89 million | 254,680 | 320,845 | 2,794 |
New York state's record of 11,666 cases was set on April 15th. At the time, New York accounted for one third of all the accumulated cases in the United States, and 47% of all USA deaths. The positivity rate in New York, that is, the percentage of tests that came back positive, was 43%; it had been over 50% as late as March 31st.
Many things have changed since April, not least of which is ready access to COVID-19 tests. New York has now had nearly 1.2 tests for every person in the state, and that puts New York just 4th among all states, behind Rhode Island, Alaska and Massachusetts. New York's daily testing rate is now about 10 times higher than it was in mid-April.
Today, New York became the last state to break its April high, with 12,542 cases. New York accounted for a bit less than 5% of all USA cases today. The 121 deaths in New York today accounted for about 4% of the national total. The positivity rate in New York today was 5%.
The attached graph from the New York state website, shows the daily testing and positive test numbers for New York state.
 |
| New York State daily totals for COVID-19 tests and positive results |
DECEMBER 19
| Today's counts | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Total Cases | Cases Today | Total Deaths | Deaths Today |
| World | 76.65 million | 634,623 | 1.692 million | 11,191 |
| USA | 18.10 million | 198,146 | 323,960 | 2,682 |
| This week's counts | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Total Cases | Percent Change | Total Deaths | Percent Change |
| World | 4.51 million | +1.8% | 80,396 | +4.1% |
| USA | 1.54 million | +1.4% | 18,797 | +7.9% |
We had new daily world and USA records for both cases and deaths this week, both daily and weekly records.
And yet...
As I've been posting for some time, the USA increase in cases is no longer exponential, as it had been throughout late October and through the first 3 weeks of November. Yes, there are pockets where cases are exploding: California, which had it's first day of 20,000 cases earlier this month, averaged more than 40,000 cases per day this past week.
But in those portions of the United States that had the biggest spikes last months, the case numbers are going down. The attached chart shows the 19 states that had a rolling 7-day average of more than 750 cases per million people as of November 20th, 4 weeks ago yesterday, as compared to their numbers as of yesterday, December 18th.
 |
| 7-day rolling average for cases; states with the highest numbers as of November 20, 2020 |
In every case, the case numbers have gone down. The eight states that had the highest 7-day rolling average as of November 20th are all down more than 50%. Some -- but not all -- of these states have imposed more restrictions over the past several weeks.
Also, as of November 20th there were 10 states averaging more than 1000 cases per million population per day; now there are 2 (California and Tennessee).
Hospitalizations and deaths follow cases, and we're sure to continue to see high numbers of both from the November surge for some time to come. There is also the possibility of another spike after the coming holiday, although that really hasn't been much in evidence from Thanksgiving.
The data, in combination with rollout of multiple vaccines that appear likely to have significant efficacy, suggest that the peak in cases in imminent, with the peaks in hospitalizations and deaths soon to follow. After then, we may start to see a somewhat rapid fall in the numbers... one can hope, anyway.
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