COVID work from home – week 15 – 15 June – 21 June

Weekend – WHO reports 150k new cases globally on Thursday. Almost 9M reported cases. 2.2M in US.

Usual weekend update via The Seattle Times.

Friday – UK alert system lowered, King county (and Issaquah) move to Phase 2 of reopening. Meanwhile cases are picking up again and WHO warns against a new danger. Virus detected in sewage water from Turin and Milan that was collected in December.

Thursday – contact tracing is hard. Contact tracing with untested mobile applications is even harder. Google and Apple built a framework; UK NHS decided otherwise. It doesn’t work.

Wednesday – WA cases, like in many other states, have ticked upwards. There’s a big argument whether this is more exposure and transmission (warmer weather, folk not distancing, holidays) or through more testing (I don’t believe so). Dexamethasone improves clinical outcomes. No vaccine in sight.

Tuesday – slowly and carefully WA state opens up. King County applies for “Phase 2 reopening”. New Zealand has two cases via travellers from the UK – quarantine testing wasn’t consistent.

Monday – another week. The news continues to oscillate between coronavirus, BLM protests and other news. June gloom (overcast, cool, raining) as always. Looking back – I didn’t think this would be a quarter of the year spent collecting news and data. Looking forward – what is the appropriate update frequency? So much was new and concerning back in early March. That now seems the new normal. Documenting the changes so there is a contemporaneous record I think will be important.

Concerning this morning: new hotspots in Beijing (see yesterday), India and Iran. This looks like a second wave.

Local and global coverage for future reference.