US, UK, SA and Aus Updates

US

Cases, + 58,858 = 3,355,457

Deaths, + 315 = 135,235 (4%)

CDC forecasts

140,000 and 160,000 total reported COVID-19 deaths by August 1st

Increasing death rates expected in

Arizona, Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and West Virginia

California

Cases, + 8,000 = 329,169

Deaths, 7,040

LA County

Closed, indoor venues including non-critical offices

Oil tanker

Florida

Cases, 278,667

Deaths, +132

Miami, 25% positive

Dr. Aileen Marty

We are exploding

Lack of unified approach

Population was not convinced of serious nature of the risk

Beaches, bars, protests, masks

Lockdown required

Not on the table

New York

Quarantine from 22 states

14 days

Provide information at the airport, enforced?

Driving, online form

UK

New cases, England only, based on positive tests

4th July, lockdown measures eased

1st July, 605

2nd July, 556

3rd July, 539

4th July, 388

5th July, 434

6th July, 644

7th July, 550

8th July, 634

9th July, 649

10th July, 442

11th July, 317

12th July, 225

13th July, 41

14th July, 398

Kings College

1, 471 new cases per day

Skin rash should be considered as a fourth key sign of COVID-19

South Africa

Cases, 298,292

Deaths, 43,46

Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape

Staff on strike or sick

Perinatal deaths

Senior doctors

‘an epic failure of a deeply corrupt system’

‘institutional burn-out… a sense of chronic exploitation’

‘the department of health essentially bankrupt, and a system on its knees with no strategic management’

‘There's a huge amount of fear, and of mental and emotional fatigue’

‘We were working with a skeleton staff even before Covid-19 and now we're down another 30%’

Services are starting to crumble under the strain

COVID has opened up all the chronic cracks in the system

Patients had been ‘fighting for oxygen’ at Livingstone Hospital in Port Elizabeth

‘like a war situation’

Blood and waste on the floors

Lack of Personal Protective Equipment

Oxygen shortages

Severe shortage of ambulances

No ventilation

Patients sleeping ‘under newspaper’

Rats

Senior nurse

‘Every day I come to work in fear’

‘The infection numbers are going up’

‘Every day we've got chaos’

Maternity

Lot of pregnant women all over the wards

Mothers and infants died.

‘I was personally involved in the delivery of two dead infants and know there were more. This is very unusual. To have several mummies and babies dying in one week in one hospital is totally unheard of and unacceptable’

Probably caused by lack of health care

Pregnant women, waiting for days, sometimes lying in corridors, for urgent surgery

Confirmed reports of an unusual number of stillborn infants in recent weeks

Provincial health department was generally seen as so inept and dysfunctional that private donors, businesses and charitable funds anxious to help in the fight against Covid-19 were refusing to deal directly with it

President Cyril Ramaphosa

"the storm is upon us".

Australia

Cases, + 259 = 10,495

Deaths, 111

10,000 Victorians attended the Black Lives Matter protest in Melbourne on June 6.

Victorian authorities issued a stern warning to people not to attend.

“We’re in the middle of a global pandemic and we’ve all come so far.”

Nine public housing towers in Melbourne were put in a hard lockdown for five days from July 4

1,800 cases of the virus are currently active in the state