Roughly 9 /100K/ day, roughly unchanged. Rapid new case growth on the East Coast, rapid new case decline on the West Coast and South Central regions.
Data source for this and other graphs of new case counts: Calculated from The New York Times. (2021). Coronavirus (Covid-19) Data in the United States. Retrieved 4/2/2022, from https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data.” The NY Times U.S. tracking page may be found at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
Australia is seeing a second Omicron wave, similar to that in the U.K. Their current new case rate is about 20 times the rate in the U.S., and is still currently rising.
Source: Johns Hopkins data via Google search
Because this is Australia’s first big COVID wave, we have no hard data on the likely seasonality (or lack thereof) of COVID in Australia. The U.S. has seasonality on its side, as we head into summer, they are heading into winter. But it’s not as if winters are terribly cold. (e.g., typical August highs in Sydney are around 65F.)
Australia has had little bumps in their hospitalization rate for COVID-19 prior to this, but no huge run-ups in the new-case numbers. And, for whatever reason, their case hospitalization rate is tiny compared to that of the U.S. Currently, they have more than twice as many new cases per day, but the U.S. has more than five times as many people in the hospital with COVID. The implication is that the Australia case-hospitalization rate for COVID-19 is about one-tenth that of the U.S.
In any case, on March 1 Australia added Merck’s oral anti-viral Molnupiravir to their formulary, for high-risk individuals. What caught my eye is that the most recent test of that showed that 100% of a sample of 92 infected persons appeared COVID-free after three days of treatment, compared to 78% of those given a placebo. (Per this news reporting.)
The only reason to bring it up is the optics of that 100% figure. It’s rare to see any treatment show up as 100% effective, in any mid-sized trial, of anything. So that appears to be getting significant press in Australia of late, given their ongoing COVID-19 surge.
That said, while this one study seemed to show that this drug wiped out COVID-19, other studies have shown that it is less effective at preventing hospitalization than other approved anti-virals in the U.S. (reference).
So, YMMV.
FWIW, that’s one of three anti-virals currently approved or given an emergency use authorization by the U.S. FDA for use with COVID-19. (Reference). We seemed to have approved it for emergency use just prior to the Australians.
All of these antivirals have some fairly significant side-effects. As a rule, sure, they muck around with viral DNA or RNA replication. And they do the same for human DNA or RNA. For example, this one isn’t approved for anyone under 18 because it affects bone and cartilage growth.
And yet, the trick with all of those is that you have to start the drug early. In this case, the guideline is to start within five days of symptom onset. So you have to make a judgement call regarding the likely severity of your COVID versus the likely severity of the side-effects of these COVID treatments.
I have not yet stumbled across data on how many U.S. COVID patients have been treated with these anti-virals.
