NEW YORK (AP) – While US coronavirus deaths are rising rapidly, public health experts are seeing good news: The second wave of confirmed cases appears to be stabilizing.
Scientists do not celebrate in any way, warning that the trend is fueled by four large and affected locations: Arizona, California, Florida and Texas, and that cases are increasing in about 30 states in total, with the center of the outbreak of the Gravity apparently shifts from the Sun Belt to the Midwest.
Some experts wonder if the apparent improvements in workload will last. It is also unclear when deaths will begin to decline. COVID-19 deaths do not tune perfectly with the infection curve, for the simple reason that it can take weeks to get sick and die from the virus.
The future? “I think it is very difficult to predict,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s leading infectious disease expert.
The virus has claimed more than 150,000 lives in the US, by far the highest number of deaths in the world, plus more than half a million people worldwide.
Over the past week, the average number of COVID-19 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 record for a single day, while Texas had 322 new deaths and California had 391.
The number of confirmed infections across the country has exceeded 4.4 million, which could be higher due to limited testing and because some people are infected without feeling sick.
In other developments:
Collateral damage from the virus increased, with the US economy declining at a staggering 32.9% annually in the April-June quarter, by far the worst quarterly decline in records dating to 1947. And more than 1.4 million laid-off Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, more evidence that employers are still losing jobs five months after the crisis.
– Amid the outbreak and bad economic news, President Donald Trump publicly raised the idea of delaying the Nov. 3 presidential election, warning without evidence that further mail voting will lead to fraud. Changing the election day would require an act of Congress, and the notion ran into immediate resistance from top Republicans and Democrats alike.
– Herman Cain, the former CEO of the pizza chain who in 2012 tried unsuccessfully to become the first black candidate to win the Republican nomination for president, died of complications from the virus at age 74.
According to a seven-day moving average, daily cases of coronavirus in the US fell from 67,317 on July 22 to 65,266 on Wednesday, according to data maintained by Johns Hopkins University. That is a decrease of about 3%.
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.
The Associated Press found that the seven-day moving average for new cases stagnated for two weeks in California and decreased in Arizona, Florida and Texas.
Trends in Arizona, Texas and Florida are “beginning to bend a little bit,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins public health researcher. Those states, along with California, have been pouring large numbers of cases each day into the national count. So when those places progress, the whole country looks better, he said.
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.
But with the outbreak in the Midwest, Wisconsin Democratic Governor Tony Evers ordered masks to be worn statewide due to an increase in cases, joining 30 other states that have taken such steps.
The latest increase in cases became apparent in June, weeks after states began reopening after a deadly explosion of cases in and around New York City in early spring. The daily case count increased to 70,000 or more earlier this month. Deaths also began to rise sharply, after a delay of a few weeks.
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.
But Dr. Ali Khan, dean of the University of Nebraska School of Public Health, said the trend could also be due to the natural dynamics of the virus that scientists don’t yet understand.
Without robust evidence and other measures to keep the virus under control, a third peak is possible, or even likely, given that so far only an estimated 10% of Americans have been infected, experts said. And there is no reason to believe that the peak cannot be greater than the first two.
“This disease will continue to affect hopscotch until it finds tinder – susceptible individuals – like any good fire,” said Khan, a former infectious disease outbreak investigator at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fauci said he is “somewhat comforted” by the recent plateau. But a case stabilization of around 60,000 “is still at a very high level.” He said he is also concerned that the increasing percentages of tests are positive in states like Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Indiana.
“That is a warning sign that you could be seeing an increase,” Fauci said. “They really have to jump through all of that.”
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