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Thirteen cities and towns found themselves in the state’s COVID-19 red zone this week — the highest number to be labeled high-risk since the Baker administration rolled out its color-coded assessment system last month. The state remains particularly focused on turning back the pandemic’s tide in six cities: Chelsea, Everett, Lawrence, Lynn, Revere and Framingham, a group of smaller, poorer cities where 10 people sometimes cram into a single apartment, where reliance on public transportation is high and where workers don’t have the luxury of staying home — all conditions ripe for transmitting the highly contagious virus. “The odds are...

When the coronavirus lockdowns began almost two months ago, the outdoors seemed like a scary place. It was where you could get infected by a neighbor, jogger, public bench, doorknob or any number of other things. The better move, as a popular hashtag put it, was to #StayHome. As more virus research has emerged, however, the outdoors has begun to look safer. It still brings risks (like those doorknobs). But they are fairly small. One study of 1,245 coronavirus cases across China found that only two came from outdoors transmission. Beside the research, something else has also begun to make...

Well over half of all documented coronavirus deaths in the United States have occurred in just five states, a statistic which mirrors the heavily concentrated and localized nature of COVID-19 outbreaks in several other countries. Of the nearly 80,000 deaths from the virus in this country as of Saturday afternoon, nearly 48,700, or about 60 percent, had occurred in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan and Pennsylvania. New York remains the hardest-hit state of any in the country by far, having logged nearly 27,000 deaths as of Saturday afternoon. The next-hardest-hit state, New Jersey, had recorded over 9,100.

(CHICAGO) WEEK - State Health officials have acknowledged a bending of the "Covid Curve" seeing smaller spikes in positive cases, or rather, not as exponential of a jump as recorded weeks ago when virus testing capability was much lower. Additionally, despite the additional virus-related deaths being reported everyday, Illinois Department of Public Health reports those numbers are decreasing too. Still, the department's Director, Dr. Ngozi Ezike used part of her time during Sunday's health briefing to explain how the department determines if a death is related to Coronavirus. Essentially, Dr. Ezike explained that anyone who passes away after testing positive...

New York state is reporting more than 1,700 previously undisclosed deaths at nursing homes and adult care facilities as the state faces scrutiny over how it has protected vulnerable residents during the coronavirus pandemic. At least 4,813 people have died from COVID-19 in the state’s nursing homes since March 1, according to a tally released by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration late Monday that, for the first time, includes people believed to have been killed by the coronavirus before their diagnoses could be confirmed by a lab test. Exactly how many nursing home residents have died remains uncertain despite the state’s...

Pennsylvania has removed hundreds of COVID-19 deaths from the official death count after coroners pointed out the state’s health department numbers did not match their own. Pennsylvania Health Department officials had included in their count “probable” coronavirus deaths in cases where they believed the virus was the cause of death but did not have confirmation from a positive test result, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Officials removed over 200 probable deaths from their official tally on Thursday in what they said was an effort to be transparent. “We realize that this category can be confusing, since it does change over time,”...

As of Thursday, nearly 16,000 people in New York have died of virus-related complications. With 250,000-plus confirmed cases, the mortality rate would be as high as 16 percent. With 2.7 million cases, it would be around 0.5 percent -- much lower, though still much higher than the seasonal flu.

A baby thought to have been the youngest ever to die of COVID-19 may not have been killed by the coronavirus after all. Days after Connecticut officials last week announced that a six-week-old baby died after contracting coronavirus, the state’s medical examiner is not ready to say that COVID-19 was the cause of death. Governor Ned Lamont on Wednesday said that the toddler who was rushed to intensive care at a Hartford hospital was the youngest fatality of COVID-19 ‘anywhere.’ As of Friday afternoon, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has yet to officially rule that the novel coronavirus...

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now counting "probable" cases of coronavirus among its tabulations, according to the agency's website. The inclusion of such cases will add thousands to the total number of patients and deaths by including people who didn't have a positive test but showed signs of having the virus.

Vote yes or No at link (no pop ups that I know of) Do you think the extended severe restrictions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are too extreme?Yes - too extreme: the long-term unemployment and lack of activity, and fear of others will do more harm than a more moderate or shorter period.No: long-term outlawing of most sports, recreation, many businesses is necessary to stop this deadly virus. Yes: a moderate response of wearing masks in mass transit, work and crowds instead of isolation, except for those in need of care, would be better.No: if anything, the most severe...

A widely followed model for projecting Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. is producing results that have been bouncing up and down like an unpredictable fever, and now epidemiologists are criticizing it as flawed and misleading for both the public and policy makers. In particular, they warn against relying on it as the basis for government decision-making, including on “re-opening America.” “It’s not a model that most of us in the infectious disease epidemiology field think is well suited” to projecting Covid-19 deaths, epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health told reporters this week, referring to...

It’s just the flu, bro. A few things: 1. Some study in the Bay Area showed antibodies are widespread and there could be 85 people who have it for every one person who was tested - good news as it shows that its lethality is about the same as the flu. 2. Texas didn’t go far enough with their announcement on reopening. 3. Healthcare workers are getting laid off or are on reduced hours - checked two clinics yesterday and one was closed and one was half hours due to reduced number of patients during Corona. They flattened the curve...

The [Puerto Rico] Secretary of Health, Lorenzo González, acknowledged today to the Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI) that the agency he heads has been mixing the results of molecular tests, which are confirmatory that the person has the virus, with the results of the rapid tests or serological, whose result according to the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA in English) is inconclusive. The implication of this is that there has been a double count, perhaps even triple, of the results in government reports on COVID-19. For example, a person who had a rapid test that was positive and then...

The most widespread testing so far shows that COVID-19 has a fatality rate of 0.004%. That’s lower than the flu. Should we start shutting everything down, every year, because of the flu? Iceland has tested 10% of its population for COVID-19, by far the largest percentage of any country.And it has discovered that the fatality rate is 0.004%.That’s lower than the flu.Should we start shutting everything down, every year, because of the flu?

New York City's Mayor Bill de Blasio abruptly added 4,000 deaths to the city's roster of Wuhan virus deaths. He did this even though there are no tests proving that these 4,000 people died because of the virus. The mayor claims he made changes to increase statistical accuracy, but he may have been acting upon baser motives. One problem with getting a handle on the Wuhan virus is that we have no accurate count telling how many people have become sick with or died from it, whether at home or abroad. Different countries use different tests; different tests have various...

You know what this is about. We’ve written several times about the frightening increase in NYC this past month of residents dying in their homes. According to data provided by the city to the Times, in the first five days of April alone no fewer than 1,125 people were already dead when paramedics responded to a 911 call at their apartments. That was more than eight times the number in the first five days of April last year, a difference of nearly 1,000 souls in less than a week.That’s the single most frightening detail about the disease I’ve encountered...

Iceland has tested one-tenth of its population for coronavirus at random and found that half of people have the disease without realising. They also discovered that 1,600 people have been infected with Covid-19 since the start of the outbreak. Of these cases, there were only seven deaths, indicating a fatality rate of just 0.004 per cent, which is significantly lower than other countries, including the UK. The findings were made during Iceland's rigorous testing campaign, conducted with the help of Reykjavik-based biopharmaceutical company deCODE genetics, which has seen 10 per cent of the 364,413 population swabbed, something yet to be...

We will remember this time as the Great Media-Driven Panphobia of 2020. ... So just how deadly is the virus? Though comparisons are looked down on because analogies have to be exact, we can still learn from another fever that swept through the land. The Centers for Disease Control on the swine flu of 2009 in the USA (emphasis added): During the pandemic, CDC provided estimates of the numbers of 2009 H1N1 cases, hospitalizations and deaths on seven different occasions. Final estimates were published in 2011. These final estimates were that from April 12, 2009 to April 10, 2010 approximately...

Dr. Ben Carson says there is not enough attention being paid to the “number of people who have recovered” from coronavirus, noting that the number “is going to be about 98 percent of all the people who get it.” Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon who serves as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), also said the one-quarter to fully one-half of all people who will get SARS-CoV-2 will show no symptoms at all. “You probably do know someone that has it, you may have it, who knows?” Carson told Fox News host Martha MacCallum on Thursday. “But people have been...

A phlebotomist working at a Chicago hospital said Thursday that 30 to 50 percent of those tested for coronavirus have antibodies, and 10 to 20 percent of those tested are actual carriers of the virus. Sumaya Owaynat, a phlebotomy technician for Rosewood Community Hospital, has had extensive experience with coronavirus testing over the last few weeks, as she has been testing around 400 to 600 people per day in the hospital’s parking lot. Owaynat also stated that there is a far greater number of those that have come through her line and have already recovered from the virus compared to...