Qatar & COVID-19, Part 8: November 2020, Another Month of Stable and Low Infection Levels

February 03, 2021

[To my readers: I have not completed this post. My duties at Qatar University College of Law demanded my time and attention. But, I promise to complete and edit this post when I have time.]

Nov. 7:

In the US, another day, another record shattered. The United States reported more than 128,000 new coronavirus cases Friday as the number of fatalities nationwide exceeded 1,000 for the fourth consecutive day. The seven-day average of new cases was nearly 100,000, almost 20,000 higher than on this day last week.

The US state of Delaware’s stay-at-home order and mask mandate contributed to an 82-percent decrease in infections and a 100-percent decrease in coronavirus-related deaths from late April through June, according to a weekly report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Adults testing positive for the coronavirus were almost twice as likely to report having gone into workplaces in person or into a school in the previous two weeks than those who tested negative, according to a new study published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Those working from home were more likely to be White and college-educated and to make more than $75,000 a year.

Nov. 8:

Children infected with the coronavirus produce weaker antibodies and fewer types of them than adults do, suggesting they clear their infection much faster, according to a new study published Thursday. Other studies have suggested that an overly strong immune response may be to blame in people who get severely ill or die from Covid-19. A weaker immune response in children may paradoxically indicate that they vanquish the virus before it has had a chance to wreak havoc in the body, and may help explain why children are mostly spared severe symptoms of Covid, the disease caused by the coronavirus. It may also show why they are less likely to spread the virus to others. “They may be infectious for a shorter time,” said Donna Farber, an immunologist at Columbia University in New York who led the study reported in the journal Nature Immunology. Having weaker and fewer antibodies does not mean that children would be more at risk of re-infections, other experts said.

Italy is now among more than two dozen countries in Europe that are faring worse than the United States, with more per-capita cases and deaths. Several European nations have returned to shutdown mode. Italy has instituted a nationwide curfew and sealed off several major regions — the kind of economy-wrecking measures it had hoped were over. The contact-tracing system “crumbled as soon as we exceeded 1,000 cases per day,” said Andrea Crisanti, a virologist at the University of Padua who advised the Veneto region in the spring. Crisanti said Italy should have been testing 400,000 people per day at the end of the summer when it was instead testing 75,000.

Denmark is killing its minks, crippling the fur industry, and locking down the northern part of the country to limit the spread of a variant of coronovirus that has infected 12 people and is resistant to anti-bodies. The most disturbing possibility is that the virus could mutate in animals and become more transmissible or more dangerous to humans. In Denmark, the virus has shifted from humans to mink and back to humans, and has mutated in the process. Mink are the only animals known to have passed the coronavirus to humans, except for the initial spillover event from an unknown species. Other animals, like cats and dogs, have been infected by exposure to humans, but there are no known cases of people being infected by exposure to their pets.

The White House has been hit with a fresh wave of coronavirus infections, an administration official said Saturday, with Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and five other Trump aides having received positive test results in the period around Election Day. Meadows tried to conceal his infection.

President-elect Biden will announce a 12-person coronavirus-task force on Monday, two sources with knowledge tell CNN. The announcement is meant to signify how seriously the president-elect plans to focus on a pandemic that has reached a record number of daily infections in the last week.

Nov. 9:

The drug maker Pfizer announced on Monday that an early analysis of its coronavirus vaccine trial suggested the vaccine was robustly effective in preventing Covid-19, a promising development as the world has waited anxiously for any positive news about a pandemic. The company said that the analysis found that the vaccine was more than 90 percent effective in preventing the disease among trial volunteers who had no evidence of prior coronavirus infection. If the results hold up, that level of protection would put it on par with highly effective childhood vaccines for diseases such as measles. No serious safety concerns have been observed, the company said. Pfizer plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization of the two-dose vaccine later this month, after it has collected the recommended two months of safety data. By the end of the year it will have manufactured enough doses to immunize 15 to 20 million people.

Nov. 10:

Nov. 11:

Nov. 12: