Slaughterhouses in general must be awful working conditions – https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-coronavirus-lockdown-north-rhine-westphalia-meat-factory-outbreak-a9580686.html

“Germany has reimposed lockdown measures in its most populous state after a surge in coronavirus cases were reported in one of Europe’s largest slaughterhouses.”

“More than 1,500 workers in the Rheda-Wiedenbrück meat processing plant were confirmed to have contracted the virus over the weekend – a figure that coincided with a leap in the nation’s rate of reproduction for the virus – or R number – from 1.06 on Friday to 2.88 on Sunday, before settling at a current estimate from the Robert Koch Institute for public health of 2.76.”

“It comes as a number of concentrated outbreaks are reported in meatpacking centres and slaughterhouses worldwide – including in the US and UK, two of the nations worst impacted by the virus. While theories on the reason behind this range from the lack of distancing possible in factory settings, poor employment conditions and cold temperatures, industry representatives in the UK told The Independent the matter is a “mystery”.”

Positive news on vaccine development in Israel – probably the most detailed in terms of development and efficacy – https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.18.160655v1.full

“single-dose vaccination was able to protect hamsters against SARS-CoV-2 challenge, as demonstrated by the abrogation of body weight loss of the immunized hamsters compared to unvaccinated hamsters. Furthermore, whereas lungs of infected hamsters displayed extensive tissue damage and high viral titers, immunized hamsters’ lungs showed only minor lung pathology, and no viral load. Taken together, we suggest recombinant VSV-ΔG-spike as a safe, efficacious and protective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 infection.”

“Lungs extracted from infected hamsters showed average viral titers of 1.6×105 pfu/lung (n=5), whereas viral titers in lungs of vaccinated and infected animals were below the limit of detection (LOD, 500 pfu/lung) (n=2) (Fig. 7B). Infected hamsters revealed extensive lung damage including focal inflammation patches, pleural invagination and massive alveolar collapse, and edema, whereas rVSV-ΔG-spike vaccinated hamsters demonstrated markedly ameliorated tissue damage (Fig. 8A-L). These results were further supported by tissue/air space analysis demonstrating significantly lower tissue/air space ratio in immunized hamsters compared to lungs of infected hamsters, but similar to that of naïve samples (Fig. 8D).”

“The rVSV-ΔG-spike possess several features that contribute to its safety potential as a vaccine candidate. The VSV-G is considered the major virulent factor of the VSV, and its elimination is known to serve as an attenuating factor [13]. Moreover, removal of the G gene from the VSV genome, together with the expression and presentation of the spike protein, restricts the viral entry only to cells expressing the human ACE2 receptor, further significantly contributing to its safety profile”

“In conclusion, we generated rVSV-ΔG-spike, a recombinant replication-competent VSV-based vaccine candidate expressing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The rVSV-ΔG-spike resembles the SARS-CoV-2 in spike expression properties, antigenicity, and ability to induce neutralizing antibody production. Moreover, single-dose vaccination of hamsters with rVSV-ΔG-spike elicits a safe, effective, and sufficient neutralizing antibody response against SARS-CoV-2 challenge. The vaccination provided protection against SARS-CoV-2 inoculation, as manifested in the rapid return to normal physiological parameters lung protection and rapid viral clearance. These results pave the way for further examination of rVSV-ΔG-spike in clinical trials as a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2.”

Mexico continues to lead deaths. Added the confirmation per capita to understand we are still a long way from really knowing how many people are impacted. On a ship 20% got infected. In slaughter houses we have 80-90% infected. The optimistic slice is this increase confirmation is not necessarily leading to more deaths.

A popular graph going around on social media from Financial Times showing use confirmation increase. However many places are now opening testing to beyond symptomatic people. We are essentially confirming what is already there at some level. The real metric to be concerned about is death…are people that are vulnerable contracting the virus therefore causing an overwhelm health system – therefore causing unnecessary death. So far that is not apparent in the charts below.

Deaths are remarkably low with NC leading for the first time at 55 deaths. Confirmation continues to rise with the populated states increasing CA, TX, FL, AZ…

A big spike in Harris County TX -1994 new confirmation

Below is the latest Texas Medical Center ICU Occupancy – no doubt rising but still only at 24% occupancy. https://www.tmc.edu/coronavirus-updates/

Bedding use is rising but still quite underutilized at 12.5%

Overall trend in Harris County is not alarming with fatality and even adj fatality rate to account for delay from confirmation to death not going exponential.

Mexico has surpassed India and US on the 7 day moving average death.