Welcome to COVID-19 daily briefing newsletter which is your place to discover daily news and numbers, backed by links to reputable and official sources.

Percentage of positive cases as indication of how bad the outbreak will be in a country

Business Insider compares number of tests performed by countries to their population to show how the US is behind other countries.

For me, another metric is very interesting: percent of tests which were positive. It is an indicator of how much actively a country is trying to find infected people.

If a country has eg. 30% positive tests, they are probably testing only people who are very obviously sick, while so many more people walk around the streets spreading the virus further. Such countries should get ready for things to get bad.

If a country has very low number of positive tests, it means they are testing massively, actively trying to find all infected people and stop the outbreak. They might have a chance to actually contain it.

I took the above numbers of performed tests and compared to number of cases at the same dates. Then I compared deaths/cases ratio for these dates as well. Here are results with countries sorted by percentage of positive tests:

Opinion: I think that the USA should prepare for a wild ride and they might get hit worse than Italy. Possibly even worse than Wuhan, unless the country radically changes their approach to testing and take drastic measures (lockdowns) to contain the outbreak.

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Worldwide

WHO has finally decided to…

United States

USA reports only 47 new cases today, for a total of 1,056, a 4.7% daily increase. One more death for a total of 29. Death/cases ratio is now 2.75% in the US.

First drive-thru testing stations are being opened in the US.

History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes. Below is an illustrated lesson from the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemics. While St. Louis banned all public events and gatherings over 20 people quickly after discovering first cases, Philadelphia organised a public parade for 200,000 people. Net result was two times higher number of deaths per capita in Philadelphia during the outbreak timespan. Early action saved thousands of lives in St. Louis. More in Quartz article.

The Week’s story shows how badly federal authorities seemed to not want to find any cases: A Seattle lab uncovered Washington's coronavirus outbreak only after defying federal regulators.

The White House is trying to limit information flow about the outbreak.

The White House has ordered federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government’s response to the contagion, according to four Trump administration officials.

Italy

Italy reported a record number of 196 deaths today and they have 827 deaths in total, 31% more than yesterday. Also a record of 2,313 new cases, for 12,462 total, 23% more than yesterday.

Italy extends lockdown measures:

Shops – barring supermarkets, food stores and chemists – will be shut down, while companies must close all their departments that are not essential to production. Services such as hairdressers and beauty parlours will also be closed, along with bars and restaurants that cannot guarantee they can keep a distance of at least one metre between customers.

As previously seen in Wuhan, it can also be clearly noticed in Italy that lockdown is working [Italian]. Codogno, one of two major clusters, reported no new cases yesterday for the first time since the outbreak.

This follows yesterday’s news about number of cases beginning to fall in the 11 towns that first went into quarantine (including Codogno):

Across the 11 towns that went into quarantine more than two weeks ago, the number of cases is beginning to fall. “In the province of Lodi, and even more so, in Codogno, there’s a net reduction in the number of positive cases,” said Giulio Galleria, the welfare councillor for Lombardy, the region worst affected.

Stay Safe

CNN after Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: Take this seriously. Coronavirus is about to change your life for a while.

"We would like the country to realize that as a nation, we can't be doing the kinds of things we were doing a few months ago. It doesn't matter if you're in a state that has no cases or one case,"

Science

A paper (non-peer reviewed) by scientists from National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Lab, Princeton University and the University of California claims that the virus can stay up to 3 hours in the air. They don’t claim you can be infected by breathing such air, but they were able to detect the virus after 3 hours in the air:

For this study, researchers used a nebulizer device to put samples of the new virus into the air, imitating what might happen if an infected person coughed or made the virus airborne some other way. They found that viable virus could be detected up to three hours later in the air, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel.

Numbers

6,709 new cases worldwide, 125,472 total (+5.6%).

Record 319 new deaths, 4,603 total (+7.4%).

Numbers are accelerating worldwide. Several countries reported their highest ever daily cases increases.

America:

USA: Only 47 new cases reported (compared to 325 yesterday). 4.7% daily increase to 1,056. 1 more death (29 total).

Europe:

Italy : Record 2,313 new cases, 12,462 total and 23% daily increase.

Record 196 new deaths (827 total).

France : Highest ever 497 new cases, 2,281 total (28% daily increase).

Record 15 new deaths (48 total).

Germany : 343 new cases, 22% increase to 1,908. 1 new death (3 total).

UK : 77 new cases, 460 total (+20%). 2 new deaths (8 total).

Sweden : Record 174 new cases, 500 total (+53%). First death.

Spain : Record 582 new cases, 2,277 total (+34%).

Record 18 deaths (54 total).

Belgium : 47 new cases, 314 total (+18%). First death.

Austria : Record 64 new cases, 246 total (+35%). No deaths yet.

Switzerland : Record 151 new cases, 642 total (+31%). No new deaths (2 total).

Norway : Record 198 new cases, 598 total (+50%). No deaths yet.

Denmark : Record 178 new cases, 442 total (+67%, and 5 times more than two days ago). No deaths yet.

Netherlands : Record 121 new cases, 502 total (+32%). 1 more death (4 total).

Czech Republic : Record 30 new cases, 91 total (+49%). No deaths yet.

Portugal: Record 20 new cases, 59 total (+51%). First death.

Asia:

Japan : 67 new cases (highest ever) increased total number by 12% to 634.

Record 5 deaths (15 total).

South Korea : 242 new cases, 3% daily increase to 7,755. 6 new deaths (60 total).

Iran : 958 new cases, 9,000 total (+12%). Record 63 deaths (354 total).

Bahrain : Record 79 new cases, 189 total (+72%). No deaths yet.

Qatar: Record 238 new cases, 262 total (11 times more than yesterday). No deaths yet.

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