Another virus spike
Variants, relaxation of limits may be driving COVID-19 upswing.
After weeks of decline followed by a steady plateau, coronavirus cases are rising again in the United States. Deaths are still decreasing, but the country averaged 61,545 cases last week, 11% more than the average two weeks earlier.
Scientists predicted weeks ago that the number of infections would curve upward again in late March, at least in part because of the rise of variants of the coronavirus across the country. The variant that walloped Britain, called B.1.1.7, has led to a newwave of cases across most of Europe. Some scientists warned that it may lead to a new wave in the United States.
The rise in infections is also a result of state leaders pulling back on mitigation measures, and large social interactions, like spring break gatherings in Florida, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Biden administration’s chief science adviser, said Sunday on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”
“The variants are playing a part, but it’s not completely the variants,” Fauci said. Most states have lifted restrictions, including on indoor dining, in response to the drop in numbers, actions that Fauci called “premature.”
As of Thursday, there were 8,337 known U.S. cases of the B.1.1.7 variant, but the actual number is probably much higher because labs in the country analyze only a very small proportion of the diagnosed cases.
Still, the trend is clear: The variant, which is more transmissible and possibly more lethal, has been rising exponentially in the United States, its growth masked by the overall drop in infections.
“It is remarkable how much this recalls the situation last year where we had introductions of virus to different places that scientists warned would be a problem,” Bill Hanage, a public health researcher at the Harvard T.H. School of Public Health, said Sunday. “People waited for them to be a problem before they took action — and then too late, they took action.”
Hanage said he was particularly worried about B.1.1.7 because it is at least 50% more transmissible than the original virus. The brisk pace of vaccinations will stem the tide somewhat, but the rising immunity in the population may be more than offset by the variant’s contagiousness, he added.
“B.1.1.7 is really scary,” he said.
The vaccines in use in the United States — made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson — are expected to prevent severe disease and death from any of the variants, although they are slightly less effective against a variant that was identified in South Africa. That variant, known as B.1.351, has not yet spread widely in the U.S.
Because many of the highest-risk people have been inoculated, hospitalizations and deaths may not show a steep rise along with infections. But a surge in cases will still lead to some severe cases and deaths, Hanage said.
“Howlarge it will be, we’ll need to wait and see,” he said. “But ideally, we would not be waiting to see. Ideally, we’d be taking action.”
The recent surge in cases has been most pronounced in New York and New Jersey, which are back atop the list of states with the highest rates of infection a year after becoming a global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic.
Even as the vaccination campaign has ramped up, the number of new infections in New Jersey has crept up by 37% in a little more than a month, to about 23,600 every seven days. About 54,600 people in New York tested positive for the virus in the last week, a number that has begun to inch up recently.
The two states now rank No. 1 and 2 in new infections per capita among states. NewJersey has been reporting about 647 new cases for every 100,000 residents over the past 14 days. New York has averaged 548.
Asked Sunday what’s going wrong in the U.S. as cases rise, President Joe Biden told reporters: “Based on what I’m hearing, apparently people are letting their guard down.” Biden said he hopes to have a better sense of the situation after a meeting with his White House pandemic team on Monday.
Neither New York nor New Jersey is experiencing anything like what they saw last spring, when hospitals and morgues were overflowing. And like the rest of the country, both are in a much better place than in January, at the peak of the pandemic’s winter spike.
Experts worry the public is getting the message that increased vaccination means the state is in the clear, even though only a fraction of the public has completed a full course. Vaccines lessen the risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19, but scientists are still studying how well they prevent the spread of the virus.
“To allow larger groups to gather, to give the message to the public that we’re over the worst and that we can go back to normal is a mistake,” Farber said.
Stony Brook University professor and neuroepidemiologist Sean Clouston said growth in new cases is concentrated in younger people, who can’t get vaccinated in New York unless they have specific health conditions or certain jobs.
He said their infection rates could drop once they’re eligible too.