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A dozen states, including Oregon, are reporting drops of 25% or more in new COVID-19 cases and more than 1,200 counties saw the same federal data released on Wednesday. Experts say the plunge could be linked to growing fear of the virus after reaching record levels, as well as growing hopes of getting the vaccine soon.
Nationally, new cases fell 21% from the previous week, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services, reflecting just over 3,000 counties. The corresponding drops in hospitalizations and deaths can take days or weeks to arrive, and the battle against the deadly virus is raging at record levels in many places.
New cases have declined dramatically in Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, with each state registering at least 30% fewer new cases. Each of those states said they vaccinated 8% or more of their adult population on Tuesday, placing them in the top 20 states in terms of vaccination rates.
Alaska currently leads the states at nearly 15%, according to HHS. It has also seen a drop in new cases of 24% in recent days.
Anxiety over new strains of the virus from the UK, Brazil and South Africa remains high in Multnomah County in Portland, Oregon, which has seen a drastic 43% drop in new cases in recent days.
“The problem is, everything could change,” said Kate Yeiser, spokesperson for the Multnomah County Health Department.
Health officials, data modeling experts and epidemiologists say it is too early to see an increase in vaccine rollout that started with healthcare workers at the end of December and which, in many states, rose to include older Americans.
Instead, they said, the factors involved are more likely related to behavior, with people returning home from the holidays or reacting to news of running out of hospital beds in places like Los Angeles. Others find the resolution to wear masks and physically distance themselves, the prospect of a vaccine becoming more immediate.
Only one reason is difficult to identify, said Adriane Casalotti, head of government and public affairs for the National Association of County and City Health Officials. She said that could be in part because people are hoping to avoid the new, more contagious variants of the virus, which some experts say also appear more deadly.
She also said that so many people got sick in the last wave that more people could take precautions: “There’s a better chance you know someone who has had it,” Casalotti said.
Eva Lee, mathematician and engineering professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is working on predictive models of COVID-19 models. She said in an email that the decline reflects the natural course of the virus as it infects a social network of people, depletes that cluster, dies out and then emerges in new clusters.
She also said the national trend, with even steeper declines in California, also reflected restrictions in that state, which included the closure of indoor meals and an 10-hour curfew in hard-hit areas. She said these measures take a few weeks to show up in the data on new cases.
“It’s a very unstable balance right now,” Lee wrote in the email. “So any premature celebration would result in another spike, as we’ve seen time and time again in the United States.”
Four California counties were among the top five U.S. counties to see the steepest declines in cases, including Los Angeles County, where new cases fell nearly 40% in the week ending Jan. 25 , compared to the previous week.
Dr Karin Michels, president of epidemiology at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, said the lower numbers in Los Angeles after one in eight county residents were infected with the virus likely reflected what had happened. past after the New York push: people got very scared and changed their behavior.
“People are starting to understand that we really need to pull ourselves together in Los Angeles, so that helps,” she says. “The great fear [now] Is it really going in that direction, is it leveling off or where is it going to go? We have to go lower because it’s really high.
Michels said herd immunity would not explain the declines, as we are nowhere near the level of 70% of the population who have had the disease or been vaccinated. She said the drops may also reflect a drop in testing, as Dodger Stadium has been converted from a mass testing site to a mass vaccination center.
California Department of Public Health officials have admitted testing has dropped, but overall rates of positive COVID-19 tests are declining, suggesting the change is real.
Yet experts are not yet ready to say vaccines are lowering cases.
“Most people in public health don’t think we’ll see the benefits of the vaccine for a few months,” said Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territory Health Officials. .
The death toll continues to remain high weeks after high case rates, as the virus variably attacks the heart, kidneys, lungs and nervous system. Many patients remain unconscious and on a ventilator for weeks as doctors look for signs of improvement.
The death rate fell only 5% in data released on Wednesday, reflecting 21,790 patients who died from the virus from January 19 to 25.
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(Shoshana Dubnow contributed to this report.)
Kaiser Health News is a national health policy news service. This is an independent editorial program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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