Atlas tweeted out a graph showing COVID-19 cases spiking in recent weeks, emphasizing the relatively low and stable rate of COVID-19 deaths despite the fact that the virus is currently spreading unchecked across the country.
About 1,000 people are dying from the virus each day, and former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said this week that this will likely be the case for “a sustained period of time.”
As Atlas pointed out, the death rate does not appear to be spiking along with the case count, which is likely due to doctors having more knowledge on how to treat the virus after dealing with it for more than eight months.
However, doctors and researchers still do not know a lot about how this virus will affect people in the coming years. The rampant spread of COVID-19 across the country could lead to long-term negative health effects — potentially including heart and brain damage — for some people.
— Sara Boboltz
U.S. Sets Record For COVID-19 Cases Amid Election Battle — 11/5/20, 6:30 a.m. ET
States around the country set all-time highs Wednesday and the U.S. set another record for daily confirmed coronavirus cases as the country awaited results of the presidential race, the AP reports.
In the time until President Donald Trump’s term expires on Jan. 20, 100,000 more Americans will likely die from the virus if the country doesn’t change strategy, said Dr. Robert Murphy, executive director of the Institute for Global Health at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
Daily new confirmed deaths are at a record 7-day average of 86,352, according to Johns Hopkins University data. Deaths are up to an average of 846 a day.
“Regardless of the outcome of the election, everyone in America needs to buckle down,” said Dr. Susan Bailey, president of the American Medical Association.
— Liza Hearon
Cruise Companies Cancel Trips Through End Of Year — 11/3/20, 6:45 a.m. ET
Royal Caribbean Group, Norwegian Cruise Lines Holdings and Carnival Corp. will cancel most cruises through the end of the year, the companies said Monday.
The companies had already suspended cruises through Nov. 30 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, USA Today reported.
The cancellations follow a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “Framework for Conditional Sailing Order,” issued Friday. It stipulates that cruises sailing in U.S. waters would first need to do simulation sailings with no paying passengers on board to show compliance with CDC standards.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, some cruises have restarted in Asia and Europe with COVID-19 protocols, but ocean cruises have yet to restart in U.S. waters.
Cruise ships were vectors for the spread of the coronavirus in the early days of the pandemic with several outbreaks on board ships. Hundreds of passengers were quarantined off Japan for weeks on the Diamond Princess cruise ship.
— Liza Hearon
Record Number Of U.S. Children Diagnosed With COVID-19 Last Week — 11/3/20, 5:40 a.m. ET
More than 61,000 children were diagnosed with COVID-19 in the week ending Oct. 29, the highest number since the pandemic began, the American Academy of Pediatrics said Monday.
While it appears at this time that severe illness due to the coronavirus is rare among children, there’s a need to research the long-term impacts on children, including on mental and physical health, the academy said.
Children represented 11.1% of cases in states that reported their cases by age. The report found that, in October, the Western states of Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Utah reported the greatest rises in the number of children with the coronavirus. Overall, the percentage of pediatric cases nationwide has crept up, from around 2% in mid-April.
“It just keeps going from horrible to even worse,” said Dr. Greg Demuri, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at UW Health in Madison, Wisconsin, NBC News reported.
The U.S. has reported about 9.3 million cases of the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, with more than 231,000 deaths.
— Liza Hearon
WHO Indirectly Helped China Whitewash Its Early Failures In Handling Outbreak: NYT — 11/2/20, 7:45 a.m. ET
The World Health Organization may have botched its early investigation into the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic by bending to pressure from China, indirectly helping the country whitewash its initial failures in handling the outbreak, The New York Times reported Monday.
Though the WHO has led the world on COVID-19 testing, treatment and vaccine science, its quiet concessions to China have created a geopolitical divide: European leaders wants to reform the organization in light of its recent blunders while U.S. President Donald Trump has essentially abandoned it, withdrawing the U.S. from the group in May.
Meanwhile, the world ― with perhaps, the exception of China ― remains in the dark about the virus’s origins, which could be key to curbing its spread, preventing future outbreaks and shaping the global response to pandemics. Many scientists now doubt the initial theory that the outbreak began in a wet market in Wuhan, though evidence suggests the virus passed naturally from animals to humans, according to the Times.
Read more here.
— Hayley Miller
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