Coronavirus counting by website Worldometers gives up to date numbers for the globe and shows the US as the unfortunate world leader in the coronavirus stakes. With the most deaths and infections in the world, the country is however still opening, surely and not so slowly — by this weekend 43 states will be open to varying degrees.

The New York Police Department has lost 41 members who succumbed to the virus. Hospitals around the country have lost dozens of healthcare workers.

Economists are predicting that the unemployment rate, currently at 15% due to the pandemic, will start to drop around July and possibly settle around 8% by August. This means that of all the jobs lost due to the pandemic, only around 50% of those jobs will still exist for people to go back to in the next two months. By the end of last week, 30 million Americans had filed for unemployment.

As expected, states that have opened earlier this week and at the end of last month, have seen infections increase. Georgia started allowing barbers, gyms and tattoo parlours to open on 24 April and have had daily new infections ranging from 628 to 769.

While New York, the epicentre of the outbreak in the US in March, has “turned the corner”, as Governor Andrew Cuomo told a media briefing yesterday, that is not the case for most of the country. “Follow the science, follow the data. Put the politics aside and the emotion aside. What we are doing here shows results — the hospitalisation rate is down, the number of deaths is down and the number of new cases is down.”

At the end of April Cuomo had expressed that New York would potentially see the start of a phased opening by 15 April, providing that numbers of coronavirus hospitalisations had been down consistently for two weeks.  As at 5 May, New York State had total coronavirus deaths of 19,645 with 321,192 positive cases.

The US meat supply is under strain as 4,900 workers at meat and poultry processing plants in 19 states were infected with the virus over the last few weeks. Last week the chairman of Tyson foods, the biggest meat processing company in the country, said millions of pounds of meat was about to disappear from grocery store shelves.

This week, Costco (Costco Wholesale Corporation), announced a limit of three meat purchases per customer, following in the footsteps of some smaller grocery stores around the country. National supermarket chain Kroger is also limiting customers to two packs of fresh meat, be it pork, beef or poultry which includes turkey.

One of the country’s oldest burger joints, Wendy’s is making headlines in the New York Times for running out of beef. Wendy’s had no beef burgers this week in 1,043 of its almost 6,000 restaurants across the country.

But the cumulative effect of the illnesses (and deaths of workers due to the virus) sweeping through meat packing plants and slaughterhouses impacts not only the consumer, but also the “producer”.  As capacity diminishes to get meat products out, farmers are starting to have to consider culling as reported in the last week of April; millions of chickens killed as there are not enough workers (due to covid-19) to process the meat. 

This also means meat pricing is affected, with beef especially starting to show an increase as more business reports show that the meat industry shortage is impacting not only meat consumption but also the consumer’s bottom line as prices have started to rise and show no sign of stopping soon.

The average American is already struggling with pandemic-related unemployment and is going to be even more hard pressed with increases in meat prices. Beef had already increased by 8% at the end of April and all signs and expectations from industry experts and analysts are that meat prices will continue to rise. As meat production for beef and pork drops by 35% prices are expected to go up by as much as 20% over the next two months.

Fresh produce is at risk as farmers have no place to sell their fruit and veg with restaurants still mostly closed around the country except for take away orders and schools and most hotels closed. Grocery stores report that frozen fruits are selling better than fresh fruit as most people are concerned about long-term purchasing amid fears of the crashing food supply chain.

In mid-April farmers were already calling for government assistance as in many cases fruit and veg had to be left to basically rot in the fields as there was no one to harvest them and very little of the usual markets left to sell them to.

With over 30 million Americans unemployed (the number eligible to claim for unemployment which means the ones unable to claim are not part of this tally and therefore the number is in reality higher) and food banks already struggling to assist all the needy, the pandemic is going to be felt for some time yet. DM