Cases: From the Associated press: The head of the World Health Organization on Wednesday said the number of recent COVID-19 deaths has dropped nearly 90% globally compared with nine months ago, a “cause for optimism” even as new coronavirus variants demand continued vigilance against the pandemic.
Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that last week just over 9,400 deaths linked to the coronavirus were reported to the WHO. In February, he said, weekly COVID-19 deaths had topped 75,000 globally.
“We have come a long way, and this is definitely cause for optimism. But we continue to call on all governments, communities and individuals to remain vigilant,” he said at the WHO’s Geneva headquarters.
“Almost 10,000 deaths a week is 10,000 too many for a disease that can be prevented and treated.”
The WHO chief said testing and sequencing rates remain low globally, vaccination gaps between rich and poor countries are still wide, and new variants continue to proliferate.
The U.N. health agency said the tally of newly registered coronavirus cases worldwide came in at over 2.1 million for the week ending Sunday, down 15% from the previous week. The number of weekly deaths fell 10% compared with a week earlier.
Overall, the WHO has reported 629 million cases and 6.5 million deaths linked to the pandemic.
There were 502 COVID-positive patients in LA county hospitals on Thursday, 38 more than the previous day, according to the latest state figures. Of those patients, 51 were being treated in intensive care, up one from the previous day.
The latest figures come as county officials are reporting increases in COVID-19 infection rates. Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Thursday that the county had an average of about 1,300 new COVID cases per day last week, up from about 1,000 per day the previous week. She said the daily average case numbers have been "slowly but steadily increasing" since the beginning of November. Some of the patients hospitalized with the coronavirus entered the hospital for other reasons and discovered they had the coronavirus after a test at the hospital.
The rate of infections is also rising, reaching a weekly average of 86 cases per 100,000 residents last week, up from 65 per 100,000 residents two weeks ago, Ferrer said. If that average rises to 100 cases per 100,000 residents per week, the county will again "strongly recommend" that people wear masks indoors. Indoor mask-wearing is currently only a matter of personal preference unless an individual location or business opts to require them.
Ferrer also noted a rise in the average daily number of COVID-related hospital admissions, with the average rising to 77 last week from 65 the previous week.
Virus-related deaths are averaging about seven per day, down from 10- 12 per day in early November, but Ferrer said deaths are considered a lagging indicator, meaning the numbers could rise in coming weeks in response to the increases in infections and hospitalizations.
Health officials have been expressing concern about a possible winter COVID surge, mirroring similar increases seen the past two years during the winter months. They noted that cooler temperatures lead to more people spending time indoors in more crowded, less-ventilated spaces -- conditions that are ripe for virus spread.
Ferrer said two recently identified variants of the COVID virus -- BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 -- are beginning to spread more rapidly in the county, now representing about 17% of all virus specimens that undergo special sequencing to identify specific infection strains. That's more than double the rate from mid-October.
On Thursday, Los Angeles County reported 1,595 new COVID-19 infections and eight additional deaths linked to the virus, bringing its cumulative totals to 3,501,782 cases and 34,039 fatalities since the pandemic began. Daily case numbers released by the county are an undercount of actual infections, since many residents rely on at-home tests and do not report those results to county health officials, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
The seven-day average daily rate of people testing positive for the virus was 5.8% as of Thursday.
Pasadena reported 21 new COVID cases and no fatalities on Thursday.
The Economy: US consumer price inflation fell to its lowest year-on-year level since January in figures released on Thursday, sending US stock index futures and government bonds rallying.
From the New York Times: Fresh economic data released Thursday showed that inflation cooled more than expected in October, a hopeful development for American consumers and welcome news for the Federal Reserve and White House after months of stubbornly persistent price increases.
While inflation is still rapid and painful for many households, it is finally beginning to show signs of turning a corner. The Consumer Price Index slowed to a 7.7 percent gain in the year through October, less than the 7.9 percent that analysts had expected and down from 8.2 percent in the year through September.
After stripping out food and fuel costs, both of which jump around, prices rose by 6.3 percent on an annual basis, down from 6.6 percent in the prior reading. And that core inflation measure pulled back sharply on a monthly basis, posting its slowest increase in more than a year.
The report provides early evidence that the Fed’s campaign to slow rapid inflation may be helping to ease price pressures, working alongside recent healing in supply chains. The central bank has lifted interest rates from near zero to nearly 4 percent this year as it tries to slow consumer and business demand and give supply a chance to catch up.
Stocks surged on the news, as investors took it as a sign that Fed officials might raise rates less aggressively and inflict less economic pain in their quest to tame inflation. The S&P 500 soared 5.5 percent, its best one-day performance since April 2020, which marked the early market recovery from a coronavirus-induced meltdown.
But a chorus of central bankers emphasized on Thursday that there is more work to do to ensure that price increases return to a normal pace — and uniformly said that they are not done raising interest rates.
The UK economy shrank more than expected in September and contracted in the third quarter for the first time since the start of last year, suggesting the country is sliding into a recession.
Housing: The days of record-low mortgage rates are over, but juiced-up home prices have not fallen in kind. And sales are stalling, as both buyers and sellers wait for the other shoe to drop.
Most analysts don’t expect home prices to free fall as they did after the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, in part because of stricter underwriting practices, a big bump in home price appreciation and a class of all-cash investors waiting to swoop in when prices dip. But the cuts are coming, analysts said, perhaps as deep as 20 to 30 percent in markets that saw the most appreciation, particularly in the Mountain West region and the South. Still, most homeowners will have gained some equity over the past two years, even after a slide in home values.
Existing home prices soared 45 percent from December 2019 to June 2022, the start of the pandemic to the summer peak in pricing, the biggest jump ever recorded in such a short window of time, according to Standard & Poor’s CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index.
In July, the same index recorded its first month-to-month price drop since January 2019, a relatively small decline of 0.3 percent — a sign that a reversal could be underway, though prices were still up a whopping 15.8 percent above July 2021.
Morgan Stanley, the investment management firm, predicted home prices will fall 7 percent, from the peak of pricing in June 2022 to December 2023. Moody’s Analytics expects prices to drop 10 percent, from June to summer 2024, but if a recession hits, an increasingly likely scenario, prices could drop 20 percent. In some supercharged markets, like Boise and Phoenix, Moody’s predicts prices could drop by more than 30 percent.
Another firm, John Burns Real Estate Consulting, predicted in May, when mortgage rates reached 5 percent, that national home prices would fall 10 percent through 2024. But with mortgage rates climbing higher, the cuts will be deeper, said Rick Palacios Jr., the company’s director of research.