Good evening,

January 15, 2021 -- This week, our planet reported 4.95 million new coronavirus infections and 95,387 additional covid-19 deaths with the global surge getting more aggressive in most geographies. Even China is now reporting a spike in cases and the first officially reported covid-19 death within its borders since last May. Spain is peaking again, breaking the 40,000 single-day new cases mark for the first time as Great Britain had its deadliest week, losing 7,462 of its infected patients. In Central and South America, Mexico, Colombia, and Bolivia peaked again; Peru is experiencing a new spike while Brazil is now averaging over 60,000 new daily cases. South Africa peaked again earlier this week and is experiencing a steep hike in new deaths. India's new daily cases are stabilizing under 20,000 as the huge nation launches a massive vaccination effort: 30 million doctors, nurses, and other front-line workers to be followed by 270 million others. Portugal also peaked this week and went on national lockdown Friday night while France started a national daily curfew starting at 6 pm this Saturday, as the country's covid-19 death toll passed 70,000. Over the last seven days, one person has died of covid-19 every 6 seconds somewhere on our pale blue dot.

Tip: click on any of the graphs for larger and clearer images and click on READ MORE to view the complete articles. Also, please forgive the occasional typos.

Although the national peak of new daily cases is now a week old, 39 states have reported at least 1,000 new COVID-19 infections in the last 24 hours. Today the nation reported 248,080 new coronavirus infections and covid-19 has killed 3,805 Americans in the last 24 hours, after reporting over 4,000 daily deaths three days in a row, with a staggering 4,491 24-hour deaths reported on Tuesday. 127,25 covid-19 patients are now hospitalized in the United States, with 23,593 in ICU and 7,772 people fighting for their life currently on ventilators. In the last week, covid-19 has killed 23,606 Americans (3,372/day) and infected 1,651,743 more of our neighbors (236,925/day).

COVID-19 in the USA

It appears California's new covid-19 infections may have peaked, but the state's new deaths peaked again yesterday with 694 new deaths, and the fatalities total for the week is up sharply (28%) from last week's numbers, as we mourn the loss of 3,749 more Californians.

1/15/2021: Reporting 158 cases from the public, 22 from the Central California Woman’s Facility, and 49 from Valley State Prison (total 229 cases), bringing the total number of reported cases to 12,778.

Of the 12,778:

Including its prison population, Madera County is averaging 162 new cases per day (101 per 100K), with 1,133 new cases revealed over the last 7 days. We need to get down to an average of 11 cases per day or 77 cases over 7 days to switch from purple to red (from "widespread" to "substantial" contagion risk).

Today, the seven local counties together reported 2,886 new infections and 48 new coronavirus deaths. In the combined 7 counties, COVID-19 has infected 257,820 people and has killed 2,531 residents of our region since it claimed its first central valley victim, in Madera, on March 26, 2020.

COVID-19 in Madera + 6 local counties (+% is the positivity rate)

COVID-19 in the 7 counties together

This was the deadliest covid-19 week yet. The 7 counties graphs, above and below, represent data from the week ending on January 15, 2021. Each of the last four weeks has reported the highest numbers of covid-19 deaths, successively, culminating again this week with 250 deaths. 28% of the total deaths of the pandemic in the seven local counties have occurred in the last 28 days. The number of new cases was slightly lower this week: 19,689 (-455), although not all the data were available at the time this report was written.

The graph below is a bit misleading as case data for Fresno and Kings counties have not yet been published for 1/15/2021; only the fatalities numbers from Fresno County were made available as I wrote this report. The overall picture is stark and all seven counties are in the midst of sustained and uncontrolled viral spread.

Keep observing the simple yet proven safety habits of physical-distancing, mask-wearing, and frequent hand-washing, that will help drive down new infections and new deaths, to a level low enough so as to give us a chance to reopen our schools for onsite education and thus, reopen our economy. Nothing else will work until we have massively administered a safe and effective covid-19 vaccine -- currently estimated by vaccinating up to 85% of the population -- to finally reach herd immunity.