COVID-19 UPDATE: Total USA cases fall to 18,790 (-3,862 past 2D). Korea CDC affirms immunity. Before fearing Memorial Day crowds--> FACT: 13 states open "prior to 5/1" have seen cases -29% since 5/1.
COVID-19 remains a global crisis and we realize that many people need to keep up with COVID-19 developments, particularly since we are moving into the more critical stage ("restart economy"), so feel free to share our commentary to anyone who has interest.
Americans view Memorial Day weekend as the "start of Summer" and this weekend saw droves of Americans leave their homes and crowd at beaches, parks, streets, highways, restaurants, basically places outside their homes and involving a lot of movement. And naturally, this brings apprehension, because movement = transmission risk. But the past few days has been more a story of positive developments involving the re-opening. Foremost, USA cases are down to 18,719, still not the lowest "official" print (17,653 on 5/11) but testing on 5/25/2020 was a new high at ~495k (up +60% in the past month) and positivity rate fell to a new low of 3.8%. Moreover, 13 states have been open >3 weeks now (prior to 5/1) and these states have since seen daily cases fall 29% to 2,497 (see below).
There were also positive developments on the healthcare front. Perhaps the most important is the study by the Korea CDC (below), which shows there is actually no re-infection for any recovered patient in Korea. It has been reported, that 447 Koreans showed "positive" test results after recovering, but their study of 64% of the "re-positive" patients showed that 100% of them did not have the disease--but rather, a non-active (dead?) virus. This is major news because it supports strongly there is no re-infection (immunity) and changes the dynamics around those recovered (they are the safest and basically not susceptible). The study even prompted Korea to change its testing around recovered patients, as it no longer sees it necessary to test any recovered patient.
And on the vaccine front, Novavax has entered Phase 1 trials for its vaccine. There are now 10 vaccine candidates in clinical evaluation, +2 in the past week. And now 114 candidates in pre-clinical evaluation (+4 in the past week). There are now 124 "shots at goal" up +6 in just the past week. This highlights the enormous global efforts at finding a vaccine and is a sign of positive progress.
POINT #1: USA daily cases fall to 18,790, -3,862 over past 2D. And despite scary headlines about Memorial Day crowds, states open prior to 5/1 are reported cases down 29% in the past 3 weeks...
Total US reported daily COVID-19 cases fell to 18,790 (Mon) and is down -3,862 over the past 2 days (Sat). Weekends tend to see under-reporting, and this is often resulting in higher case counts mid-week. And the CDC is also going to revise its methodology for tabulating COVID-19 cases, as it has been combining PCR test (COVID-19 cases) with the results from serology (antibody tests). The mixing of the data does not give the complete picture of disease progression and this could potentially be contributing to the lumpiness of the data. By July, the CDC plans to provide complete data between the two.
- total tests reported for 5/25 surged to a new high of 495,054 (almost 500,000) so the drop in reported cases is not due to lower tests
- the % tests positive in the US dropped to a new low of 3.8%
So both are signs of progress.
