COVID -19 Update

United Stated
• The US continues to find more cases as testing continues to climb.
• Cases have remained around 25,000 for the past few days with Mother’s Day finding a new low of only 750 deaths and 20,000 cases. This decline is likely due to the holiday. In fact several states didn’t even report their cases for the day.
• Fatalities on Sundays and Mondays are consistently below the rest of the week so we should see a spike, especially after the lull on Sunday. Nonetheless the trend now appears to be improving.
• There is some concern that the US case count has been climbing excluding NY/CT/NJ markets. For now the data suggests this is true. But the increase in testing has directly led to roughly 5,000 additional cases being found per day.

United States Forecast Summary
• The total case count forecast range in the US remains between 1,600,000-1,900,000. The forecast for total deaths by mid-June remains between 110,000 and 120,000 and a new projection of between 130,000 and 200,000 by August 1st.
• The case fatality rate (CFR%) forecast has now decreased to 6.1% as the forecast now has a peak followed by a slow slight decline.

International
• Global case count has remained range bound in the 66,000-100,000 range. Russia, Brazil, India, the UK, Peru, and Mexico have been experiencing high case counts.
• Most are climbing at a slower rate. It will still take some time to extinguish the growth at these large, populated countries listed above so the case count may remain range bound for a few more weeks.
• Not all countries are actively fighting the virus. Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, continues to flout the risk of Covid and had even tried to host a BBQ this past weekend although it was cancelled at the last minute. He has also sacked his health minister. Still most of the 27 state and district governments are implementing mandatory quarantines. Nonetheless Brazil may remain a hotspot given the mixed messages.
• The Russian prime minister has been diagnosed with Covid.
• South Korea had no new cases last week for the first time since February but then experienced a spike in cases on Sunday with 50 cases mostly stemming from night clubs.
• China has also seen a bump in cases the past 2 days and had 14 cases Sunday.
• Denmark was the first country to partially reopen over 2 weeks ago and has not yet seen any reacceleration of cases.
• Cases in Africa continue to climb. While the growth rate is only 6% for the continent.
• Half of Europe’s entire case growth came from Russia on Sunday. India now makes up about a quarter of Asia’s daily increase.

A Word of Caution When Establishing a Back to the Office Protocol
If you are considering how to safely structure your back to the office policy I found this article to be insightful. There appears to be legitimate limitations with the 6 feet of separation in an enclosed indoor space.

This link was passed on to me by a close friend of mine –thanks Jim!
https://erinbromage.wixsite.com/covid19/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them

The article articulates the different ways that C19 has spread and finds the mass spreading events happen inside closed spaces –restaurants, offices, conventions, weddings, and similarly closed spaces with lots of people.

The reason for this is that there’s a level of virus particles that a human needs to be exposed to in order to become sick. Thus walking quickly by someone outside has a low probability of passing along the virus as there just isn’t that much time to breathe in or consume enough particles of the virus.

Unfortunately for offices, sitting inside of an open office architecture for an entire day has far greater risks. The six-feet of separation just aren’t all that helpful inside because of the duration of exposure. One of the best examples in the text takes place in an office in Seoul, South Korea where a single person with C19 infected 94 additional employees (out of 216 on the floor) over a week long exposure. Many appear to have been well over 6 feet away. Given the volume of the infections on the one side of the office it suggests the air’s saturation and duration of exposure is a major factor. It’s not even clear where the infected employee had been sitting because the virus was so widespread.

As business owners decide the best ways for employees to safely go back to work in offices and other tight, enclosed spaces this underscores the limitations to the 6 feet of social distancing. That might be quite effective outside, but inside a single individual has the capacity to infect a lot of people over a long period of time. That also might explain how some people have become super spreaders at various events. Nonetheless it likely means that simply spacing people at least 6 feet apart is nowhere near adequate.

Second Wave
Evidence for a second wave in Europe, the US, and Asia is likely to take weeks and possibly longer. If a closed economy slowly opens by 20% in the first week of reopening then that impact will be relatively small and may not be evident for a few weeks because of the incubation period, time to develop material symptoms, and time to receive results from testing. Even more of a factor will be individual behavior which won’t return to normal just because stores open. This should help keep chances for any second wave lower.

United States
Almost all states have reopened to varying degrees. Even NJ opened their beaches to some activities this past weekend.

Asia
Risks of a Second Wave: Asia – No Evidence of a Second Wave Emerging
There have been rumors of cases breaking out in China, especially in the northern part of the country but these are not showing up in any official statistics. Nonetheless things are stable in other countries.

1 https://covidtracking.com

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