Corona-zona

A recent article in the New York Times details problems one pharma company is having getting approval for a new post-infection COVID-19 treatment. This post is your TL;DR for that article. Existing monoclonal antibody treatments have lost effectiveness due to new variants, and the only option for universal treatment at this point is Paxlovid. However, Paxlovid has worrisome interactions with other drugs, meaning some people can't take it. A company called Eiger Biopharmaceuticals developed and requested emergency use authorization from the FDA for a drug called  pegylated interferon lambda. Interferons are proteins that signal to your immune system that there is an invader that needs to be eliminated.   Interferon drugs are tricky because they signal your immune system to attack, and most kinds have receptors throughout the body. However, the company found a type of interferon whose receptors are specific to the respiratory tract. This means the drug could be usefu...

Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Statewide case rates have increased around 30%, close to what they did last week and less than they did the week before that. So although those are increasing, so far they appear not to be increasing at an accelerating rate.  The case graph even shows a little flattening over the last few weeks.   That is good. Maricopa County cases actually decreased a little. Deaths and hospital beds went up too, but not drastically. They remain at a fraction of their 2022 high values. Two of the wastewater locations had increases, with Yavapai posting another 2022 record (quite a few COVIDiots up there so this is not a huge shock). Mohave and Tempe wastewater values are down. All in all, it could be a lot worse—and it has been in the past. Hospital Beds Then and Now Last week I wondered how the hospital beds numbers in the current wave compared the the ones during previous waves. Fo...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Welp, last week I thought the early warning indicators might be leveling off but this week we see they are clearly headed back upward again. Hospitalizations are continuing to increase, but I don't think at the rate they were at the beginning of the year (I will try to compare the rates for next week's report). Case rates are up. Last week I did a post about how I'm seeing so many cases in my social circle, really more than at any other time in the pandemic.  In that post I cited a researcher who guestimated cases were eight times higher than what are being reported. Today I saw  this rticle about a not-yet-reviewed study that says they are 30 times higher! If that is true then we are at a case rate similar to January. And if so then the hospitalization rate looks pretty good. A couple of notes about the table: I changed to a Mayo Clinic site for the positive...

Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Just a couple of notes about the table. First, I have changed the one and four week absolute change values to percent increase/decrease. So for Maricopa County cases, the rate has increased by 8.9 from last week. If we divide by last week's rate and multiply by 100, we see that is a 52.1% increase. To me this is a little more meaningful than the raw number. Second, Sonora Quest has not updated its dashboard since I reported the values last week so I have not current or change values for that.  For what it's worth, Maricopa country reports  19% positivity, about the same as the last Sonora Quest report. Cases, deaths, and hospitalizations are all up. But those are lagging indicators, probably the result of what has happened over the last few weeks. The possibly good news is that (as just mentioned) positive tests may be stabilizing. Also wastewater signals have decrease...

Ugh, COVID-19 On Indefinite Repeat?   Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: A combination of wishful thinking and the desire to avoid being alarmist have so far kept me from saying we're in a fourth wave. But if it walks like a duck... This is the third week in a row we've seen week-over-week increases in cases and in the early warning indicators (positive tests and wastewater). Things I'm not happy to see are that, relative to the previous week's values:  Maricopa county cases have increased by 36% Statewide cases have increased by 31% Pima wastewater has increased 26% Yavapai wastewater has increased 94% and has set a new 2022 record Tempe wastewater is up a whopping 209%. Positive tests are only up a little, but up nonetheless. Public health officials caution that so many people are relying on home tests that are not reported, cases counts are significantly underestimated.  This could affect pos...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Everything is trending up except deaths and hospital beds. I expect those won't be too far behind. Also now there are increases over four weeks as well as over one week.  Though again—for context—we are not seeing values for anything as high as the worst this year, we are seeing upward trends now for three weeks, and the weekly change is increasing. This is almost identical  to what things looked like at the end of June and beginning of July last year when the Delta wave was cranking up. If this is a new wave, which it is starting to look like, we could be in for trouble. The Arizona health emergency declaration is cancelled. AzDHS has stopped reporting hospitalizations and is only reporting cases once a week. Federal pandemic money has dried up amid partisan squabbling , which means (among other things) no more free testing. Almost nobody is wearing masks anymo...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: This is not the data I was hoping to see today. Almost everything is up. Cases are up statewide, ending a three-week flat spot in the case graph. Cases have increased 25% in Maricopa County. Positive test percent is up, as is the wastewater signal in Pima County and Tempe (and again those values are lagged, from a week ago).  Deaths are up but those are lagging indicators that might be due to infections quite some time ago. Hospital beds are still flat, but those are lagging indicators too. The one bright spot is that Yavapai wastewater is down after a big spike over the last couple of weeks. Last week, there was no indication that the wastewater values corresponded to a lot of new cases.  Today the Yavapai County shows 25 new cases from May 3 to May 4, which is a different story. Unfortunately they don't provide historical numbers it's hard to tell if that's an...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday, as well as the most recent update of Pima County (it's back!) and Tempe wastewater surveillance: The table looks pretty good. The statewide case rate is down again, though looking at the case graph I note not back on the track is was on before last week's anomaly increase (due to adding old data). Death rates are up a little but only a fraction of a percent. Hospitalizations are level. The Pima County wastewater data has been restored at the CDC site. It's chart shows a kind of alarming increase of 1200% - 1800% over the last couple of weeks.  The same does not appear in the Tempe data. But if you look at their dashboard , which breaks out specific areas, there may be some action in the one covering South Tempe (my chart averages all areas).  Let's hope this is not an early warning of a new wave! Posts from the past seven days you may have missed New Variants ...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday, as well as the most recent update of Tempe wastewater surveillance: The most concerning aspects of the table and first graph is a rather large uptick in cases at the state level. Could this be the start of a new wave?  There is reason to worry because epidemiologists have warned that it is just a matter of time until the current wave in Europe makes its way over here. JP  Weiland, a scientist who does modeling of disease spread, tweeted a graph predicting that the decline in cases would bottom out this week and be followed by another period of increasing cases. I thought we were getting an early start on a new wave until I saw this tweet from Garret Archer, a data journalist who works for ABC 15. He was informed by AzDHS prior to this week's data dump that cases would go up due to a testing provider just now reporting some data that should have been reported i...

" Double ouch, double vaccination "  by  jacco de boer  is marked with  CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 .   The CSC has added new data on the risk of hospitalizations for unvaccinated kids 5-11 years old relative to those who are vaccinated. The data are from January, when the Omicron wave was still active. Here is their chart: If you divide the unvaccinated rate by the vaccinated rate and average over the five weeks represented, the ratio is 5.23 to 1.  In other words, unvaccinated kids in this age range were, during the period covered, on average more than five times as likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19. Granted, the risk is small either way. The highest rate, on January 22, was only 3.9 per 100K. But when it's your kid I'm pretty sure you'd prefer the risk 1/3 as high for the vaccinated group.

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Everything continues to look good. Case rates are essentially down to levels seen last spring. Hospital beds are declining and are below ten percent. There is a slight uptick in deaths, but it's a fraction of a case per 100K and it is expected for deaths to lag case declines. However, I worry this may be an "enjoy it while you can" situation. Case rates are increasing in Europe again due to the so-called "stealth" Omicron variant .  They have seen case rates roughly double from late February to mid-March. In Arizona, just yesterday it was reported to  account for 10% of cases in Pima County. Experience shows that what happens in Europe tends to happen here about two weeks later. Now, thanks to our leaders  failing a marshmallow test  and dropping reporting frequencies to weekly, we are not going to know the increase is hitting in Arizona until it...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Except for a fractional percent increase in deaths, everything continues to look good. The seven-day average of cases shown in the graph is comparable to levels last seen in mid-july last year when Delta was just cranking up. The curve appears to be continuing downward, so in another week we might be back to spring 2021 levels.  I take the Maricopa county numbers with a grain of salt. For one thing, the cases per 100K are reported "for the most current calendar week of data 02/27-03/05." So the numbers are lagged by five days. Second, I divide the number they list (55) by seven to get a seven-day average. It seems like an awfully big drop from last week, though not an impossible one. Third, none of their numbers line up with their "community transmission indicators." On a detail page they say total new cases per 100K in the range of 0-9 is low, 10-49 ...

  Unless you're an anti-vax moron, you already accept that vaccines are safe and effective. You also know that a booster is important to strengthening your immunity, and that this immunity is likely to be enduring . That all describes me, but even I didn't know how dramatic the effects of boosters really are. I found out last week, when AzDHS released an analysis of the effects of vaccinations on COVID-19 rates and outcomes. The bottom line (well actually top line) result is that, compared to people who are fully vaxxed and boosted, unvaccinated people have 11 times the risk of testing positive, 67 times the risk of being hospitalized, and 180 times the risk of dying.  Breaking out groups who are unvaccinated, fully vaccinated, and fully vaccinated plus booster, and looking at the Omicron period, there are few differences between the first two groups in case rates, and only a very small rate for the third. There are big differences between the first two on hospitalizations a...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: This is my first summary since the state switched to weekly reporting of data. Before I point out changes, I note that everything is moving in the right direction, and cases are moving below the levels from last fall's Delta surge, hopefully headed for near-zero. Changes As for changes, first, I an getting data directly form the AzDHS and Maricopa County dashboards. The former now updates on Wednesday, and the latter updates case numbers a day late, which is why I'll be posting this summary on Thursdays instead of Wednesdays.  Second, obviously the new cases graph can no longer show daily values, but will include numbers from every Wednesday instead. It's not quite as smooth but otherwise no big loss. Third, you will notice that the past values and change values for vaccinations are blank. That's because in researching the mystery surge in vaccination perc...

   Here is the Arizona pandemic numbers summary and graph of seven-day average of new cases for the week just ended:* This week everything is going in the right direction, even deaths for the first time in a long time. The only red numbers are from deaths over the last month and Arizona rank among states in vaccinations. The deaths aren't surprising since as noted before those lag infections. The rank has been dithering for some time now. One slightly discouraging thing is that the decrease in cases seems to be bottoming-out. Both state and county rates declined by 28 over the last week, but the previous week they declined by over 60, and the week before that by around 90.  The new cases graph seems to be leveling off too. Hopefully it will continue moving downward. We are still at a little more than double the case rate of last spring. The decline in new hospital beds may be leveling off too, according to the dual-axis graph. As with last week, decline in news deaths is ...

 Here is the Arizona pandemic numbers summary and graph of seven-day average of new cases for the week just ended:* Last week I speculated that we might be back to Fall 2021 levels by now. We are almost there, but the seven-day average departed from a linear decrease and began to tail-out this week, which it totally predictable.  It looks like another week should do it. The only question is whether we will continue to decline below levels from the fall, which would be awesome.  All the metrics except deaths continue to show steep declines. Again we see the same in the dual axis graphs for deaths and hospital beds. Deaths continue to lag cases, as is expected. Hospitals continue to see relief: One odd thing is that we continue climbing in the ranks of states' vaccinated percentage. We've been  averaging an increase of of about a half-percent a week since August. This means we're continuing to bang-out small increases whereas the states we are passing are not.  I...