U.S. deaths reported per day
- The novel coronavirus has taken a heartbreaking health and
- economic toll in America. But the course of the pandemic isn’t
- the same as it was a few months ago. There are encouraging signs
- all over the country — but no early indications of an overall
- reopening. Nate Silver pointed out that the seven-day rolling
- average for deaths is 1,362, down from 1,761 the week prior and a
- peak of 2,070 on April 21. That’s still too much too high, but
- the trend is favorable.
Correction officers in New York City live in fear of bringing the virus home to families. They say the city has not protected them.
NY TIMES
For one Rikers Island correction officer, the low point came when he and his wife were both extremely sick with the coronavirus. She could hardly breathe and begged him to make sure she was not buried in a mass grave, he recalled. He was sure he had contracted the disease working in the jailhouse, where supervisors had discouraged him from wearing a mask.
“I’m looking at the person I care most about possibly dying from this thing I brought home,” he said, choking back tears. “That to me is the scariest thing I ever faced.”
Another officer at the Rikers jail said he worked for nearly two weeks while feeling ill but received no help from the jail’s administrators in getting a test. A third, who delivered mail to people in custody, some of them sick, was told he could not use a mask that he had at home but had to wait for a city-issued one. He, too, became infected.
The coronavirus has wreaked havoc on New York City’s 9,680 correction officers and their supervisors, who, like the police and firefighters, are considered essential workers. So far, 1,259 have caught the virus and six have died, along with five other jail employees and two correctional health workers. The officers’ union contends that the death of one other guard is also the result of Covid-19.
The virus has sickened more correction officers in New York, the center of the pandemic in the United States, than in most other large American cities, including Chicago, Houston, Miami and Los Angeles combined, according to data collected by The New York Times.
A majority of the officers in New York City are black and Hispanic and come from neighborhoods with high rates of Covid-19. Inmates also have also been hit hard: 545 have tested positive for the virus since the pandemic started, officials said. Three have died in custody, and two succumbed within hours of being released.
Correction officers and union officials have blamed the jail system’s management for the high number of infections. The union points to the department’s practice of asking officers to return to work after they recovered from the illness even if they had not yet tested negative for the virus. And they cited delays in providing many officers with protective gear during the critical month of March and failures to notify guards about colleagues who tested positive for Covid-19.
More than 160 inmates and 130 staff members at the Rikers Island jail complex have been infected with the virus.Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York TimesThey also have said that extra-long work shifts — sometimes 24 hours at a stretch — contributed to the epidemic among officers. At the peak of the epidemic, 36 percent of the uniformed jail staff called in sick, leading to long shifts for those still on the job.
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Coronavirus ‘does not spread easily’ on contaminated surfaces: CDC
DAILY NEWS
The uncertainty surrounding coronavirus has been a huge source of anxiety throughout this pandemic, as scientists have struggled to uncover not just a treatment for the disease, but also basic facts about its existence.
Though many have been concerned about infection through items like groceries or mail deliveries, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recently issued updated guidance saying that coronavirus “does not spread easily” from touching surfaces or objects.
“It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes,” the CDC says. “This is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads, but we are still learning more about this virus.”
The Striking Racial Divide in How Covid-19 Has Hit Nursing Homes
Homes with a significant number of black and Latino residents have been twice as likely to be hit by the coronavirus as those where the population is overwhelmingly white.
The coronavirus pandemic has devastated the nation’s nursing homes, sickening staff members, ravaging residents and contributing to at least 20 percent of the nation’s Covid-19 death toll. The impact has been felt in cities and suburbs, in large facilities and small, in poorly rated homes and in those with stellar marks.
But Covid-19 has been particularly virulent toward African-Americans and Latinos: Nursing homes where those groups make up a significant portion of the residents — no matter their location, no matter their size, no matter their government rating — have been twice as likely to get hit by the coronavirus as those where the population is overwhelmingly white.
More than 60 percent of nursing homes where at least a quarter of the residents are black or Latino have reported at least one coronavirus case, a New York Times analysis shows. That is double the rate of homes where black and Latino people make up less than 5 percent of the population. And in nursing homes, a single case often leads to a handful of cases, and then a full-fledged outbreak.
Disparity in the share of nursing homes hit
In many states, facilities with a population of at least a quarter black and Latino residents were more likely to have at least one coronavirus case.
The nation’s nursing homes, like many of its schools, churches and neighborhoods, are largely segregated. And those that serve predominantly black and Latino residents tend to receive fewer stars on government ratings. Those facilities also tend to house more residents and to be located in urban areas, which are risk factors in the pandemic.
Yet the disparities in outbreaks among homes with more Latino and black residents have also unfolded in confusing ways that experts say are difficult to explain.
The race and ethnicity of the people living in a nursing home was a predictor of whether it was hit with Covid-19. But the Times analysis found that the federal government’s five-star rating system, often used to judge the quality of a nursing home, was not a predictor. Even predominantly black and Latino nursing homes with high ratings were more likely to be affected by the coronavirus than were predominantly white nursing homes with low ratings, the data showed.
Cuomo: Westchester to reopen Tuesday as COVID-19 deaths drop below 100 for first time since March
The death toll dropped to 84 people Friday, the first time it’s dipped below 100 since the pandemic slammed the city and surrounding suburbs more than two months ago.
Cuomo called it a bittersweet benchmark that shows how far New Yorkers have come.
“It doesn’t do any good for those 84 families that are feeling the pain,” Cuomo said. 'But we are making progress and that feels good."
In the city, 52 people died of coronavirus in the 24 hours ending Friday evening. The total death toll rose to 21,138. There have been nearly 195,000 COVID-19 cases in the five boroughs.
Gov. Cuomo gave Westchester and the Hudson Valley the green light to reopen starting Tuesday as the coronavirus death toll dipped below 100 for the first time since the crisis erupted in March.
The governor also suggested hard-hit Long Island could start the reopening process on Wednesday if the death toll and case numbers keep dropping in Nassau and Suffolk counties.
U.S. government scientists finally publish remdesivir data.
Nearly a month after U.S. government scientists claimed that an experimental drug had helped patients severely ill with the coronavirus, the research has been published.
The drug, remdesivir, was quickly authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of coronavirus patients, and hospitals rushed to obtain supplies.
But until now, researchers and physicians had not seen the actual data.
The long-awaited study, sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, appeared on The New England Journal of Medicine’s website on Friday evening. It confirmed the essence of the government’s assertions: Remdesivir shortened recovery time from 15 days to 11 days in hospitalized patients. The study defined recovery as “either discharge from the hospital or hospitalization.”
The trial was rigorous, randomly assigning 1,063 seriously ill patients to receive either remdesivir or a placebo. Those who received the drug not only recovered faster but also did not have serious adverse events more often than those who were given the placebo.
