COVID-19 Megathread 5: The Trumps catch COVID-19

[Tintrlvr]

Before anyone asks about the huge increase in Ohio the past couple days, it's because of a huge outbreak at a prison in Marion. The prison has 2,500 inmates, and 1,300 have just been diagnosed.

That's terrible!  Have their been any who died in that population?

I don't think any prisoners died, but I think a guard did.

It's been pretty recent, too, so deaths might not be showing up yet. Inevitably some people will die in a set of 2,000 cases. Marion County really sticks out on a per capita map. Almost 2,000 cases in a county of just 66,000 people. I believe it has the highest per capita rate of any county in the country now, or at least second to Rockland County, NY.

[Tintrlvr]

New York new cases dropped again today by a significant margin, again the lowest total since March 21 (down by about 600 cases since yesterday).

I'm a bit concerned that there has also been a drop in new tests in New York that may be contributing to the drop in new reported cases, although I suspect that has to do with rapidly dropping hospitalization rates and the fact that New York had basically stopped testing outside of hospitals as of a few weeks ago, so it's still good news, although the state should be taking the opportunity to ramp up testing outside of severe cases.

[Tintrlvr]

Italy now at it's lowest numbers since early March.

Spain now at it's lowest numbers since early March.

Germany now at it's lowest numbers since early March.

Japan's case rates are currently freefalling.

On the flip side, some countries that were late to the game, such as Russia and Turkey, are now seeing case surges.

Pennslyvania just recorded its highest # of deaths in a single day (360)

My data shows me that the most deaths in a day in PA from covid was on the 14th.

Today, PA reached it's lowest new case numbers since March.

That was yesterday. PA is up again significantly today in new cases, though still below most days in April.

Another prison in Ohio is reporting a major outbreak, this time in Pickaway County (south of Columbus).  Given those two outbreaks, I have to guess a lot of other prisons around the country are experiencing something similar but haven't reported figures publicly yet.

[Tintrlvr]

Am I the only person who legit thinks dine-in restaurants, malls, and theaters are done after this?

Restaurants provide an irreplaceable service. They will be back.

Movie theaters will probably struggle for a while, and the industry will need to reorient; theaters are going to become fewer in number and a less significant part of the movie industry as a whole. But they are also not replaceable completely by streaming services. They may become more oriented towards being a "higher end" or "luxury" part of the market, with higher prices and a more catered experience, where people go once every few months instead of trying to lure customers more frequently at rock-bottom rates, in order to distinguish themselves from streaming. (Not anything crazy but $20 tickets might become much more normal.)

Malls and department stores in particular are in deep trouble, but they were already in deep trouble pre-crisis; this is just accelerating their previously slow-moving collapse. There will be a lot of major retail bankruptcies over the next year. The NYT had an interesting article on the subject earlier today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/business/coronavirus-department-stores-neiman-marcus.html

[Tintrlvr]

I'm sorry, but if there is no hope of a vaccine happening anytime soon by this time next year, I'm just not going to care about any "social distancing" or whatever.

I have a less than 0.1% chance of dying if I even contract this disease, why the hell should I have to waste nearly my entire 20s being afraid of this? And I'm certainly not alone in this either.

If people can't develop immunity, as there have been hints of since the beginning, this may end up fundamentally changing our society. Obviously things won't remain exactly as they are now forever, but there will be significant change from the old "normal."

There have been literally zero hints towards this.

Yeah, for every chicken Little who vows not to leave the house or touch anyone for years and years until a vaccine is found, there will be 10 of us who won't. If the media ends its insane fear mongering thatd help. I don't see corona news having the same money making power after 6 months of nothing else.

It's already dropping off rapidly. Spikes in news viewership at the beginning of the crisis have disappeared, and ratings for news channels are not much different than they were pre-crisis. Mainly because there's no news, really: "Coronavirus still happening" doesn't draw the viewers in.

[Tintrlvr]

If people can't develop immunity, as there have been hints of since the beginning, this may end up fundamentally changing our society. Obviously things won't remain exactly as they are now forever, but there will be significant change from the old "normal."

There have been literally zero hints towards this.

'No Evidence' Yet That Recovered COVID-19 Patients Are Immune, WHO Says
Recovered coronavirus patients are testing positive again. Can you get reinfected?
Questions raised over COVID-19 reinfection after Japanese woman develops illness again

There's tons more, going back to at least mid-March, if my memory serves.

Don't call me a liar. I make sure my opinions are stated as such, and unlike many others, I don't make up information to suit my argument.

Anyway, my point was that we may see masks become part of daily life, as well as other things I can't think of but would be different than how life is now to keep the reproduction number down while the least vulnerable return to work. Life will be different.

The "Japanese woman gets reinfected" story was debunked almost immediately.

https://www.wired.com/story/did-a-woman-get-coronavirus-twice-scientists-are-skeptical/

The article about Korean patients being "reinfected" contains a very clear explanation of what was going on: "For now, the most likely explanation of why people are retesting positive seems to be that the test is picking up remnants of the virus"

Moreover, given the extremely low overall rate of infection in Korea, 2% of former coronavirus patients being infected again - when around 0.02% of the Korean population as a whole has been infected throughout the entire outbreak - would be extraordinarily unlikely. And Korea is one of the only countries where testing is very obviously sufficient to catch the vast majority of cases.

As for the WHO, they are just being extra-cautious and, for an institution that should realize its role is also public relations, overly scientific in their terminology. They didn't say there is any evidence whatsoever of a lack of immunity; all they said was that they don't have proof that there is immunity. The media is predictably terrible at understanding science and has interpreted it as meaning that there is evidence of a lack of immunity.

[Tintrlvr]

I don’t really see how this can be interpreted as evidence the lockdowns are working.  It’s seems just as likely to me that this is an inevitable consequence of approaching herd immunity, with about 25% of NYC’s population already infected.

If lockdowns worked, this decline would have happened much earlier.

Pandemics die down. People build up immunity, the seasons change, and things change.

Do you literally not understand, or simply refuse to, that the whole point of the lockdown isn't to magically eliminate the virus but to keep the numbers steady so the healthcare system isn't overwhemed?

If that were the point, we'd be doing measured reopening right now. The healthcare system isn't overwhelmed in NYC (any more), and the number of hospitalizations is dropping very rapidly. You couldn't completely go back to normal (i.e., you couldn't hold packed concerts or nightclubs, people should avoid very crowded public spaces like a rush hour subway car if possible, masks should be worn in public), but you could even have restaurants open with basic precautions if your only goal was to reduce the rate of infection to the point where the medical system wasn't overwhelmed.

It's clear that, while not overwhelming the medical system was the original stated goal for lockdowns, political forces have dictated that the point of lockdowns now is to eliminate or nearly eliminate the virus, even though that's clearly a wrongheaded and ineffective approach, because that's what the public has come to demand. You wouldn't be continuing a lockdown almost anywhere now otherwise.

As others have pointed out, the value of "not overwhelming the medical system" seems to be pretty low with this virus anyway. Ventilators have extremely low efficacy at saving lives (they may even be killing more patients than they save), and it doesn't seem like any major medical interventions are having any net effect whatsoever on overall mortality. We are starting to find certain drugs that may help (certain antivirals, some immunosuppressants, etc.), and there are basic interventions (like proning) that do seem to make a difference, but the need specifically for fancy medical equipment or highly equipped hospitals is just not there.

[Tintrlvr]

I don’t really see how this can be interpreted as evidence the lockdowns are working.  It’s seems just as likely to me that this is an inevitable consequence of approaching herd immunity, with about 25% of NYC’s population already infected.

If lockdowns worked, this decline would have happened much earlier.

Pandemics die down. People build up immunity, the seasons change, and things change.

Do you literally not understand, or simply refuse to, that the whole point of the lockdown isn't to magically eliminate the virus but to keep the numbers steady so the healthcare system isn't overwhemed?

The goal of the lockdown was to reduce total infections.  That’s what all the models told us would happen. But the models were wrong in many ways.  The models way underestimated the contagion of the virus and overestimated its lethality.  The lockdowns have almost completely failed to turn the spread negative, and by bluntly forcing a one-size-fits-all approach, they have increased the deaths that will result from the virus by failing to better protect the most vulnerable.

That is the exact OPPOSITE of what the models ever told anyone. The models are a function of number of cases over time. The whole point of flattening the curve is to have the same number of cases over a longer time span so that the system is not overwhelmed (see below).



The number of cases under the peak is the same over a longer period of time. Anyone with a basic understanding of mathematical functions can understand this. Your understanding of the models is flawed, and so is your argument by derivation.

You can't misinterpret information, assign it a different end game, and then call it a failure because it doesn't fit that interpretation. Please read up more on this information.

Finally, we don't have lockdowns. We have stay at home orders, which are far less restrictive, and a good number of people aren't even following them; there are some of those people even within our own forum community.

You can just glance at this model and see how wrong it was.  The model shows a symmetrical increase and decrease in cases.  That’s not what’s happening in the US, and it is not what’s happening anywhere that’s had a major outbreak.

And if you do believe this model, I guess that means that you accept that at least 70% of the population will end up being uninfected even with restrictions in place indefinitely.  So if it can be shown that the health care system will not be overwhelmed if restrictions are removed, you would be perfectly happy to do this, regardless of how much it would increase infections?

Someone should do a national poll asking the question: Would you support the current restrictions if you they would lead to a 70% chance of you and your family being infected?

"You can just glance at this model and see how wrong it was.  The model shows a symmetrical increase and decrease in cases.  That’s not what’s happening in the US, and it is not what’s happening anywhere that’s had a major outbreak."

Indeed. The model is... a model... not a calculation of what's actually going to happen or is currently happening. It is a model... of a goal that we need to approximate as much as possible.

"And if you do believe this model, I guess that means that you accept that at least 70% of the population will end up being uninfected even with restrictions in place indefinitely."

Yes, the model does say that.

"So if it can be shown that the health care system will not be overwhelmed if restrictions are removed, you would be perfectly happy to do this, regardless of how much it would increase infections?"

Correct. That's the point that health experts and health economists would say: 'okay, we did what we needed to do, and we're good to go.'

"Someone should do a national poll asking the question: Would you support the current restrictions if you they would lead to a 70% chance of you and your family being infected?"

That's not the point of it at all. First of all, the model predicts that about 70% of the population will end up with COVID-19 at some point, but it does not mean that every individual has a 70% chance of being within that 70%. That's a clear misunderstanding of the data.

So the IMHE model predicted that if we implemented restrictions, there would be basically zero deaths after June 1.  How does this square with a very long "flatten the curve" model?  How does this square with 70% of the population getting infected?  Under this scenario and a 0.6% IFR, aren't about a million people going to die regardless?

Maybe we should rephrase the polling question to "Would you support the restrictions if you knew they would not reduce the total number of people infected?"

I really think people believe that the restrictions are eventually going to eradicate the virus and prevent them personally from getting infected.  If they knew the result was that they would still very likely get the virus slightly later, I don't think people's view of them would be the same.

Absolutely true. And then there are people who openly talk, both here and elsewhere, about lockdowns persisting until there is a vaccine, or until there is a clearly established medical regimen and death rates drop, or until other such benchmarks. That's not flattening the curve.

There's no doubt that the original point was to "flatten the curve": not reduce the overall number of cases, just spread them out over time. There's equally no doubt that the ongoing decision to persist in the current policy is not driven by flattening the curve (or at least, by what was originally meant by flattening the curve) but rather by a public belief that the virus will be eliminated. "Defeat the virus" is the current slogan. It's true that the lockdowns proved "too" effective for flattening the curve; they aren't just flattening the curve, they're driving the curve downward. But the belief seems to be that the lockdowns can defeat the virus. The experts don't seem to think so, and so the lockdowns are just prolonging the inevitable with extra pain (and making it take longer, for no medical benefit, as compared to more measured approaches that would actually flatten, instead of temporarily invert, the curve).

[Tintrlvr]

These results are all preliminary tests on small samples (<100 patients) but several studies are finding early signs of longer-lasting lung damage to severe COVID patients that's consistent with but likely more damaging than other SARS and MERS infections.

link (Science News)

Some patients who survive COVID-19 may suffer lasting lung damage

[...]

The tissue lesions can be a sign of chronic lung disease. Similar damage has been documented in survivors of SARS and MERS, respiratory diseases caused by coronaviruses similar to the SARS-CoV-2 virus behind COVID-19. Long-term studies of SARS patients have shown that roughly a third of people who recovered from severe bouts were left with permanent lung damage. In the case of MERS, one study found about a third of people who recovered from a serious infection still had signs of lung damage about seven months later.

But while initial lung images indicate that SARS and MARS typically set into just one lung, COVID-19 appears to be more likely to afflict both lungs right away. In 75 of the 90 patients admitted to Huazhong University Hospital with COVID-19 pneumonia from January 16 to February 17, damage was seen across both lungs, Wang and colleagues report. CT scans taken before hospital discharge revealed that 42 out of 70 patients displayed the type of lesions around the alveoli that are more likely to develop into scars.

[...]

Some lung damage seen in the Wuhan study cases are likely to gradually heal or disappear, Wang and colleagues suspect. However, in some patients, lung abnormalities will harden into layers of scar tissue known as pulmonary fibrosis. That scarring stiffens the lungs, making it hard to get enough oxygen. People with pulmonary fibrosis typically suffer shortness of breath, limiting their ability to be physically active.

[...]

Article suggests a lot of this is due to the cytokine storm. There's some other interesting stuff in here like about how ventilators use is associated with longer-term damage (causation seems hard to determine here).

Here's one of the studies quoted in the article. 60% of patients featured still featured lung scarring upon discharge and all but four patients had "mild to substantial" lung abnormalities upon discharge. It looks like the scarring improved for some patients over the course of infection, though, so there's still some potential for recovery after discharge. Mean age in the study was 45.

There's also the long-term effects of heavy ventilator use, again highlighting the problem with ventilators as a medical intervention in coronavirus cases. The reason for very low oxygen levels in coronavirus patients is primarily that the virus seems to attack the ability of the lungs to uptake oxygen. Ventilators don't do anything to increase the ability to uptake oxygen but rather improve breathing itself and push oxygen into the lungs. But coronavirus patients aren't failing to breathe (compared to other severe pneumonia cases, their lungs are quite plastic); they're failing to uptake the oxygen that is reaching their lungs. So the ventilators are only causing severe pressure on the lungs, and also pumping very high concentrations of oxygen, which are themselves corrosive, without addressing the underlying issue. So of course people who have had their lungs filled with excessively concentrated oxygen pumped in aggressively and to high pressures by a ventilator are going to have lung problems for the rest of their lives.

[Tintrlvr]

For the first time since March 18, a state other than New York reported the most new deaths in a day. 335 new deaths reported in NY vs. 398 in NJ today. (On March 18, NY reported no deaths at all and WA reported 14 deaths; NY has been the highest reporter every day since.)

[Tintrlvr]

Mask orders continue to spread across the country. Andy Beshear is now mandating all Kentuckians to wear masks in public by May 11: https://www.wkyt.com/content/news/WATCH-LIVE-Gov-Beshears-daily-COVID-19-update-569985941.html. Apparently, the general public will not be cited if they don't wear them, but they will be "asked" to put them on, and it will be mandatory for essential employees in businesses. The city of Birmingham, Alabama, is also making masks mandatory in public: https://www.al.com/news/2020/04/birmingham-eyes-requiring-masks-in-public.html. And in Colorado, Aspen is also requiring masks: https://denver.cbslocal.com/2020/04/28/face-masks-mandatory-in-aspen/. Both Birmingham and Aspen will fine residents if they don't wear masks. Aspen is the first place in my home state that I am aware of that is making it mandatory.

How long do these mandatory masks orders last for I've seen as soon as they can last a year

Honestly why would this be a big deal? Mandatory masks in public spaces are much less intrusive than various closure/lockdown/stay-at-home rules.

[Tintrlvr]

IHME model now revising the death toll up to 74k by August 1st and that most states should not begin to reopen until late June. I don't know what is going on with this model.

It's strange as we have been undershooting their projected deaths by quite a bit (i.e., in the previous projection, they were forecasting about 55,000 deaths by yesterday, but we had only reached 50,000 deaths by then). I think a big part of the shifts are due to reopenings (i.e., there was a big bump in their projection for deaths in Georgia). But that doesn't seem to be taking into account the behavior of the public and assumes people are behaving exactly as they were in February.

Also, they are predicting deaths per day nationwide to be under 100 on May 27 and under 10 on June 17 so it's really a projection through mid-June. They're projecting a total of around 10 deaths in the entire month of July, e.g.

[Tintrlvr]

Why did NY cut off a lot of its testing?

It has popped back up more recently. There seems to be enormous variance day-to-day. Saturday had by far the most test results reported of any day so far in the entire pandemic (nearly 47,000), with Friday (34,000) and Sunday (27,000) also big days, though there's been a drop off Monday and today. I wonder if maybe some labs in NY are bundling results and only reporting on certain days of the week.

The tests:positives ratio is still way down, so the results are still quite good (and testing isn't down on net over, say, a week-long period - you just happen to be looking at a low cut-off day).

https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Tracker/NYSDOHCOVID-19Tracker-DailyTracker?%3Aembed=yes&%3Atoolbar=no&%3Atabs=n

[Tintrlvr]

Reopening schools should be much more of a priority than returning to work right now.

Seems like simply more evidence, along with climate change denial, that people really don’t care very much about the welfare of future generations.

I think parents freak out about their children getting sick more than about they themselves getting sick even though the risk to children from the disease is near-zero.

And I do think people probably care more about their immediate paychecks than long-term investment in their children's education (which isn't totally crazy if you're in a position of not being able to pay rent/buy food/whatever).

[Tintrlvr]

Latest cumulative European case & death graphs (5-day weighted average).  Continued steady progress in Italy and Spain, but no sign that America has significantly declined from its peak death numbers.

The US figures are awkward because New York used to dominate daily deaths but is now well past peak and significantly declined, while many other states with lower overall deaths are still at or before peak in daily deaths.

[Tintrlvr]

For the fourth day in a row, New York is not the state reporting the most deaths. For three of the past four days, it has been surpassed by New Jersey. (New York was surpassed by Pennsylvania but not New Jersey on April 29.)

This is of course good news for New York, which dropped below 300 deaths a day (to 289) for the first time since March 30 today, down more than half from its peak of 799 deaths on April 9. But not good at all for New Jersey. Also a bad sign for the rest of the country as deaths nationwide are up since April 9 despite the dramatic fall in New York. To put it in perspective, deaths in New York made up not too far short of half of deaths nationwide on April 9 but less than a sixth yesterday, and probably even lower today once we get updates from every state. This is less and less a New York crisis and more and more a national crisis.

[Tintrlvr]

2nd highest number of cases today.

Deaths are down some though.

The new case numbers are not very important.  Since we are only identifying a small fraction of actual infections, this is mostly a function of testing, and we had a record number of new tests today.

Deaths are a much more important stat, especially deaths outside of New York, since the decline in NYC can be attributed to progress toward herd immunity.

Testing is also a lot higher now than a few weeks ago.

Still, some states, such as Illinois, are showing worrisome increases that are not entirely explained by expanding testing.

[Tintrlvr]

2nd highest number of cases today.

Deaths are down some though.

The new case numbers are not very important.  Since we are only identifying a small fraction of actual infections, this is mostly a function of testing, and we had a record number of new tests today.

Deaths are a much more important stat, especially deaths outside of New York, since the decline in NYC can be attributed to progress toward herd immunity.

We are not trying to get herd immunity through infections! I am not sure why you keep repeating this line. Any effort to accomplish herd immunity would be hugely destructive even if we could somehow limit infection just to people we suspect are more resilient. We are trying to stall transmission until there's a vaccine so we don't overwhelm hospitals. That's it.

The decline in New-York-City-area deaths, which you are attributing to herd immunity, also just so happens to coincide with a massive and successful lockdown. Are you saying that's a coincidence? What do you think the true death rate of this disease actually is?

I think he’s working off an assumption on those antibody studies that 25% or so of New Yorkers have or have had the virus.

It is also true that cases and deaths are declining significantly in New York, while they are mostly just flattening (or even still increasing somewhat) in places like Illinois and Massachusetts that have had basically the same policies in place as New York for the same period of time. It does feel like something different may be happening in New York. 25% immunity, particularly concentrated in vulnerable populations likelier to be exposed (people still commuting by subway or working in healthcare fields, e.g.), would definitely be high enough to start making a real dent in infections all by itself.

[Tintrlvr]

A new study shows just how badly black people have been hit by Covid-19
The number of cases and deaths in minority communities compared to white ones is staggering.

There are some recent reports that high levels of mortality may be associated with Vitamin D deficiency, which is a problem for everyone but particularly acute for people with darker skin tones.

[Tintrlvr]

If the task force is disbanded, I don't think we'll ever be free of this pandemic. Not until we have a vaccine, which might never happen; we've never created a vaccine for a coronavirus.

We would have to learn to live with it, although I think it's impractical to expect social distancing, masks, and all the rest to continue indefinitely. Our society eventually acclimatized itself to HIV/AIDS, to give an example of what the path forward might look like if there is no vaccine.

HIV/AIDS is much easier to prevent transmission of. If this coronavirus is truly with us forever, we're looking at an eventual herd immunity scenario as the only realistic ending. Of course that probably means 1-2 million deaths.

We are only looking at 1-2 million deaths if we achieve herd immunity through a random spread throughout the population.  If we had targeted infections among the young and healthy, we could achieve herd immunity much more quickly with likely under 100,000 deaths.

Those are still huge numbers, that's insanity.

We're going to hit 100,000 deaths with the current scattershot approach by the end of June at the latest anyway.

[Tintrlvr]

If the task force is disbanded, I don't think we'll ever be free of this pandemic. Not until we have a vaccine, which might never happen; we've never created a vaccine for a coronavirus.

We would have to learn to live with it, although I think it's impractical to expect social distancing, masks, and all the rest to continue indefinitely. Our society eventually acclimatized itself to HIV/AIDS, to give an example of what the path forward might look like if there is no vaccine.

HIV/AIDS is much easier to prevent transmission of. If this coronavirus is truly with us forever, we're looking at an eventual herd immunity scenario as the only realistic ending. Of course that probably means 1-2 million deaths.

We are only looking at 1-2 million deaths if we achieve herd immunity through a random spread throughout the population.  If we had targeted infections among the young and healthy, we could achieve herd immunity much more quickly with likely under 100,000 deaths.

Those are still huge numbers, that's insanity.

We're going to hit 100,000 deaths with the current scattershot approach by the end of June at the latest anyway.

Yeah but that doesn't mean it's not a completely unacceptable outcome.

I don't understand what you're saying. There isn't an alternative where 100,000 people don't die. There is no acceptable outcome by your standard.

[Tintrlvr]

Why the increase in deaths? Backlogged?

PA reported over 500 deaths today vs. just 14 yesterday. NJ and GA also had huge spikes. All three of those states have been pretty inconsistent in reporting deaths; they seem to be bunching their reporting so most deaths in a week are reported on just some days.

NY did not report the most new cases today for the first time since March 14 (NJ reported more).

[Tintrlvr]

Until we get a vaccine or a very strong treatment that will reduce the risk of mortality to a very low level socially distancing in masks in public are going to be a thing. This is kind of why I'm hoping that the Oxford vaccine ends up working because it works so we can get a vaccine by September life can start to go back to normal around election time and for the holidays.

 but until either one of those two things happen we just have to accept we're going to live in a new reality

Depends what you mean by "social distancing". Shutting down, for example, crowded concert venues might continue indefinitely, but the types of general shutdowns we have now are not going to last much longer anywhere, certainly not until September let alone later.

Mandatory masks are a kind "of course" solution that is really very non-intrusive (much less so than any of the social distancing requirements) and may be in place indefinitely as well. The only reason it wasn't in place earlier was because masks were so difficult to obtain in March/early April.

[Tintrlvr]

This poll question is so unhelpful as a way to frame the policy debate.
For people who are saying restaurants are “safe”, are they saying this because they think they are unlikely to get the virus if they go to a restaurant, or they think they are likely to get the virus, but that getting the virus is not unsafe for them?

"Would you go to X?" is the formulation that I've seen in other polls and IIRC the numbers are lower across the board among Republicans.

I assume you mean the numbers are higher across the board for Republican than Democrats.
I’m not denying that at all.
It’s just that in terms of public policy framing, it seems much more important to understand -why- people would describe this as “safe” (or be willing to go to).  I’ve seen very little polling on what exactly people understand and believe about the virus and its consequences.

Undoubtedly the public has completely wrong and uninformed views about the virus in a wide variety of disparate ways (you'd get a big portion who think "about half" of people who get sick die and another big portion who think "no more than die from the flu" if you prompted both answers, e.g.). That's just par for the course.

[Tintrlvr]

The new positives rate (as a percentage of tests performed) in New York dropped below 10% for the first time since March 8 (when there were only 307 tests and 22 positives) today. Progress continues to be made here.