These graphics show how severe the fall outbreak of Covid-19 is in the United States

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Daily cases were declining as recently as September, as the country recovered from a summer surge.

But the infections returned in ways never before recorded.

The highest single-day infection total in the United States (over 143,000) and the seven-day average for new daily infections (over 127,000) were on Wednesday, according to data from Johns University Hopkins.

This average is more than 3.5 times higher than it was on September 12, when it was at a post-summer low of 34,198.

And that’s well above the summer’s highest seven-day average, which was around 67,100 on July 22.

There has been good news recently: A vaccine candidate has reportedly been found to be over 90% effective, and the US Secretary of Health and Human Services has said the vaccines could be widely available in the second quarter of 2021. And the Food and Drug Administration this week approved a new antibody treatment that may reduce the risk of hospitalization for patients with mild to moderate illness.

But with colder weather potentially leading to risky gatherings indoors, and no vaccines available this minute, experts warn everyday infections have room to grow.

“It won’t surprise me if in the next few weeks we see more than 200,000 new cases a day,” Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota said Monday.

We must emphasize that the graph captures the reported cases. Studies have found infections to be vastly undercounted, especially at the onset of the pandemic, in part because of the limited availability of tests.

Some health experts have said hospitalizations may be a truer measure of the severity of the pandemic – although the rise in cases is a warning sign, as a patient’s hospitalization can occur long after diagnosis. .

Positivity test

A test positivity rate is the percentage of people who get tested and are found to be infected. And the US rate has skyrocketed in recent weeks.

The country’s test positivity rate averaged 8.7% over seven days as of early Thursday, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

That’s above the highest seven-day summer average of about 7.9% in mid-July.

The World Health Organization in May advised governments not to reopen until test positivity rates have been 5% or less for at least 14 days.
And the director of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr Robert Redfield, suggested that communities’ positivity rates should be less than 5% for schools to be comfortably open.
White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Dr Deborah Birx said the test positivity rate was the statistic she monitors the most because it is “the most sensitive indicator” of how the coronavirus situation is unfolding at a particular time and place.

Hospitalizations

More Covid-19 patients are reported to be in U.S. hospitals now than at any time during the pandemic.

About 65,300 coronavirus patients were in those facilities as of Wednesday, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

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That’s more than double the number since September 20, when the country was at a low of 28,608 after the summer surge.

And that’s beyond the summer peak of 59,718 on July 23 and the spring peak of 59,940 on April 15.

“The new hospitalization record underscores that we have entered the worst period of the pandemic since the original epidemic in the Northeast,” two co-founders of the COVID Tracking Project wrote in an online article on Wednesday.

“These hospitalization figures prove that the current surge in Covid-19 cases is not simply the result of increased screening of asymptomatic people. On the contrary, the cases we detect are a leading indicator that many people are seriously ill, ”the post read.

Some hospital systems have said in recent days that they are on the verge of being overwhelmed.

Seventeen states reported Covid-19 hospitalization records on Tuesday: Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Wyoming, the follow-up project told me.

Hospitalization numbers have likely become more accurate over time – Florida only reported hospitalizations on July 10, notes the COVID Tracking Project.

Death

Recent daily Covid-19 counts in the country are not in record territory, but they are climbing.

The average number of deaths per day, over a week, exceeded 1,000 this week for the first time since the summer.

That average was above 1,130 on Wednesday – the highest since August 1, according to data from Johns Hopkins.

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Just over 2,000 deaths were reported on Wednesday alone. The tally would reflect a new one-day high since May, although it could be skewed by an outsized number from Georgia that could include late deaths.

The University of Washington Institute for Health Measurement and Evaluation projects that the United States could on average more than 1,650 deaths a day by December 1, and more than 2,200 a day by Jan. 1, if government leaders maintained and even added current social distancing mandates.

This would be reminiscent of tallyings seen at the start of the pandemic, when more than 2,000 deaths were reported daily for some time in April. The highest daily weekly average was 2,241 on April 24.

Infections appear to kill fewer people on average today than at the start of the pandemic, in part, experts say, due to changes in the way the disease is treated and the increase in the proportion of more people. young infected.

But as hospital admissions break records, daily death rates could rise further.

“The ratio of hospitalizations to deaths has dropped dramatically since the spring,” read Wednesday’s COVID Tracking Project post. “But it’s also true that wherever hospitalizations increase, deaths increase two to three weeks later.

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