Note: I will be traveling 10/11 and 10/12, so no daily updates. Happy Indigenous People’s Day!

Question: While we know widespread distribution of a vaccine will probably take a year or more, I would expect the use of the therapeutics to increase much faster. What do we think those treatments will be able to do to the death counts?

Answer: As discussed in our Q&A of 9/26, case fatality has declined over time. This decline is due to: a) increased testing; b) cases shifting younger; c) improved biomedical treatment. We should expect that patient treatment will continue to improve over time thanks to medical/therapeutic advances and health care worker/system’s growing experience, which means that the case fatality rate should continue to decline.* Here’s yet one more reason to try to avoid the coronavirus for as long as possible! When it comes to therapeutics and medical advances, the NY Times keeps a “Coronavirus Drug and Treatment Tracker” that I find quite helpful as a snapshot of what we currently know. For example, in terms of what works, we now know that:

• Remdesivir use among hospitalized patients has been shown to reduce duration of hospitalization
• Prone positioning on belly is effective at keeping oxygen levels up, reducing the need for ventilators.

*Note: A decline in the case fatality rate does not necessarily mean a decline in death counts since the number of deaths will greatly depend on the number of cases.