Nine days back I wrote about active cases of COVID-19 in Maine. Recall that the active infections we are tracking are among Maine residents who have either had a positive test, “confirmed” cases, or are “probable” (close contact with a confirmed case and meeting certain clinical criteria as defined by the CDC). These cases have not recovered or died, and are thus actively ill. As of yesterday there had been 424 probable cases and 3287 confirmed since testing began 131 days back. These numbers do not reflect those who were ill but never tested, and likely do not reflect the majority asymptomatic carriers, who for the most part have not been tested. The numbers also do not reflect out of state visitors who test positive in Maine.
In the July 11 post I discussed the bump in cases seen after Father’s day, and expressed concern about the possibility of the same following July 4. We have now passed two weeks since that holiday, and numbers of cases among Maine residents have been shared by the Maine CDC, as outlined in the above graphic (view the article on the website if you cannot see that). What the numbers tell us now is that we did fairly well for most of that two weeks. The number of active cases dropped to 385 on July 14, which was the lowest level we have seen since April. However, those numbers have since been slowly climbing, and the current number of active cases is 435. Recall that in Maine the peak of active cases so far was 714 on May 24. The current 7 day average is 22 cases per day (up from 15 on July 11). So far, 117 Mainers have died from COVID-19.
On Friday of last week Maine was one of three states in our country whose numbers were going down. My concern is that it appears our numbers might be starting to go up again. And, though it appears to me the number of out-of-state visitors is lower than normal, there are still many here. The concern expressed by many of my patients and their family members is that visitors tend to have a false sense of security when they visit here, saying to Mainers that there are practically no cases here, or that they don’t need to worry when they come here because the risk is so low. It seems lost on them that they are a risk to Mainers. Many are also not wearing masks, and don’t appear to be quarantining. This is how the virus is spread. Remember, a significant number of people will be asymptomatic carriers of this disease.
We are not doing a good job dealing with this virus in our country. The CDC found in late June that antibody tests in six different states showed viral exposure at a much higher magnitude than prior testing had revealed. After reviewing thousands of blood tests in each state, CDC estimated the differences between reported case counts and actual was as follows: western Washington State (11x higher than reported positive tests), New York metro area (12x), southern Florida (11x), Missouri (24x), Utah (11x), Connecticut (6x). But this is nowhere near the levels of infection we would need to see to have herd immunity, which would require somewhere north of 50% of the population immune (more likely over 70%).
As of today there have been 14,608,517 cases of COVID-19 across the globe, with 3,808,104 in the U.S. (26% of cases though we have just 4% of the world’s population). Our case numbers are now 11 times that of Mexico, 15 times that of Italy, 19 times that of Germany, 34 times that of Canada, and 45 times that reported by China-who hosts 36% of the world’s population. We have had several days with over 60,000 new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. lately and the trend is going up. Over 137,000 Americans have already died from COVID-19, and the CDC estimates the overall case fatality rate of COVID-19 to be 2.3%. That means for each day that we have 60,000 new infections, we can expect close to 1,400 additional deaths.
We are seeing more young people around the country with COVID-19. The problem with this is that although they are still at risk of serious illness or death, they are also more likely to have a minor illness or be an asymptomatic carrier. We need people to take this seriously.
It seems to me that although everyone knows about the virus, they are getting information from a lot of suspect sources. The CDC is a good source but I don’t think everyone is listening. There should be PSAs in all kinds of media about COVID-19 telling people how to avoid catching or spreading disease, how to wear a face cover or mask, how to do their part.
