COVID-19 Update for June 22, 2020
The USA leads the death scoreboard by a wide margin; Houston surges
I hope everyone had a good, safe weekend. Here are the stories worth paying attention to, based on my expansive scans of news media and scientific literature. Paid subscribers have access to a searchable archive of prior day’s reports. Questions or comments? Please feel free to contact me.
A grim tally: The United States now has recorded more than 120,000 COVID-19 deaths — fully 25% of more than 469,000 deaths worldwide. Brazil and the United Kingdom rank Nos. 2 and 3 on the mortality scoreboard, according to Johns Hopkins University trackers.
Spikes of COVID-19 cases in Texas, California and other states are largely blamed on young people gathering in bars and other places without social distancing, masks or other precautions. Some of these cases are attributable to increased testing, since some of the new cases are people in jobs where testing has only recently been required or available. However, added testing does not correlate with the increasing numbers hospitalized. Public health experts worry that young people think they can avoid getting sick with COVID-19 and ignore the possibility that they bring the virus to others in their family or older people they encounter.
In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott and other officials are scrambling to respond to the upward trend. Over the weekend, 3,409 people were being treated for COVID-19 in Texas hospitals - the most ever, with continued increase expected. According to one noted expert, Houston could become the most-impacted city in the United States and potentially rival Brazil’s COVID-19 situation.
Once again, the New York Times has developed new charts that explain the current state of COVID-19 in the United States from multiple angles.
Chef Jose Andres and his Think Food Group have compiled an excellent guide for restaurants to reopen and keep both employees and customers safe while COVID-19 continues to spread. It covers how to retrain staff, what supplies are useful for new sanitation standards, and how to communicate with guests if an employee tests positive for COVID-19 infection. Though geared to the food service industry, much in this document applies to any business that caters to the public.
ICYMI when I shared this headline last week: This study in Health Affairs helps explain why masks or other face coverings are such an important tool for reducing the spread of COVID-19 in the United States.
Contrary to what many people may think, the CDC continues to advise people to stay home as much as possible because of COVID-19 circulating so widely in much of the United States.
The CDC updated its information on COVID-19 and animals. Bottom line: the virus can spread from humans to pets but animals are not considered a major risk for spreading COVID-19, according to the CDC.