Coronavirus update – April 21st
Bottom Line: This daily update is designed to put everything in perspective with straight-forward facts. No hyperbole, no misinformation, no nonsense. We entered the week with renewed optimism of the peak in cases being behind us nationwide and Monday did nothing to take away from that thought. Overall new case count, though still high, is below the trailing two-week trend line which is important to President Trump’s 3-phase plan for reopening.With several states meeting the phase 1 requirements, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Tennessee announced phase 1 reopening plans. Meanwhile, President Trump signed an executive order temporarily suspending new immigration into the United States until the national emergency has ended. We have data driven progress evidenced across the country as May has the appearance of being a much better month for us and likely people around the world.
Here’s where we stand as of now...
Worldwide:
- 2,484,314 – 170,501 deaths – 652,761 recovered
Nationally:
- 792,938 cases – 42,518 deaths – 72,389 recovered
Florida:
- 27,058 cases – 823 deaths (specific Florida recoveries aren’t disclosed)
We’ve experienced over 70,000 additional diagnosed cases and over 5,000 deaths worldwide on Monday. The news has been improving but clearly, we're not in the clear with the virus yet. In the United States, we had over 28,000 new cases and nearly 2,000 deaths. For the month of April, COVID-19 remains the top estimated cause of death in the United States.
The most disconcerting aspect of the virus remains the death/recovery rate based on closed cases. With nearly 825,000 closed cases, the death rate remained at 21% for a 16th-consecutive day. This after having reached a low of 6% in early March. More optimistically, new research suggests many COVID cases result in mild symptoms – likely showing we’ll have an overall outcome considerably better than those numbers currently suggest. Much is still unknown about why some are hit so hard by the virus while others aren’t. We’ve seen the death rate rise as the reach of the virus grows. The common pattern with the virus spreading is an increase in death rates with vulnerable early on, followed by improving rates overtime as people begin to recover.