US infection rate rising as states open up
Daily death toll now well over 1,000
Take the New York metropolitan area’s progress against the coronavirus out of the equation and the numbers show the rest of the U.S. is moving in the wrong direction, with the known infection rate rising even as states move to lift their lockdowns, an Associated Press analysis found Tuesday.
New confirmed infections per day in the U.S. exceed 20,000, and deaths per day are well over 1,000, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University. And public health officials warn that failure to flatten the curve and drive down the infection rate could lead to many more deaths — perhaps tens of thousands — as people are allowed to venture out and businesses reopen.
“Make no mistakes: This virus is still circulating in our community, perhaps even more now than in previous weeks” said Linda Ochs, director of the Health Department in Shawnee County, Kansas.
Elsewhere, Britain’s official coronavirus death toll, at more than 29,000, topped Italy to become the highest in Europe and second-highest in the world behind the U.S. The official number of dead worldwide surpassed a quarter-million, by Johns Hopkins’ count, though the true toll is believed to be much higher.
The New York metropolitan area, comprising some 20 million people across a region that includes the city’s northern suburbs, Long Island and northern New Jersey, has been the hardest-hit corner of the country, accounting for at least one-third of the nation’s 70,000 deaths. People across the region live on top of each other in apartment buildings, and ride together on subways, buses and trains.
When the still locked-down metropolitan area is included, new infections in the U.S. appear to be declining, according to the AP analysis. It found that the five-day rolling average for new cases fell from 9.3 per 100,000 people three weeks ago on April 13 to 8.6 on Monday.
But subtracting the New York area from the analysis changes the story. Without it, the rate of new cases in the U.S. increased over the same period from 6.2 per 100,000 people to 7.5.
While the daily number of new deaths in the metro area has declined markedly in recent weeks, it has plateaued in the rest of the U.S., the analysis found. Without greater New York, the rolling five-day average for new deaths per 500,000 people dropped from 1.86 on April 20th to 1.82 on Monday.
U.S. testing for the virus has expanded and that has probably contributed to the increasing rate of confirmed infections. But it doesn’t explain the entire increase, said Dr. Zuo-Feng Zhang, a public health researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles.
“This increase is not because of testing. It’s a real increase,” he said.
Pockets of America far from New York City are seeing ominous trends.
Zhang said it worries him that the rate of new cases is increasing at the same time some states are easing up: “We’re one country. If we’re not moving in the same step, we’re going to have a problem.”