By the Numbers
The Numbers: The rate of daily
new cases has bottomed out nationwide and is now increasing by about .59% per day for the last 13 days.
Whether or not this will turn into a "surge" or not waits to be seen. The total number of estimated active cases is around 1.53 million. About the same as two weeks ago.
The growth rate varies from state to state. Texas, for example peaked in August at over 12,000 new cases daily, and has been in a steady decline to 2.800 new cases daily. Pennsylvania, has, after 3 weeks of decline, began growing again. Last week's average was 5,000 new cases daily. Previous high was October 4, at 4,900 new cases.
New Anti Viral Treatments:
New antiviral drugs have been approved for Covid treatments on emergency basis. Both have shown to reduce hospitalization rates and deaths if taken on early diagnosis.
They are Molnupiravir/Lagevrio by Merck. Available in the UK. Emergency authorization has been applied for in the USA.
Paxlovid by Pfizer. It is not available yet, but Pfizer seeking emergency authorization in the USA.
Their efficacy is impressive. Both were tested against non vaccinated patients of similar sized groups that had tested positive for Covid, and tracked for 28 days afterwards.
For Paxlovid, the trial group had 3 hospitalizations out of 389 patients, while the placebo group had 27 hospitalized, and 3 deaths out of 385 patients.
Molnupiravir/Lagevrio seems to be not as effective. 28 of their test group of 385 patients was hospitalized within 28 days of testing for Covid, vice 53 of the placebo group of 377.
With both drugs, there were no deaths in the test group.
Both antivirals are taken orally.
More antivirals are currently in the testing phase.
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