Here is the short cut to the COVID report for Wednesday.
The present looks bleak because the past was disastrous, causing a high fatality rate today. (Fatalities are a trailing variable, predicted by the new cases 2-3 weeks prior). Both the USA and the world set records for the highest single-day fatality counts in history.
The future, however, looks promising because of the ever-decreasing rate of new infections and hospitalizations, so the light continues to shine at the end of the tunnel. At the moment, the world’s vaccination efforts still seem to be outrunning the spread of the virus. Yay, us! (Let’s keep our fingers crossed that the new, faster-spreading strains don’t reverse this trend.)
Here is the “new cases” trend for the last nine days:
USA | World | |
Last Tuesday versus the previous Tuesday | -2% | -3% |
Last Wednesday versus the previous Wednesday | -9% | -6% |
Thursday versus last Thursday | -16% | -9% |
Friday versus last Friday | -18% | -9% |
Saturday versus last Saturday | -19% | -16% |
Sunday versus last Sunday | -17% | -18% |
Monday versus last Monday | -34% | -19% |
Tuesday versus last Tuesday | -23% | -13% |
Wednesday versus last Wednesday | -20% | -12% |
In addition,
- US COVID hospitalizations declined for the eighth straight day.
- US COVID patients in ICU declined for the sixth straight day.
- The number of COVID patients on ventilators declined for the third straight day.