Richard Orange noted that Sweden, in deference to the rest of the countries believing in the strategy to lockdown their populace, decided not to use stay-at-home or lockdowns except for the elderly.  Sweden’s opposition has attacked the government for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with the stubbornly high death rate fueling questions over the decision not to impose a lockdown. 

Jimmie Akesson, the leader of the populist Sweden Democrats, first called for Anders Tegnell, the architect of Sweden’s less restrictive coronavirus strategy, to resign. The attacks continued in heated televised leaders’ debate on Sunday night.  

“The strategy in Sweden was not to try to hold back the infection, but instead to try to limit it at the same time as protecting risk groups,” Mr Akesson wrote in a debate article in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper.

“By that measure, it has failed miserably. Anders Tegnell should therefore resign. Only then will he show the Swedish people that he takes responsibility for the mistakes FHM [Public Health Agency of Sweden] has made.”

During a party leaders’ debate on Sunday evening, Ebba Busch-Thor, leader of the Christian Democrat party, blamed Sweden’s strategy – and by extension the government that allowed it – for some of the 4,659 deaths due to the virus. 

“What we can say about Sweden is that many of those who are mourning over those they have lost this spring are doing so because Sweden knowingly and deliberately allowed a large spread of the infection,” she said.  

Ulf Kristersson, the leader of the Moderate Party, the biggest party on the Centre-Right, held back from joining Mrs. Busch-Thor’s attack on the strategy, instead attacking the implementation of it.

“I had no problem with the strategy. It was a bit slow but, when it was in place, I had nothing against it,” he said. “But the government didn’t put any power behind the words.”

The Prime Minister, Stefan Lofven, continued to back Sweden’s strategic decision not to impose a lockdown, instead laying the blame for the death rate on failures within elderly care. 

“I think the strategy is the right one,” he said. “But it has transpired that that very many people, in certain areas, have died in elderly care. There’s no doubt that elderly care needs to be improved.” 

Mr Akesson faced an immediate counter-attack from Johan Carlsson, the director of FHM, who dismissed his call as “almost pathetic”. 

Dagens Nyheter’s political commentator Ewa Stenberg wrote on Sunday that the debate marked an end to the “borgsfred”, or “castle truce”, in Sweden.

“The tone was harsh and quite contrary to how it was when the virus hit the country. Then all the parties backed the government’s decision to let the Public Health Authority take the lead,” she wrote.

However, the return of political opposition does not yet seem to reflect a loss of support for the government among the public.

Kids During Lockdown: Is Another Epidemic About to be Revealed?

Ingrid Walker-Descartes noted that even in non-pandemic years, the summertime “back-to-school” rush of appointments in many pediatric practices can be a logistical challenge. This year could be even more hectic after many families delayed routine appointments during quarantine. Hoping to return to their routines, children and teens will need vaccines, physical exams for sports clearances and school forms, and all the regular developmental and emotional surveillance that is so important to keep them healthy.

As pediatricians, we should be adding another layer to our checklists in these visits this year. For many children, this visit may be the first time in weeks or months that someone outside their immediate family has had eyes on them.

We must be careful to listen, very carefully, to what the children and parents tell us, both in their words and in other signs. How has the family coped with the stress of being stuck at home? Are there financial struggles? Food insecurity? Other stresses? As a child abuse pediatrician, I know all of these things can put tremendous stress on a family, and ultimately can lead to a child being maltreated or abused. We have a real opportunity right now to intervene and provide critical support to families, and to protect children.

Sadly, we know from previous disasters that during these times of intense emotional and economic stress, rates of child abuse and neglect increase. Injuries and deaths among infants due to abusive head trauma increase during times of economic stress, and scattered reports among physicians at children’s hospitals in various states are reporting that is happening now, too. For example, a hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, and a hospital in Philadelphia, are reporting an increase in the number of severe physical abuse cases. Many times, this abuse occurs when a parent or caregiver is frustrated or at the “end of their rope,” and in a moment of anger, makes a devastating choice that injures a child.

For the past few months, during sheltering in place, children have lacked many of the people who often step forward as protectors — the aunt they may confide in, a teacher who sees a bruise, or a physician who notices an injury where there reasonably should be none. Reports to child abuse hotlines and child protective services have declined during the pandemic, but this is not necessarily because fewer children are being injured. We know that teachers and school counselors are the most frequent reporters of suspected abuse, and for months children have not had access to these trusted protectors. Many of them have not seen their pediatrician, either. These combined realities have left some of our most vulnerable children without several much-needed layers of protection.

As a pediatrician who specializes in diagnosing abuse and protecting children from further abuse, I am well versed in talking with children to understand what happened to cause their injuries. Some may convey lessons learned from their choices made due to curiosity or naivete. Others struggle to elaborate on marks or scars made in anger by a caregiver. Post COVID-19, it will be important for all pediatricians to have a careful approach as they are talking with families, listening and observing to understand what children experienced during the pandemic, and how we can help them and their families be safe and healthy.

Some families may benefit from a referral to a nutrition program, caregiver support program, parental counseling, or other resources. In other cases, a pediatrician may notice a sign of potential abuse that should be reported to the relevant child protection agencies. This is always difficult, but it can be the first step to making sure a child is safe and protected while a family gets the support they need.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recently provided a webinar guide on how to identify child abuse during the pandemic, and additional resources are provided on the AAP website, including a list of child abuse programs across the country to help support you in this difficult role.

The stress on families and children will not end when the stay-at-home orders lift. Let’s be prepared to help all our children emerge healthy and strong, and ready to learn.

CDC wants states to count ‘probable’ coronavirus cases and deaths, but most aren’t doing it

Reinhard, Emma Brown Reis Thebault and Lena H. Sun reported that fewer than half the states are following federal recommendations to report probable novel coronavirus cases and deaths, marking what experts say is an unusual break with public health practices that leads to inconsistent data collection and undercounts of the disease’s impact.

A Washington Post review found that the states not disclosing probable cases and deaths include some of the largest: California, Florida, North Carolina and New York. That is one reason government officials and public health experts say the virus’s true toll is above the U.S. tally as of Sunday of about 1.9 million coronavirus cases and 109,000 deaths — benchmarks that shape policymaking and public opinion on the pandemic.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention works closely with a group of health officials called the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists to issue guidelines for tracking certain illnesses. The guidelines are voluntary, though states generally comply. The goal: solid comparisons between states and accurate national statistics that inform public health decision-making.

In April, as coronavirus infections multiplied and laboratory testing was limited, the CSTE and the CDC advised states to count both probable cases and deaths — where symptoms and exposure pointed to infection — along with those confirmed by tests.

Yet weeks after the guidance was handed down to standardize coronavirus reporting, a Post review found states as of early June counting cases and deaths in all sorts of ways.

At least 24 states are not heeding the national guidelines on reporting probable cases and deaths, despite previously identifying probable cases in other national outbreaks, including H1N1 flu during the country’s last pandemic in 2009.

The failure of many states to document probable coronavirus cases and deaths is “historic in many ways because there are lots of probable case classifications and probables are regularly and normally reported on,” said Janet Hamilton, the CSTE executive director. “We are definitely concerned about the undercounting of covid-19 deaths and cases.”

New Jersey says it began reporting probable cases and deaths to the CDC on May 15 but does not disclose them publicly on its website. Georgia says it tracks the information internally but is not reporting those numbers on its website or to the CDC.

“We do have intentions of sharing them but not yet,” said Nancy Nydam, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Public Health, who said as of late May the department had tracked 1,658 probable cases and potentially dozens of probable deaths.

Officials in Montana, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia say they haven’t reported any probable cases or deaths because they have not had any, citing low numbers or the wide availability of testing.

Seven states did not respond to The Post’s requests for a breakdown of cases and death counts. Five of those are not reporting probable cases or deaths, according to data the CDC began publishing June 2. South Dakota reports probable deaths but not cases.

Officials in the remaining 17 states say they are reporting probable and confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths on their websites and to the CDC. Some states distinguish between probable and confirmed while others group them.

In some states not reporting probable cases, officials cite the demands of an unprecedented crisis in which Americans press for daily updates from public health data systems that are chronically underfunded and outdated.

In Washington state, where many of the nation’s first deaths occurred, health department spokeswoman Lisa Stromme Warren said documenting probable cases and deaths “is one of many urgent priorities.” The state has identified about 100 people whose death certificates list covid-19 but were never tested, so they are not included in the public death count or reported to the CDC.

“We suspect that we are actually more likely to be undercounting deaths than overcounting them,” Katie Hutchinson, the health department’s health statistics manager, said during a recent briefing.

CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said that the agency is working with health departments to improve the flow of data. “In pandemic circumstances, such as with covid-19, collecting complete information on each case is challenging,” Nordlund said. “The current case and deaths counts reported to CDC are likely an undercount.”

During the H1N1 flu pandemic, states initially counted probable and confirmed cases individually. But about three months into the outbreak, the CDC said those individual counts represented “only a fraction of the true burden” of the disease. The agency stopped collecting individual case reports and instead began publishing estimates based on hospitalizations, symptoms and other data.

The CDC is planning to come up with similar estimates for the coronavirus but has no immediate plans to stop counting individual cases. “CDC is actively working on a model to address and assess the true burden of covid-19 in the U.S.,” Nordlund said.

All eyes on numbers

For government officials assessing how quickly to reopen the economy and individuals deciding what risks to take, their daily judgment calls are based, in part, on the case and death counts publicized on television and computer screens.

That has propelled the pandemic counts into the contentious political arena, where some allies of President Trump and conservative voices on social media have claimed that the covid-19 death toll is inflated. The debate over whether counts of probables are crucial or misleading extends beyond the nation’s capital.

In Illinois, two Republican lawmakers and three businesses have sued the Democratic governor over coronavirus disaster orders. A spokeswoman for the health department, Melaney Arnold, said the state is not divulging probable deaths on its website “because there is concern from the public that the number of deaths is being inflated. . . . We need the public to have confidence in the data and therefore are reporting only those deaths that are laboratory confirmed.”

The state website lists about 5,700 deaths as of June 5, excluding the approximately 185 probable deaths tracked internally as of that day and reported to the CDC.

But a resident looking at a state chart and then turning to the CDC might not find the same numbers. The newly posted CDC table does not reflect the probables that officials in some states said they have reported. Officials say that’s because the reports sent to the CDC include those with confirmed cases in one figure and because the national update can run slightly behind state websites.

Since the 1950s, CSTE has recommended which diseases states should track and what those reports to the federal government should look like. The CDC works closely with the epidemiologists’ council and adopts its guidelines to “enable public health officials to classify and count cases consistently across reporting jurisdictions,” according to the CDC website.

States usually follow these recommendations and report the incidence of dozens of different diseases to the CDC, with some exceptions. A state may not report cases of a disease that does not occur within its borders, yet may track another illness found only in its part of the country.

Hawaii, for example, does not report Lyme disease, as every other state does, but it does report hallucinogenic fish poisoning.

“It’s more of a handshake agreement between the states and CDC that we will send you the data in this way so that you can then aggregate it,” said Kathy Turner, Idaho’s deputy epidemiologist. “In general, there’s no argument. We all do it because we realize the importance of being able to look at a disease on a national level.”

Some reportable diseases rarely result in deaths, so CSTE directives have typically focused on how to count cases, not fatalities. Then came the coronavirus and a mushrooming death toll. The CDC acknowledged in early April that the death count was an “underestimation” because it included only fatalities in which the virus was laboratory confirmed. Testing shortages, people dying at home or in nursing homes, and spotty postmortem testing meant victims were overlooked.

“When the outbreak first started and we were all just counting lab-confirmed cases by default, it became clear that we were not going to be able to describe the burden of the pandemic because so many people were not being tested,” said Turner, lead author of the CSTE statement on covid-19.

“We usually don’t approach a death separately from a case, but in this situation, we decided it was needed,” she said.

The CSTE recommended reporting probable and confirmed cases and deaths on April 5. The CDC’s written response to the recommendations, which was shared with The Post, said the agency “concurs” and that adoption by states is “very important” for covid-19 record-keeping. On April 14, the CDC noted on its website that the national tally includes probables, although the agency did not at that time provide a state-by state breakdown. The CDC also modified the form states use for coronavirus reports, adding boxes that can be checked to indicate a “lab-confirmed” case or “probable” case.

Probable cases were defined as showing symptoms and having contact with an infected person, or meeting one of those criteria and testing positive for coronavirus antibodies, rather than for the virus itself. Probable deaths meant those who were never tested for the virus but whose death certificates listed covid-19 as the cause of death or a significant condition contributing to death.

The CSTE statement also says that confirmed and probable counts should be included in the tallies “released outside the public health agency,” which could mean a state website or written report, according to the organization.

“When states are using different approaches, it always begs the question: ‘Why does one state choose one over another? Why a more conservative approach over a more sensitive one?’’’ asked Lorna Thorpe, director of the division of epidemiology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. “That’s the reason we have standards and guidance that are technically sound.”

Information varies

The erratic reporting of coronavirus cases and deaths means that what residents can learn about the extent of the pandemic in their community varies widely.

Ohio was one the first states to begin disclosing probable cases and deaths in early April. “It usually is a given when CSTE makes a recommendation like that,” said Brian Fowler, chief data officer for the Ohio Department of Health. “When they made that recommendation, we looked at it and said, okay, well this is what we need to use.”

As of June 5, Ohio’s website showed 2,117 confirmed deaths and 222 probables. By breaking out the numbers separately, Fowler said, “you can’t be accused of hiding information and you can’t be accused of inflating numbers — it’s all out there.”

The transition to counting probables was not “a huge lift,” Fowler said. Epidemiologists at the health department were already reviewing all suspected coronavirus cases.

Some health officials were candid about how adding probable deaths would boost the overall tally. “I want to make sure that everyone understands that these are not new deaths,” Indiana Health Commissioner Kristina Box said at an April 20 news conference. “Rather, we are capturing the deaths that have occurred really since this pandemic began.” Box suggested other states would do the same: “Indiana — like every other state — will include these deaths in our reporting in order to better capture the toll that covid-19 has truly taken.”

One week earlier, Michigan officials had said they intended to begin disclosing probable cases and deaths. When the state finally began doing that on June 5, more than 5,000 cases and 200 deaths were added to coronavirus totals.

California’s state health department is reviewing the process to track probable deaths and “working to provide as much data as possible about COVID 19 while ensuring that the data are valid and useful for understanding the pandemic,” according to a May 20 email to The Post.

Hilda Solis, a supervisor in Los Angeles County who represents a heavily Hispanic and impoverished district, said she was surprised that the state is not following national recommendations on counting coronavirus deaths. She has called for more post-mortem testing by the medical examiner. “A lot of people are dying at home. Poor people are dying at home. Homeless people are dying,” said Solis, a former U.S. labor secretary under President Barack Obama. “I do believe covid-19 is being underreported and that we need to take more responsibility.”

The scale of undercounting that results from reporting only confirmed cases became clear when New York City on April 14 added more than 3,700 probable deaths to its numbers, sending the city’s tally over 10,000.

The city that sits at the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States still is not counting probable cases, however. New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat praised for his command of daily news briefings during the pandemic, has indicated skepticism about recording probable cases. “Probable is different than confirmed,” he said at a news conference in late May. “Probable is ‘probable, but I have to check, I don’t know, I have to do further testing.’ We’ve had many cases that were probable coronavirus and turned out not to be coronavirus and that’s why they call them probable.” Covid-19 websites for New York and New Jersey include probable deaths at nursing homes, but those numbers are not included in the states’ overall death totals. A spokesperson for North Carolina’s health department said the state is not reporting probables because of wariness about the reliability of antibody tests, and because of concerns that the CSTE’s definition of a probable case is overly broad. Officials in Florida did not respond to repeated requests for comment about why the state isn’t following federal guidelines.

People behind ‘probables’

Behind each probable death is a person. Barnes O’Neal, 83, checked into the Brightmoor Nursing Center in Georgia in March to recover from a 10-day hospitalization. Less than a month into his stay at the facility about 40 miles south of Atlanta, a coronavirus outbreak forced a lockdown. O’Neal developed a fever and pneumonia. His daughter, Natalie Turner, pleaded with her father’s caretakers and the state health department for a coronavirus test. She said she wanted his illness on the record.

On April 20, just hours after Turner had spoken with him by phone, O’Neal died. He was never tested, but Turner said his doctor told her there was “zero doubt” it was covid-19 and wrote it on her father’s death certificate.

Still, her father, a frequent volunteer at the local soup kitchen, would not be included in the death toll on the state website because he was never tested. “It’s just important to me because my dad’s life counted,” Turner said. “I feel like there’s a face behind every statistic, and that’s forgotten many times.”

And now the pandemic’s overall death toll in U.S. has exceeded 100,000, but what are the real numbers?

Second U.S. Virus Wave Emerges as Cases Top 2 Million

Emma Court and David Baker noted that a second wave of coronavirus cases is emerging in the U.S., raising alarms as new infections push the overall count past 2 million Americans. Texas on Wednesday reported 2,504 new coronavirus cases, the highest one-day total since the pandemic emerged. A month into its reopening, Florida this week reported 8,553 new cases — the most of any seven-day period. California’s hospitalizations are at their highest since May 13 and have risen in nine of the past 10 days.

A fresh onslaught of the novel coronavirus is bringing challenges for residents and the economy in pockets across the U.S. The localized surges have raised concerns among experts even as the nation’s overall case count early this week rose just under 1%, the smallest increase since March.

“There is a new wave coming in parts of the country,” said Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “It’s small and it’s distant so far, but it’s coming.”

Though the outbreaks come weeks into state reopenings, it’s not clear that they’re linked to increased economic activity. And health experts say it’s still too soon to tell whether the massive protests against police brutality that have erupted in the past two weeks have led to more infections.

In Georgia, where hair salons, tattoo parlors and gyms have been operating for a month and a half, case numbers have plateaued, flummoxing experts.

Puzzling differences show up even within states. In California, which imposed a stay-at-home order in late March, San Francisco saw zero cases for three consecutive days this week, while Los Angeles County reported well over half of the state’s new cases. The White House Coronavirus Task Force has yet to see any relationship between reopening and increased cases of Covid-19, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn said on a podcast.

But in some states, rising numbers outpace increases in testing, raising concerns about whether the virus can be controlled. It will take a couple of weeks to know, Toner said, but by then “it’s going to be pretty late” to respond.

Since the pandemic initially swept the U.S. starting early this year, 2 million people have been infected and more than 112,000 have died.

After a national shutdown that arrested the spread, rising illness had been expected as restrictions loosened. The trend has been observed across 22 states in recent weeks, though many increases are steady but slow.

In New York, the state hardest hit by Covid-19, Governor Andrew Cuomo only recently started reopening by region. New York City, the epicenter, began the first of four phases Monday.

“We know as a fact that reopening other states, we’re seeing significant problems,” Cuomo said Tuesday. “Just because you reopen does not mean you will have a spike, but if you are not smart, you can have a spike.”

Experts see evidence of a second wave building in Arizona, Texas, Florida and California. Arizona “sticks out like a sore thumb in terms of a major problem,” said Jeffrey Morris, director of the division of biostatistics at University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.

Arizona Spike

Arizona’s daily tally of new cases has abruptly spiked in the last two weeks, hitting an all-time high of 1,187 on June 2.

This week, its Department of Health Services urged hospitals to activate emergency plans. Director Cara Christ, told a Phoenix television station that she was concerned about the rising case count and percentage of people tested who are found to be positive.

Valleywise Health, the public hospital system in Phoenix, has seen an increase in Covid-19 cases during the past two weeks. It’s expanded its intensive-care capacity and those beds are 87% full, about half with Covid patients, according to Michael White, the chief medical officer.

White said Valleywise has adequate protective gear for staff, but hospitals aren’t getting their entire orders. A surge in Covid cases could put that supply under stress, he said.

The increase in transmission follows steps to resume business and public life as well as the riots and protests.

“Within Phoenix, we’ve been more relaxed than I’ve seen in some of the other parts of the country,” White said, with some people disregarding advice to wear masks and maintain six feet of distance from others. “People are coming together in environments where social distancing is challenging.”

Texas on Wednesday reported a 4.7% jump in hospitalizations to 2,153, the fourth consecutive daily increase. The latest figures showing an escalation came as Governor Greg Abbott tweeted a public service announcement featuring baseball legend Nolan Ryan urging Texans to wash their hands and to not be “a knucklehead.”

Abbott was criticized for an aggressive reopening last month. Mobile-phone data show activity by residents is rebounding toward pre-Covid levels, according to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s PolicyLab.

That could reflect a perception that the virus wasn’t “ever a big threat,” said Morris, who recently moved to Philadelphia after 20 years in Houston.

Florida’s health department said in a statement that it attributes the increase in cases to “greatly expanded efforts in testing,” and noted that overall positivity rates remain low, at about 5.5%.

Bucking the trend is Georgia, which was the first U.S. state to reopen. Covid cases there have plateaued. Despite local outbreaks in the state, “their sea levels did not rise,” said David Rubin, director of the PolicyLab, which has been modeling the virus’ spread. “They’ve kind of held this fragile equilibrium.”

Creeping In

California was the earliest state to shut down its economy over the coronavirus, after one of the nation’s first outbreaks in the San Francisco Bay Area. It has been slower than most to reopen.

Even so, the state has also seen the number of people hospitalized with Covid-19 rebound in the past two weeks, as commerce accelerates. Case counts are climbing too, although officials attribute that to increased testing and say it’s a sign of preparation.

In part, rising numbers represent the virus spreading into places that largely avoided the first round of infections, including rural Imperial County in California’s southeastern desert. Yet the contagion remains present in places that bore the brunt of the first wave, including Los Angeles County. Hospitalizations there are lower than at the start of May, but deaths remain stubbornly high, with 500 in the past week alone.

Barbara Ferrer, Los Angeles County public health director, said the region has likely not seen the end of the first wave. And despite concerns about infections coming out of mass demonstrations in the sprawling city, she thinks the reopening of the economy will have a bigger impact.

“We’re not at the tail end of anything,” Ferrer said. “We never had a huge peak. We’ve kind of been within this band. We’re not in decline, we’re kind of holding our own in ways that protect the health-care system.” But, she added, “go to Venice and see the crowds, and you’ll understand why I have concerns.”

Another Onslaught

The U.S. has long been bracing for another wave, but future outbreaks are likely to take a different shape. Social distancing and mask-wearing, as well as careful behavior by individuals, are likely to have staying power even as economies reopen.

Experts are steeling for autumn, when changes in weather and back-to-school plans could have damaging repercussions.

“The second wave isn’t going to mirror the first wave exactly,” said Lance Waller, a professor at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta. “It’s not snapping back to exactly the same thing as before, because we’re not exactly the way we were before.”

Daniel Lucey, a fellow at the Infectious Diseases Society of America, compared the virus’ new paradigm with a day at the beach: The U.S. has been bracing for another “high tide” like the one that engulfed New York City. Today is a low tide, but “the waves are always coming in.”