Hey all - sorry I missed April 18, so here’s a recap for the weekend. Happy Monday!

Summary

• Worldwide: 2,418,592 confirmed cases and 165,741 deaths; 633,067 recoveries

• USA now at 764,265+ cases

• Spain at 200,210, Italy at 178,972, France at 152,894, and Germany at 145,743. The United Kingdom (120,067) and Turkey (86,306) have also passed China’s confirmed cases tally.

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch

Now daily new cases: • Feels increasingly safe to say daily confirmed infections in US have peaked • UK testing less, so could be misleading • New cases falling in four countries that acted early: New Zealand (!), Australia, Norway, Austria All charts: ft.com/coronavirus-la…

April 18th 2020

239 Retweets388 Likes

Good places to find numbers and other Covid-19 info:

• Johns Hopkins Dashboard

• US testing tracking (US daily totals, as well as numbers broken out by state)

• New York Times Coronavirus

• Worldometers

• 1Point3Acres Dashboard

🇺🇸 US news

At a glance:

• Total confirmed cases at 764,265, 40,565 deaths

• New York (247,215 cases & 18,298 deaths), New Jersey (85,301 & 4,202), and Massachusetts (38,077 & 1,706) lead in case numbers

• Pennsylvania (32,734 & 1,237), California (31,527 & 1,177), and Michigan (31,424 & 2,391) are the next three states.

• Illinois (30,357 & 1,290), Florida (26,314 & 774), and Louisiana (23,928 & 1,296) are next. Texas continues to round up the top ten with 19,317 cases and 499 deaths.

• Testing total at 3,865,864 (up 167,330 from yesterday)

State and Local News

• New York Governor says if the trend holds, New York is past the peak of the pandemic. Governor Cuomo said “don’t get cocky, don’t get arrogant. This virus has been ahead of us every step of the way. This is only halftime in this entire situation.” 1,300 people were hospitalized in the past day in NY. (graphic from NYTimes)

  

• Various protests against stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns took place around the country: 2,500 people gathered at the state capitol of Washington (11,790 & 634), Montana (433 & 10) and Colorado (9,730 & 422) saw protests of a few hundred people, Michigan (31,424 & 2,391) saw a few thousand protestors, Maryland (12,830 & 486), Arizona (4,929 & 184), Indiana (11,210 & 562), and Texas (19,317 & 499) each saw a few hundred protestors in their capitals.

• After prisons, youth detention centers have become the next virus hotspot. The Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center has 25 inmates test positive, the largest of such outbreaks. There are also outbreaks in youth detention centers in Louisiana, Connecticut, and DC.

Trends

There are two ways to lower the positivity rate of tests: 1) test more, 2) have fewer positive cases. We can’t control option 2, but we can control option 1. We need to do more tests! New York is at 40% positive rate, while California is hovering around a 10% positive rate. In comparison, Germany is at 7% and South Korea is at 3%.

Scott Gottlieb, MD @ScottGottliebMD

Even as new #COVID19 cases start to decline across the nation, the positivity rates on #coronavirus tests being performed remain high -- reflecting an epidemic that's still underway.

April 19th 2020

642 Retweets1,427 Likes

🌐 International News

• 🇩🇪Germany (145,743 cases & 4,642 deaths) is doing widespread antibody tests. In the small town of Gangelt, they found that 15% of the population has antibodies. Bigger scale testing in cities like Munich and Berlin will tell a more nuanced picture.

• 🇧🇩Despite a national lockdown and a ban on mass gatherings, as many as 100,000 people gathered in Bangladesh (2,948 & 101) for the funeral of an Islamist leader.

• 🇫🇷More than 1,000 sailors (over 60%) aboard the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle test positive for Covid-19. Before France (152,894 & 19,718) went into lockdown, the ship was docked at Brest, where sailors were allowed to go ashore, see family, and visit shops & restaurants.

• 🇧🇷President Bolsonaro of Brazil (38,654 & 2,462) cheers an anti-quarantine protest that called for military rule. The president has been against the stay-at-home orders issued by state governors in the country.

• 🇨🇳Beijing, the capital of China (82,747 & 4,632), has announced that all business visitors staying in local hotels must take nucleic acid tests to ensure they don’t have the virus. China has already banned entry of all foreign nationals.

• 🇸🇬Singapore (8,014 & 11) just reported 1,426 new Covid-19 cases on April 20, vast majority of which are work permit holders residing in work dormitories. Initially praised for its containment of the virus, Singapore now the most cases in Southeast Asia. It is in a lockdown until early May.

• 🇭🇰Meanwhile, in Hong Kong (1,026 & 4):

  Alex Lam 林偉聰 @lwcalex

  Department of Health: No new #COVID19 case so far today for #HongKong. Daily press conference is also canceled, which means for the first time since 23 Jan Dr Chuang will not appear on TV. If no case emerge before midnight, today will be the first case-free day since 5 Mar.

  April 20th 2020

  8 Retweets15 Likes

Interesting Things

• Minnesota’s Covid website - together with data, dashboards, information, and FAQs.

• Asthmatics and smokers are both way less represented in those hospitalized by Covid-19 than expected.

• A tweet on the power of exponential growth:

  Do\n Syme @dsymetweets

  Exponentials still have the capacity to shock me. If mass wearing of masks make just 0.01 shift in the spread per day, from say 1.22x to 1.21x, there would now be ~20% fewer cases (and ~20% fewer deaths) in the UK since March 12. I had to double check that multiple times.

  April 5th 2020

  739 Retweets1,983 Likes

Quaran-tweet of the Day

Seth Rogen @Sethrogen

Really looking forward to being bad at making eye contact again.

April 19th 2020

3,873 Retweets16,800 Likes

• This is a work in progress, so please PLEASE let me know at dailycovid19updates@gmail.com if you have any suggestions, and/or see anything that is wrong or missing. You can also tweet me @julienchien