Covid cases in US dip from last peak, but delta continues to rise in some states

The number of Covid cases in the United States shows signs of easing from their latest highs, but remains high as the country heads into a fall season of back-to-school and colder weather.

The seven-day average of daily Covid cases is around 144,300 as of September 12, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That figure is down 12% over the past week and down 14% from the most recent spike in the number of cases on September 1, when the country reported an average of around 167,600 cases per day.

“This is good news,” said Dr Arturo Casadevall, president of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It could mean that we have peaked and are now on the way down.”

The United States has seen a handful of peaks in the number of cases throughout the pandemic. The average number of daily cases peaked at around 32,000 in April 2020 before dropping, and peaked again at 67,000 per day in July 2020. The rate of new cases fell after Labor Day 2020 before reaching a record 251,000 cases per day in January. There was a sharp drop after the holidays, with another jump to about 71,000 cases per day last April.

“Every epidemic goes through cycles and eventually decreases, and this happens when you have enough resistant people,” Casadevall said, explaining that the combination of vaccinations and a high number of infections this summer could help the country to take a step forward.

But, he warned, the virus has been unpredictable. “I would just be careful not to declare anything except a certain degree of optimism with the numbers going down,” he added.

There are also promising signs in the tally of hospitalizations and deaths from Covid, which tend to delay the number of cases by a few weeks or more because it takes time for people to become infected with the virus and then get sick enough to need urgent care.

About 100,600 Americans are currently hospitalized with Covid-19, according to a seven-day average of Department of Health and Human Services data, down 2% from a week ago. Although current hospitalizations have not exceeded 100,000 since January before crossing that level again at the end of August, the rate of new Covid patients entering the hospital is now declining. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a 6.8% drop in the seven-day average hospital admissions for the week ending September 10 from the previous week.

The daily death toll, however, is still on the rise. The country is reporting on average more than 1,600 Covid deaths per day over the past week, according to data from Hopkins, a six-month high. Daily deaths have increased 4% over the past week, however, a more modest increase than the 26% weekly change reported two weeks ago.

Still, the United States is heading into the fall season, with students returning to school and colder weather approaching, leading people indoors where the virus spreads more easily.

“I think it’s likely we’ve made it to the top, but I think the only thing we need to see before we know for sure is what the data looks like once the whole country has started the school season.” said Dr Bruce. Farber, head of infectious diseases at Northwell Health in New York. With the school year just starting in the northeast, it could be weeks before potential classroom-related outbreaks become visible.

The rate of new infections is now slowing in some of the states that saw the first impact of the delta variant last summer.

In Missouri, which saw an increase in the number of cases from early July, the number of cases declined 10% over the past week to an average of about 2,100 per day, a drop of 29% compared to the last peak in early August. Hospital admissions have been declining for weeks and the state’s daily death toll is showing signs of flattening. Missouri reports an average of 32 deaths per day, according to data from Hopkins.

Trends are similar in Arkansas and Louisiana, both of which were at or near the top of the state rankings for population-adjusted number of cases over the summer, but now rank 19 and 21, respectively. Arkansas is reporting 1,600 average daily cases from its recent high of 2,351 per day on August 7, with Louisiana at 2,239 average daily cases as of September 12, up from a pandemic high of 5,839 on August 13.

Hospital admissions are down in both states, according to the CDC, although neither state has yet experienced a sustained decline in the number of daily deaths.

Infection levels are dropping even in Florida, where hospitals were overrun this summer as the state suffered one of the worst epidemics in the United States. period ending Friday, compared to 129,202 the previous week and 151,760 the previous week. The state reported 2,448 new deaths last week, however, this is the highest weekly total in the pandemic.

In other parts of the country, the delta variant is still in effect.

The number of cases in West Virginia has reached record levels, according to data from Hopkins, reaching a daily average of nearly 1,800 a day. Dr Clay Marsh, state czar Covid and vice president and executive dean of health sciences at the University of West Virginia, said the most recent surge was more extreme and occurred more faster than all previous waves.

“We are very concerned about the exit of this particular part of the pandemic because our hospital systems and intensive care units have been put to the test more severely than before,” he said.

There are 852 West Virgins in a hospital with Covid-19 on Monday, Marsh said, up from 52 on July 5. There was also a sharp increase in the number of patients in the intensive care unit, from 17 to 267 during the same period, and on ventilators, from 6 to 162.

The majority of Covid patients in intensive care in its hospital system are not vaccinated and are also younger than in earlier stages of the pandemic, Marsh said. While West Virginia was one of the first national immunization leaders, the pace of injections has since plummeted and the 39.9% of the state’s fully vaccinated population is tied for last in the country , according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While Marsh is particularly concerned with protecting the state’s under-12 population who are not yet eligible for a shot, he said 51 of the county’s 55 school districts and many state universities have adopted a mask policy. He hopes that a recent increase in vaccinations, combined with what is likely a high level of immunity among the population against past infections, will help the state avoid unmanageable strain on the hospital system.

Some projections show that hospitalizations in West Virginia will continue to reach new highs in the coming weeks, said Dr Kathryn Moffett, infectious disease specialist at WVU Medicine.

“It’s mind-boggling,” she said. “We’re trying to prepare, but I don’t know how you can prepare for having more fans and more space.”

Kentucky is also setting records. Gov. Andy Beshear said in a September 7 statement that the state reported a record number of new cases in a week, from August 30 to September 5, with 30,680 cases.

“We continue to see more cases than are safe by any means,” Beshear said in the statement. “The bad news is that we had the worst week ever last week. Our hospitals continue to be pushed to the brink. If we have a bad week, we can run out of intensive care beds very quickly. “

And the number of cases in Tennessee, which reports the highest number of average daily new cases per capita in the past week, has been rising steadily since July. Tennessee has reported an average of more than 7,600 cases per day over the past week, according to Hopkins, up from a pandemic peak of 9,627 in December.

Yet infectious disease experts say the country would be in a much worse state without access to Covid vaccines. About 54% of Americans are fully vaccinated, according to CDC data, although the current rate of daily injections is well below record levels in mid-April.

“If we hadn’t had the vaccine, you would have seen much larger cases and much greater mortality,” said Casadevall, Hopkins’ doctor. “It is very clear that people who have the vaccine can get [Covid], but it is also clear that the likelihood that they will contract a serious illness, or have to go to the hospital, or die, is much lower than if they had not been vaccinated. The vaccine is therefore quietly in the background, saving tens of thousands of lives. “