Virus notes: April 24-25, 2020

MERCED (BLJ) --Merced County Public Health Department on April 24 reported 102 cases of COVID-19 (two new) and three deaths (unchanged).

California reported 41,338 cases (1,654 new) and 1,618 deaths (54 new),

The United States reported 952,585  cases (42,640 new) and 53,625 deaths (2,180 new).

Mexico reported 12,872 cases (1,239 new) and 1,221 deaths (152 new).

The global report for the day was 2,868,539 cases (79,224 new) and 201,502 deaths (5,727 new).

New York State reported 282,137 cases (10,553 new) and 17,671 deaths. The figure for deaths in New York State hasn’t increased in a week. There are two likely reasons for this, neither of them that there have been no new deaths in New York. The figures are provided by two public health departments in the state.

This brings us to today’s article in the New York Times:

4-25-20

New York Times

36,000 Missing Deaths: Tracking the True Toll of the Coronavirus Crisis

By Jin Wu, Allison McCann, Josh Katz and Elian PeltierUpdated April 25, 2020, 11:00 A.M. E.T.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing...

 

…In Paris, more than twice the usual number of people have died each day, far more than the peak of a bad flu season. In New York City, the number is now four times the normal amount.

Of course, mortality data in the middle of a pandemic is not perfect. The disparities between the official death counts and the total rise in deaths most likely reflect limited testing for the virus, rather than intentional undercounting. Officially, about 190,000 people have died worldwide of the coronavirus as of Saturday.

But the total death numbers offer a more complete portrait of the pandemic, experts say, especially because most countries report only those Covid-19 deaths that occur in hospitals.

“Whatever number is reported on a given day is going to be a gross underestimate,” said Tim Riffe, a demographer at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany. “In a lot of places the pandemic has been going on for long enough that there has been sufficient time for late death registrations to come in, giving us a more accurate picture of what the mortality really was.” …