While coronavirus deaths in the U.S. are growing, some public health experts note that a second wave of confirmed cases now appears to be stabilizing on a plateau.
Over the past week, the average number of deaths per day in the US has increased more than 25%, from 843 to 1,057. Florida on Thursday reported 253 more deaths, setting its third consecutive single-day record. The number of confirmed infections across the country has exceeded 4.4 million.
But according to a seven-day moving average compiled by the Associated Press, daily cases of coronavirus in the US fell from 67,317 on July 22 to 65,266 on Wednesday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That is a decrease of around 3%, although it is still a very high level of infection.
Scientists don’t celebrate and warn that the trend is fueled by four large, affected locations: Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas, and that cases are now increasing in nearly 30 states overall, with the center of gravity of the outbreak now apparently shifting from states of the solar belt to the midwest.
Some experts also wonder if the apparent case improvements will last. It’s also unclear when, or if, deaths could start to decline, as they are a lagging indicator that could continue to rise even as new cases level off or decline.
“I think it is very difficult to predict,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s leading infectious disease expert, told the Associated Press.
The virus has claimed more than 150,000 lives in the United States, by far the highest number of deaths in the world, plus more than half a million people worldwide. But AP found that the seven-day moving average for new cases has stalled for two weeks in California and decreased in Arizona, Florida, and Texas.
Researchers prefer to see two weeks of data pointing in the same direction to tell if a trend is genuine. “But I think it’s real, yes,” said Ira Longini, a biostatist at the University of Florida who has been tracking the coronavirus and has been a source of disease forecasts used by the government.
Trends in Arizona, Texas and Florida are “beginning to bend a little bit,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins public health researcher.
Also, in another possible ray of hope, the percentage of tests that are testing positive for the virus in the US fell from an average of 8.5% to 7.8% over the past week.
Some researchers believe that the recent leveling off is the result of more people taking social distancing and other precautions. “I think a lot of them are people who wear masks because they are scared,” Longini said.
With the outbreak in the Midwest, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers ordered the use of masks statewide due to an increase in cases, joining 30 other states that have taken such steps.
Among those newly dressed masks is Donald Trump, who donned one Thursday for a visit to the American Red Cross headquarters, where the White House is promoting the donation of blood plasma. Trump, who is rarely seen wearing a mask and has been critical of them, has more recently moved to advocate their use, though he did not wear one throughout the event.
But as a battle breaks out over when, if and how to safely reopen American schools, Mike Pence took off his mask on Wednesday while visiting a private school in North Carolina, saying the children should be back in the classroom.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who was with the vice president on the visit and also removed his mask, also urged schools to reopen, despite failing to develop a national plan for them to do so. “There are too many schools in this state and others that ignore parents and leave schools closed,” she said.
If the reopening of the school becomes a public health disaster, it could threaten a new boost to infection rates and trigger many new cases.
But Dr. Ali Khan, dean of the University of Nebraska School of Public Health, said the current leveling trend in terms of new cases could also be due to the natural dynamics of the virus that scientists don’t yet understand.
Fauci said he was “somewhat comforted” by the recent plateau. But a case stabilization at around 60,000 is “still at a very high level.”
“What we are focusing on now is that there are a lot of other states – Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana – that are starting to show that very subtle increase in the positive percentage of the total evaluated, which is a sure track that it may be having the same kind of problems with the states that the southern states had problems with, “he told ABC News.
