The Covid-19 case in America is a spike, with improper testing and hospitalization trends

A new wave of Covid-19 cases is building up in the United States, a haven for the difficult winter months.

According to the Covid Tracking Project, an average of 48,000,000 new confirmed cases are reported each day in the United States, the highest number since mid-August. More than 34,500 Americans are currently hospitalized in Covid-19 in the U.S., down from 30,000 a week ago. An average of 900 new deaths a day are also being reported – and while that is less than August, when there are more than 100 deaths per day, if cases and hospitalizations continue, the death toll will eventually rise. It’s a pattern we’ve seen before.

Public health experts have been warning for months that Kovid-19 cases are likely to increase in the fall and winter. Why Because the best way to slow the spread of coronavirus is to keep your distance from others and, if you live around others, stay out where possible – and both become harder when the weather cools down.

We can now see that those predictions seem to be coming true. U.S. There are already more than 7.7 million confirmed cases and 214,000 deaths. The number of both will continue to grow.

Eight months after the epidemic, America’s failure to contain the Covid-1 contain, and its eagerness to reopen even if its possession is out of control, leads to another case and hospitalization.

Covid-19 cases are on the rise across the country

At the beginning of the year, it was of limited value to discuss the “waves” as some states saw a decline in cases while others experienced a boom. What sets this autumn wave apart is that it seems to be happening everywhere.

The number of cases is higher in the Northeast, Midwest and West. The South, at best, seems to be platooning at even higher levels than the Northeast at the worst of New York’s eruption.

Covid Tracking Project

What is so worrying is that no single state or region can be blamed for this new wave. Only 13 states have seen a reduction in their new Covid-19 cases in the last two weeks, according to the Covid exit strategy. The case goes on in all the others.

The number of raw cases, of course, can obscure important differences in population; The 100 new cases mean something different than Wyoming in California. Experts will use another metric – a new case per million people – to estimate how saturated a given state is with Covid-19.

The goal is to have less than 40 new cases per million people. But only three states – Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire – meet that threshold. Meanwhile, North Dakota (627 cases per million), South Dakota (596), Montana (474), and Wisconsin (434) are some of the states with the highest rates of new infections.

As Vox’s German Lopez reported this week, only one state – Maine – meets all the benchmarks set by experts to consider its Covid-19 outbreak by state. And yet, most states have reopened many businesses that closed in the spring: 40 or so states have reopened restaurants, bars, gyms, movie theaters and nonsensational retail.

“Part of the trouble is that the U.S. never really pressed for the start of its Covid-19 case,” Lopez wrote, “why experts expect new growth in cases. “Think of an epidemic like a wildfire: when there are small organ flames in parts of the forest and practically everywhere, it will be really difficult to control the virus. The country always risks a complete glitter in the direction of reopening and with every step failing to take precaution seriously. “

Right now a lot of Covid-19 tests are coming back positive

A more closely watched indicator for the new Covid-19 spread is the percentage of coronavirus tests that return positive. The number of tests conducted doesn’t really tell you all that; If a high percentage of them is positive, it indicates that many others have not been caught and the virus may continue to spread without testing.

So when the U.S. Now running an average of about 1 million tests a day, it doesn’t sound like a victory (or President Donald Trump believes it to be.) The country’s positive test rate is percent percent, right threshold experts say adequate testing will be reflected. Ideally, it would be even lower, 2 percent or less.

But despite that passable national positivity rate, most states are still not testing enough. According to the Covid Exit Strategy, here are the 10 states with the most positive test rates:

1. Idaho (25 percent)
2. South Dakota (20.6 percent)
3. Wisconsin (19.5 percent)
4. Iowa (17.1 percent)
5. Kansas (16.1 percent)
6. Wyoming (15.5 percent)
7. Utah (14.7 percent)
8. Nevada (14.4 percent)
9. Indiana (13.6 percent)
10. Alabama (13.3 percent)

It’s really just a handful of better-performing states – namely New York, which does more than 115,000 tests a day and a positivity rate of 1.2 percent – which prevents the overall positive test rate in the U.S. from looking worse.

America has never had a single Covid-19 testing strategy. Since February, there has been a regular shortage of supplies with delays in test results. States have been fighting each other for valuable testing resources. Contact tracing is not a priority for the federal government, and most states have not yet hired almost enough people to do the job.

Wealthy countries like Germany and South Korea have used an effective test-trace-isolate program to keep their Covid-19 outbreaks. Meanwhile, U.S. Still struggling to do enough tests or increase its contact tracing capability. Only 11 states, plus the District of Columbia, can expect real exposure, according to the Covid Exit Strategy, given their positivity rate.

Without making any improvements in either of those areas, U.S. Therefore coronavirus will be difficult to contain.

Even more Americans have been hospitalized with Covid-19

Case numbers and positive test rates can be a bit misleading depending on how many tests are performed. They indicate what is happening on the ground – in this case, the Covid-19 spread – but they have limitations. There is little truth to the president’s claim that more tests would mean more cases, although that is not a reason to stop testing.

On the other hand, hospitalization is more solid. If more people are developing serious enough symptoms for a hospitalization warrant, it is a strong indicator that the actual number of people getting a Covid-19 infection is increasing, even if they are being tested.

And since the sinking in September, the number of Americans currently in hospital with Covid-19 is up more than a month. Such a trend has been seen across the country.

Covid Tracking Project

The concern is that if hospitals take in too many patients, they will have to turn to others, or some patients may receive quality care from overcrowded staff and facilities. According to the Covid Exit Strategy, 20 states currently have reduced ICU capacity which puts them at risk; Their regular hospital beds in 21 states have enhanced business rates.

Wisconsin, where the number of Kovid-1 patients admitted to the hospital has risen from about 30,000 in the past month to 87,876, state hospitals have recently set up a new area hospital in its state park grounds, fearing that state hospitals will not get enough beds at a recent stage. Increase in cases.

Fortunately, hospitals have gotten much better at treating Covid-19. They have proven treatments such as remedesivir and dexamethasone, which reduce the length of hospital stay and reduce mortality in patients with severe symptoms. They have learned techniques to place on the abdomen of patients to improve breathing. Hospitals that have suffered multiple spikes of Covid-19 have reported that patients in rear waves spend less time in hospital and die more frequently.

However, as more people develop severe symptoms, as we begin to see, inevitably more will lead to death. During the summer, people wondered why deaths were declining when cases and hospitalizations – until deaths began to rise. There is a long gap between increasing deaths and increasing cases, as it can take a month or more for a person to contract the first covid-19 and, if he dies, his death is reported. .

That’s why the U.S. These new Covid-19 trends in are very worrying. Cases are increasing like hospital admissions. It may just be a matter of time before death even starts to spike.

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