Coronavirus update – April 29th
Bottom Line: This daily update is designed to put everything in perspective with straight-forward facts. No hyperbole, no misinformation, no nonsense. If you’re looking for optimism you can find it. 31 states, including Florida, are on track to enter phase one reopening this week. Importantly, though it’s early, there’s no immediate indication of spikes in cases coming from states like Georgia which began reopening measures last week. While the virus can incubate for up to 14 days according to the CDC and WHO, the average incubation period monitored has been five days. Today’s the 6th day for states which reopened last Friday. Additionally, Pfizer announced they believe a COVID-19 vaccine could be ready by this fall for use on an emergency basis. This is the earliest timeline we’ve heard from a major manufacture.
Here’s where we stand as of now...
Worldwide:
- 3,146,200 – 218,139 deaths – 961,785 recovered
Nationally:
- 1,035,765 cases – 59,266 deaths – 142,238 recovered
We experienced over 73,000 additional diagnosed cases and more than 6,400 deaths worldwide Tuesday. Fewer new cases but more deaths than the previous day. There’s improvement around much of the world, however cases are continuing to spike in Brazil and Russia. They're the world’s new hot spots. Russia’s 8th in cases and seeing the fastest growth in the world. In the United States, we had over 25,000 new cases and 2,463 deaths over the past day. After reaching a two plus week low in both categories on Monday – both of those totals rose on Tuesday.
One of the most positive developments over the past week, which continued Tuesday, was the improvement in closed case death rate. With nearly 1.2 million closed COVID-19 cases the death rate dropped to 18%. This is down from the recent peak of 21%. There’s been a considerable lag in clearly recovered cases in Florida and around the world so there’s room for optimism that this rate will continue to significantly decrease with time. For the month of April, COVID-19 remains the top estimated cause of death in the United States.