Maps, science, data & statistics tracking of COVID-19

[Tatty_Two]

Natural immunity fails to help vs P1 and B.1.135 (Aka: Brazil / South African). But UK (B.1.1.7) seems to be covered by natural immunity of the original COVID19. The vaccines are also a lot more effective.

The US seems unlikely to lockdown again frankly, given our political situation. Biden is pushing for schools to open (for example). I think its all in on vaccine hopes at this point. Hopefully it works out. Trump unexpectedly announced support of the vaccine this past week, so it looks like we have a degree of bipartisan agreement here. There's still a strong anti-vax undercurrent (which hasn't affected us yet: there isn't enough vaccine available for the anti-vax politics to affect us yet). Hopefully we can turn around the anti-vax opinion and keep this vaccination effort strong.

Yeah, the thing is, until the majority of our people are actually vaccinated then this more contagious beast can still run rampant in the population and put huge strains on resources as it did here and you like us have already had cases of both the South African and Brazilian variants since January to add further potential complications but you are right, vaccinations are the hope as apparently these variants are much less prone to appear with low infection rates.

 

[HTC]

Here are Portugal's updated numbers this week.



The pics are, in order, last day updated numbers and every day since then until today's numbers (click for full picture), and the below numbers are current totals, week totals and daily averaged this week:

- 61987 active cases --- 7281 less --- 1040 less per day
- 731567 recovered --- 12590 more --- 1799 more per day
- 16540 fatalities --- 223 more --- 32 more per day
- 810094 confirmed infected --- 5532 more --- 790 more per day

- 8345773 tests taken --- 145604 more --- 24267 more per day but was last updated March 4th and it includes antigen tests as well
- 1029189 vaccinated --- 167267 more --- last updated today (????) but that corresponds to 737206 1st doses + 291983 2nd doses
- 1414 hospitalized --- 751 less --- 107 less per day
- 354 in ICU --- 130 less --- 19 less per day

The usual report wasn't published yesterday and today but, on the days it WAS published, it would always "refuse to load properly" with missing values in either one place or another, so i was forced to use situation report instead.

Hospitalized had another massive decrease, now having a bit more than the highest we had during the 1st wave, and ICU also dropped significantly, though a lot less than hospitalized . Daily fatalities dropped significantly again with it being about as high as we ever got in the 1st wave.

Quite the difference VS 5 weeks ago, just over 2 weeks after our 2nd lockdown started, before it's effects started to get noticed.

 

[dragontamer5788]

A few weeks ago, my state was pushing only 25,000 doses/day. Today, the doses are now averaging 36,000+ / day, and expected to only increase as J&J's vaccine is arriving!

We reached over 1-million 1st-dose administrations a few days ago (out of a ~6-million population). So ~18% 1st-dose vaccinated. Now with J&J vaccine out, it will be a bit complicated (J&J is a single-dose vaccine, no 2nd dose needed).

In local news: more mass-vaccination sites have opened up. Clinics, Hospitals, Pharmacies and grocery stores are offering vaccines, but the process is very ad-hoc. The mass-vaccination sites have a more centralized registration system and seem to be a bit more fair (yeah, some other states have a "central website" for registering doses. We don't... for some reason. Ah well, we should fix that next time a pandemic happens I guess...). The distribution rampup seems to be going smoothly.

The big issue is decentralization. Even within the state, every county, every pharmacy, every hospital has its own rules for how to register for the vaccine. Some are in earlier phases (1C is the state-wide phase, but many stuck on 1B to focus on teachers). If a mass-vaccination site is in your area, it might be following state-wide rules (ie: administering 1C), while the local hospital next door is in Phase 1B. Some prefer federalized / non-centralized solutions though. (I certainly took advantage of it for my parents: 65+ age is phase 1C, and the county they're in was sticking with 1B. So I gave them an appointment from another location serving 1C)

I dunno. It feels a bit unfair for me to "take vaccines from another county". But if that's how the system works, I'm going to do what I can to keep my parents safe.

 

[HTC]

Here are Portugal's updated numbers this week.



The pics are, in order, last day updated numbers and every day since then until today's numbers (click for full picture), and the below numbers are current totals, week totals and daily averaged this week:

- 38156 active cases --- 23831 less --- 3404 less per day
- 759417 recovered --- 27850 more --- 3979 more per day
- 16684 fatalities --- 147 more --- 21 more per day
- 8142574 confirmed infected --- 4163 more --- 595 more per day

- 8502802 tests taken --- 157029 more --- 22433 more per day but was last updated March 11th and it includes antigen tests as well
- 1163873 vaccinated --- 134684 more --- last updated today but that corresponds to 824313 1st doses + 339560 2nd doses
- 976 hospitalized --- 438 less --- 63 less per day
- 242 in ICU --- 112 less --- 16 less per day

The usual report is finally being properly published so it "returns".

Hospitalized had another big decrease and ICU also dropped significantly. Daily fatalities continue to drop and we had days with under 20 fatalities. Active cases had a massive decrease because the number of recovered increased substantially this week: all numbers (except vaccinations, obviously) are now below those of the peak of 1st wave.

Plans are being made to ease restrictions but there's concern because there are other European countries that are NOW starting their own lockdowns and, by opening now, we risk returning to a situation where we're forced to have another lockdown sooner rather than later because the percentage of those vaccinated is still WELL BELOW the required for herd immunity.

 

[dragontamer5788]

I decided to check the vaccination sites this past week. When I got my parent's a vaccine, it took ~5 minutes before all the slots were allocated, meaning I had to F5 furiously over many minutes, waiting for the random updates, to get a slot for them.

This past week, I'd estimate that the vaccine slots were open for a little over an hour. They all filled up eventually, so there's still demand for vaccines, but not nearly as much demand as a month-and-a-half ago.

The waiting lists are all still based on priority groups... But it seems mostly on the honor system here. All of my friends are willing to wait our appropriate turn for the vaccine (none of us want to "kill a grandma" by taking up a potential gradma's slot... or teacher or police officer's slot). But I guess I was expecting for some better checks on age / profession. As long as you click the "I'm part of the priority groups" button, you pretty much can get an appointment. I have to imagine that some people who got vaccines were in fact, NOT part of the priority groups.

Ah well: even an "inappropriate" vaccination is still a vaccination. One fewer vector for the virus to spread to. I did hear back in phase 1A (highest priority), there were issues getting enough people to sign up for the vaccine, because it was just too small a group. (Doctors / nurses all wanted the vaccine, but they also didn't want to take it all at the same time. A degree of "taking turns" so that they could man the office was still a factor). So one benefit of opening up to lower priorities is that we can spread the vaccine more efficiently, since there's more people filling up more slots.

 

[claes]

If you live in the US some nice people built this to help distribute expiring vaccines

Online medical consultations for $15 - Dr. B

Dr. B provides affordable $15 medical consultations for a range of common conditions, plus a unique no-cost option for patients who qualify at hidrb.com.

hidrb.com

 

[Tatty_Two]

Joe Public cannot book over here, well in so much that our Doctor's surgery sent me a text message saying that I was eligible at the time for a vaccine, the message contained a link which I went to and was able to book myself an appointment for the following day, afterwards I tested/tried the link on my PC and my wife's mobile phone and I couldn't enter the booking system, so no text from the surgery means no vaccination appointment, for those that do not have a mobile phone number on the docs system then it's a personal phone call from the surgery apparently although "NHS England" also send you a letter (I got mine on the day of my appointment) that tells you that you can book an appointment by calling a number that is not your local doctors surgery to book as the healthcare system is all linked.

It is believed by the end of this week half of our adult population will be vaccinated so we remain on target for everyone by the early summer.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Hmmmm. Looks like we've reached a Plateau here. Hospitalizations and cases are inching upwards again, suggesting that the downtrend from Winter -> Spring is over. (I don't think we're going to spike upwards yet. It just means we aren't in a downtrend anymore...)

There's definitely lockdown fatigue, especially as other states are opening up and going maskless. We're still masked up here in all public places (pretty rare for me to see someone unmasked). This plateau is above the "2nd COVID wave" of ~August. But we only reached that low-level due to a multi-week total lockdown. So this might be the best my area can get to. This is still an unacceptably high number of #cases and #hospitalizations (but at least %Positive is below 5%).

We just need to hold out until the vaccine is well distributed. A lot of statistics are focusing on "1st dose" vaccinations (which stop hospitalizations / deaths), but we need "2nd dose" full vaccinations to end COVID19, and that takes another month.

 

[dragontamer5788]

And now for a dose of pessimism:

B.1.1.7 (aka: UK variant) has been in USA for some time. It has gone from near 0% of infections in December, to ~36% of infections today.

I've said before that B.1.1.7 and the Vaccine in the USA is in a tight race. Unlike P.1 or B.1.1.351, the B.1.1.7 / UK Variant is perfectly covered by vaccines and natural immunity. Its "just" a more infectious variant. All we gotta do is vaccinate before it takes over, and we will be safe.

B.1.1.7 was inevitably going to become the dominant strain in the USA. Its significantly more infectious. We're not out of the woods yet, B.1.1.7 is just getting started. But with some luck, maybe it will run into a highly vaccinated population and be stamped out before major damage is done to us.

-------

B.1.526 is a new variant we're watching out for: the New York variant. Home-grown here in the USA, B.1.526 is our own more infectious version of the virus. Not much is known of it, aside from being also more infectious than the original. B.1.526 is probably too late however: its just getting started now and the vaccine gets distributed faster-and-faster each day. Similarly: as scary as P.1 and B.1.351 are, they seem to be "too late" to get a major foothold on the USA ("knock on wood").

B.1.1.7 on the other hand, is reaching critical mass and we're not fully vaccinated yet. I won't be surprised if B.1.1.7 is our "final boss", the last challenge before this is all over. Well, either that or P.1 / B.1.351 (since those two avoid the vaccine and natural immunity to some degree. So we might need a booster to win vs those two).

 

[claes]

I’ve been holding my tongue not to rain on anyone’s parade, but a fourth wave in the US seems inevitable. Even NYC is opening back up while infections have been at levels equivalent to last summer’s peak across the US. I appreciate that everyone’s fatigued and the economic ramifications, but there was no way we were gonna avoid another wave if states opened up months before we approach herd immunity. Last Friday saw the highest number of airline travelers since the pandemic began — it’s boggling to me that states are so willing to take these risks.

 

[Tatty_Two]

We got the UK variant under control ............. eventually, first significant cases mid December (although it was being monitored before that), by mid January it accounted for 70 - 80% of all new infections, the fact that the US is much less population dense may help but the only way we got it under control is to go into full lockdown on 4th January and we are still in that lockdown now apart from schools going back last week, albeit daily infection rates are right down to around 5k, I fear that the US is moving in the opposite direction in terms of restrictions, our hospitalisations alone at the peak (last week of January .... ish) had doubled on the peak of the first wave.

 

[Aiden_]

Thanks for the informative graphs and tables, although these are only confirmed cases and realistically, there could be up to 10x more.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Thanks for the informative graphs and tables, although these are only confirmed cases and realistically, there could be up to 10x more.

Not really.

%Positive is the main metric at figuring out whether or not your counts are accurate. When %Positive grows beyond 5%, then you know you're not testing enough in your community. When %Positive is below 5% (aka: over 95% of tests are negative), you're catching the vast majority of COVID19 cases.

That's why most of these states / communities / countries are reporting the number of negative tests.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Good example of shitty testing:

337.6% positive in Missouri. Uhhhh... what the hell? Well, for one day at least. They probably glitched their systems or something...

Available from JHU's COVID19 tracker: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/tracker/overview

 

[R-T-B]

Good example of shitty testing:

View attachment 193107

337.6% positive in Missouri. Uhhhh... what the hell? Well, for one day at least. They probably glitched their systems or something...

Available from JHU's COVID19 tracker: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/tracker/overview

Ah, the "show me" state really showing off their stats well I see.

 

[HTC]

Here are Portugal's updated numbers this week.



The pics are, in order, last day updated numbers and every day since then until yesterday's numbers (click for full picture), and the below numbers are current totals, week totals and daily averaged this week:

- 33443 active cases --- 4713 less --- 673 less per day
- 759417 recovered --- 7902 more --- 1128 more per day
- 16768 fatalities --- 84 more --- 12 more per day
- 817530 confirmed infected --- 3273 more --- 468 more per day

- 8502802 tests taken --- 268618 more --- 33577 more per day but was last updated March 19th and it includes antigen tests as well
- 1348331 vaccinated --- 184458 more --- last updated today but that corresponds to 902527 1st doses + 445804 2nd doses
- 765 hospitalized --- 211 less --- 30 less per day
- 170 in ICU --- 72 less --- 10 less per day

Hospitalized had another big decrease and ICU also dropped significantly. Daily fatalities continue to drop and we had days with under 10 fatalities, for the 1st time since the 2nd wave.

 

[kapone32]

Well it took pretty much a full lockdown and we are in to week 8 of that lockdown to get the UK variant under control and it still accounts for 90+% of all new infections but in that 8 weeks infection rates have been reduced by over 90% over what they were at the peak in January. If it takes hold in the US I fear for those states that may have fewer restrictions in place because these new ones are a whole different ball game and we know now there are some strong indications that those who would have a degree of natural immunity from previous infections are likely to have little defence against these newer strains.

The problem with the US is that many people attribute wearing a mask to an assault on their "freedom".

 

[kapone32]

Is it not insane that the whole human population may have to be vaccinated against this virus? Right now clinical trials are going on for kids as young as 3. We need to shut everything down for a month of 2 and have the governments help to pay for or provide survival material. I fear that the half hearted closures and ill advised re openings will extend the life of the virus as people become more frustrated with the conditions. If we are not careful it could lead to Apathy on the part of many.

 

[Vya Domus]

We need to shut everything down for a month of 2 and have the governments help to pay for or provide survival material.

That would probably be a catastrophe even bigger than what this virus did in a whole year.

We have to face the reality that it's never going to go away, even getting the entire population vaccinated, which is absurd, wont exterminate the virus. It's time we try and slowly go back to normal despite all of this, we have no other choice.

 

[dragontamer5788]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/astrazeneca-vaccine-trial-efficacy/2021/03/22/fc950a22-8aa6-11eb-a33e-da28941cb9ac_story.html

AstraZeneca’s vaccine is 79% effective in US-tests, higher efficacy than European tests.

The scientists said the data show the vaccine is 79 percent effective against symptomatic covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and 100 percent effective against severe illness. There were five cases of severe illness in the trial, all of them in the group that received a placebo.

So after much delay, AZ might finally be deployed here in the USA, increasing our vaccination supply dramatically (again).

 

[Tatty_Two]

The problem with the US is that many people attribute wearing a mask to an assault on their "freedom".

Well, wearing a mask is a little less important in a "full" lockdown where like here, with some exceptions a "stay at home" order has been invoked but obviously here they are required to be worn if for example you go into a Supermarket where by law you can be refused entry without one unless you can produce evidence of a specific medical condition where wearing one would be a risk.

I always simply look at vaccinations as a route to herd immunity but in a safer way, especially now as there is already significant evidence that people who had caught the original strain have little or no immunity against some of the new ones, at least if we get a variant that renders a vaccine relatively ineffective some of these vaccines especially the mRNA based ones can be adapted in 6 - 8 weeks apparently, but I agree, there is no easy answer.

 

[claes]

That would probably be a catastrophe even bigger than what this virus did in a whole year.

Catastrophe? Most major economies expanded... the only catastrophe was all of the dead people and cancelled plans...

We have to face the reality that it's never going to go away, even getting the entire population vaccinated, which is absurd, wont exterminate the virus. It's time we try and slowly go back to normal despite all of this, we have no other choice.

I was going to reply to your climate change post in earnest, but this post suggests you’re not really interested in things like logical proofs and sound reasoning as much as dropping bombastic political claims on the dl to own all the sheeple

 

[claes]

Edit: I’ll assume the laugh emoji and lack of a reply implies as much so much for “reason”

 

[dragontamer5788]

In my previous update, it looked like hospitalizations were transitioning from "downward trend" into a plateau. However, with spring-break COVIDIOTS going out everywhere + the more infectious UK variant becoming more-and-more dominant, it seems like the trend has fully reversed and hospitalizations are on the rise again.

%Positive has risen dramatically from ~3.5%ish to 4.5% (getting close to the 5% estimate where COVID data becomes less reliable). We never got back to "2nd wave" numbers.

Hopefully this is a temporary bounce upwards. But notice: hospitalization rates are going up, so its serious infections that are occurring. Despite ~20% of my state being vaccinated (and that's most of the older folk 65+), we're still seeing a dramatic increase in hospitalizations.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Oddly, as I mentioned in an earlier post, our 2nd/3rd wave (whichever it was I suppose) that peaked in January saw a definite increase in under 60's all the way down to 40's getting hospitalised than in the first outbreak, most of it was talked about with interviews on our news channels, the only factual thing in terms of stats I saw was that under 60 year year olds hospitalised increased by 42% across the UK in comparison to the first wave, the thing I don't know for sure is 42% more than how many.

This is a news article around a statement made on a government briefing on 11th January basically saying that as of then, running up to our peak 25% of all our hospital admissions were under the age of 55 and at that time there were 35,000 in hospital .....................

25% of Covid-19 admissions to hospital are under the age of 55, MPs told | Express & Star (expressandstar.com)