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The global case tally of the coronavirus illness COVID-19 rose to 58.87 million on Monday, and the U.S. tally rose above 12 million, with new daily infections heading toward 200,0000 amid growing fears that Thanksgiving travel will spark a further U.S. surge.
The pace of spread is accelerating rapidly. It took the U.S. six days to climb to 12 million cases from 11 million, after taking seven days to rise to 11 million from 10 million and 11 days to get to 10 million from 9 million.
“Four days before a holiday with potentially the most indoor and in-person gatherings of the year in the U.S., the virus is here and more prevalent than ever,” said Raymond James analyst Chris Meekins.
The U.S. has averaged 171,461 cases a day in the past week, according to a New York Times tracker, a 54% increase from two weeks ago. Hospitalizations are setting daily records, too, according to the COVID Tracking Project. There are currently 83,782 COVID-19 patients in U.S. hospitals, topping the previous record of 83,227 set a day ago.
“ ‘Four days before a holiday with potentially the most indoor and in-person gatherings of the year in the U.S., the virus is here and more prevalent than ever.’ ”
Against the advice of public health agencies and experts, many Americans are traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday. More than 2 million people passed through U.S. airports on Saturday and Sunday, according to the Transportation Security Administration, as the AP reported. That’s just the second time since mid-March that daily airport screenings topped 1 million and shows that many Americans have decided to travel to see family, despite the recommendation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that this is one year to stay put for Thanksgiving and not mingle with people from outside one’s own household.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday he’s worried that crowds in airports will lead to more transmissions, telling CBS’s “Face the Nation” that people at airports “are going to get us into even more trouble than we’re in right now.”
Health-care workers are also calling on Americans to scale back their holiday plans. In an open letter, the American Medical Association, American Hospital Association and American Nurses Association urged everyone “to celebrate responsibly, in a scaled-back fashion that limits the virus’s spread, to help reduce the risk of infecting friends, family and others you love.”
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Since the start of the outbreak, holidays have tracked the same pattern of positive cases spiking some two weeks afterward. That happened after Memorial Day, after Fourth of July, after Labor Day and even two weeks after Halloween, they wrote.
“The record-shattering surge underway is resulting in uncontrolled community spread and infection that has already overburdened health systems in some areas and will ultimately consume capacity of our health care system and may reduce the availability of care in many places in our country,” said the letter.
Individual nurses are increasingly taking to social media to remind Americans that the coronavirus is real and deadly and to lament the politicization of the pandemic that has cost lives.
On a brighter note, the Census Bureau’s latest Household Pulse Survey found the majority of American adults have canceled Thanksgiving travel plans, according to the Demo Memo, a blog published by Demographer Cheryl Russell, who is a contributing editor for American Demographics.
Russell reported that 144 million Americans aged 18 or older said they cancelled one or more planned overnight trips to a place 100 or more miles from their home. That’s 66% of the adult population.
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What’s the latest medical news?
AstraZeneca PLC AZN, -1.48% AZN, -3.81% and the University of Oxford said their COVID-19 vaccine candidate was found to be as much as 90% effective in preventing infections, according to data from a late-stage clinical trial in the U.K. and Brazil, MarketWatch’s Lina Saigol reported.
That marks the third vaccine candidate to show high levels of efficacy, after Pfizer Inc. PFE, -0.64% and its German partner BioNTech BNTX, +2.81% requested emergency-use authorization for their COVID-19 vaccine candidate, shown to be 95% effective, in the U.S. on Friday. Moderna Inc. MRNA, +3.75% has said that its vaccine candidate is 94.5% effective and that the biotech company is also expected to apply for emergency authorization shortly.
Interim analysis from the Phase 3 vaccine trial found that the AstraZeneca experimental shot is 90% effective when administered as a half dose and then a full dose one month later. Effectiveness falls to 62% when two full doses are administered one month apart. AstraZeneca said there were no serious safety events related to the vaccine and it was well tolerated across both dosing regimens. Late-stage clinical trials of the vaccine are continuing in the U.S.
AstraZeneca’s vaccine candidate is viewed as promising, as it can be stored at normal refrigeration temperatures, easing the path to distribution. Both the Pfizer–BioNTech and Moderna vaccine candidates require low temperatures.
Separately, U.S. health officials said Saturday they have agreed to allow emergency use for a second antibody drug that helps the immune system fight COVID-19, an experimental medicine that President Donald Trump was given when he was sickened last month, as the AP reported.
The Food and Drug Administration authorized use of the Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. REGN, +0.97% drug to try to prevent hospitalization and worsening disease from developing in patients with mild to moderate symptoms.
Finally, the head of the U.S. federal vaccine development program Moncef Slaoui said the first immunizations could happen on Dec. 12. A U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory committee is scheduled to meet on Dec. 10 to review the EUA for Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE’s vaccine candidate.
Slaoui, head of “Operation Warp Speed,” the coronavirus vaccine program, says plans are to ship vaccines to states within 24 hours of expected FDA approval. Slaoui told CNN he expects vaccinations would begin on the second day after approval, Dec. 12.
Vaccine optimism sent financial markets higher on Monday with the Dow Jones Industrial DJIA, +1.30% recently up 154 points and the S&P 500 SPX, +0.71% up 0.3%.
In other news:
• Thousands of workers at Shanghai International Airport were tested for the coronavirus on Sunday, after an outbreak understood to stem from cargo, the South China Morning Post reported. An official said 17,719 workers from the cargo handling division were tested. By noon Monday, 11,544 were determined to be negative, while analysis of the remaining samples continues. High-risk workers will be inoculated with China’s experimental vaccine candidate, the official said. Shanghai has counted five new COVID-19 cases since Friday.
• Russia saw its biggest one day case load of 25,173 infections, the Guardian reported. The country’s coronavirus task force has reported 361 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the official death toll to 36,540. With more than 2.1 million infections, Russia has the world’s fifth largest number of cases after the US, India, Brazil and France, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.
• A Hasidic synagogue in Brooklyn planned the wedding of a chief rabbi’s grandson with secrecy and hosted thousands of revelers without face masks and without the city finding out in advance, the New York Post reported. The paper published videos showing thousands of guests crammed closely in the Yetev Lev temple in Williamsburg for the event which took place Nov. 8, singing, dancing and stomping without a single face mask. Williamsburg has become a COVID-19 hot spot as the religious community has persistently defied state and city restrictions on gatherings and refused to wear face masks.
• A Malaysian company that is the world’s biggest manufacturer of surgical gloves will close over half of its factories after a surge in coronavirus cases among workers, AFP reported. The company, called Top Glove, has seen a huge jump in demand for its gloves during the pandemic as many countries have scrambled to stock up on much needed protective equipment. But a cluster of virus outbreaks among Top Glove employees at factories in an industrial area near the capital, Kuala Lumpur, has now forced the shutdown.
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Latest tallies
The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide now stands at 58.8 million, the Johns Hopkins data show, and the death toll is 1.4 million. At least 37.6 million people have recovered from COVID-19.
Brazil has the second highest death toll at 169,183 and is third by cases at 6.0 million.
India is second in cases with 9.1 million, and third in deaths at 133,738.
Mexico has the fourth highest death toll at 101,676 and 10th highest case tally at 1 million.
The U.K has 55,121deaths, the highest in Europe and fifth highest in the world, and 1.5 million cases, or seventh highest in the world.
China, where the virus was first discovered late last year, has had 92,189 confirmed cases and 4,742 deaths, according to its official numbers.
What are companies saying?
• Guitar Center Inc. filed for bankruptcy Saturday, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to batter the retail industry. The retail chain, the largest seller of musical equipment in the U.S., said it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and plans to keep its nearly 300 U.S. stores open during the process. Guitar Center will seek to reduce its debt by $800 million. The company is saddled with $1.2 billion in long-term, high-yield debt, after it was taken private by Bain Capital in 2007 in an LBO valued at $2.1 billion.
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• Merck & Co. Inc. MRK, -0.61% is buying clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company OncoImmune for an upfront payment of $425 million in cash. OncoImmune shareholders will also be eligible to receive payments based on sales payments contingent the achievement of regulatory milestones. OncoImmune recently announced positive findings from an interim analysis of a Phase 3 study of CD24Fc for the treatment of severe and critical COVID-19. The acquisition is expected to close before the end of the year. “Recent clinical investigations support the view that CD24Fc may provide benefit beyond standard of care therapy for COVID-19 patients requiring oxygen support, and hence will represent an important addition to the Merck pipeline of investigational medicines and vaccines designed to address the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Dr. Roger Perlmutter, president of Merck Research Laboratories.
• Warner Music Group Corp. WMG, -3.29% reported a breakeven fiscal fourth quarter, missing expectations, although revenue rose slightly above forecasts. Revenue rose 0.2% to $1.13 billion, just above the FactSet consensus of $1.11 billion, as “robust” digital revenue growth was partially offset by a decline in recorded music artist services, and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on its music publishing business. “We’re essentially flat against a record-breaking prior year and, during the quarter, we grew 11% on an as-reported basis, excluding the revenue streams most impacted by COVID,” said Chief Executive Steve Cooper. “Our streaming growth has stayed strong, and we’ve also seen an acceleration in a whole spectrum of emerging revenue streams such as social media, gaming, and in-home fitness.”
