Pandemic in the U.S.: Wave of cases, deaths
In New York City, the daily onslaught of death from the coronavirus has dropped to half of what it was. In Chicago, a makeshift hospital in a lakefront convention center is closing, deemed no longer needed. And in New Orleans, new cases have dwindled to a handful each day.
Yet across America, those signs of progress obscure a darker reality.
The country is still in the firm grip of a pandemic with little hope of release. For every indication of improvement in controlling the virus, new outbreaks have emerged elsewhere, leaving the nation stuck in a steady, unrelenting march of deaths and infections.
As states continue to lift restrictions meant to stop the virus, impatient Americans are freely returning to shopping, lingering in restaurants and gathering in parks. Regular new flareups and super-spreader events are expected to be close behind.
Coronavirus in America now looks like this: More than a month has passed since there was a day with fewer than 1,000 deaths from the virus. Almost every day, at least 25,000 new coronavirus cases are identified, meaning that the total in the United States — which has the highest number of known cases in the world with more than 1 million — is expanding by between 2 percent and 4 percent daily.
Outbreaks still coming
Rural towns that one month ago were unscathed are suddenly hot spots for the virus. It is rampaging through nursing homes, meatpacking plants and prisons, killing the medically vulnerable and the poor, and new outbreaks keep emerging in grocery stores, Walmarts or factories, an ominous harbinger of what a full reopening of the economy will bring.
While dozens of rural counties have no known coronavirus cases, a panoramic view of the country reveals a grim and distressing picture.
“If you include New York, it looks like a plateau moving down,” said Andrew Noymer, an associate professor of public health at the University of California, Irvine. “If you exclude New York, it’s a plateau slowly moving up.”
In early April, more than 5,000 new cases were regularly being added in New York City on a daily basis. Those numbers have dropped significantly over the last few weeks, but that progress has been largely offset by increases in other major cities.
Consider Chicago and Los Angeles, which have flattened their curves and avoided the explosive growth of New York City. Even so, coronavirus cases in their counties have more than doubled since April 18. Illinois’ Cook County, home to Chicago, is now sometimes adding more than 2,000 new cases in a day, and Los Angeles County has often been adding at least 1,000.
Dallas County in Texas has been adding about 100 more cases a day than it was a month ago, and the counties that include Boston and Indianapolis have also reported higher numbers.
It is not just the major cities. Smaller towns and rural counties in the Midwest and South have suddenly been hit hard, underscoring the capriciousness of the pandemic.
Trousdale County, Tennessee, suddenly finds itself with the nation’s highest per capita infection rate by far. A prison appears responsible for a huge spike in cases; in 10 days, this county of about 11,000 residents saw its known cases skyrocket to 1,344 from 27.
Infectious-disease experts are troubled by perceptions that the U.S. has seen the worst of the virus, and have sought to caution against misplaced optimism.
“I don’t see why we expect large declines in daily case counts over the next month,” Trevor Bedford, a scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who has studied the spread and evolution of the virus, wrote on Twitter. He added, “There may well be cities/counties that achieve suppression locally, but nationally I expect things to be messy with flare-ups in various geographies followed by responses to these flare-ups.”
Grim forecasts
The outbreak in the U.S. has already killed more than 70,000 people, and epidemiologists say the nation will not see fewer than 5,000 coronavirus-related deaths a week until after June 20, according to a survey conducted by researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. A federal projection, based on government modeling pulled together by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, forecasts a steady rise in deaths in the next several weeks, to a daily death toll of 3,000 on June 1.
Across the country, scientists tried to project the virus’ future course, and the results have been a range of shifting models. An aggregate of several models assembled by Nicholas Reich, a biostatistician at the University of Massachusetts, predicts there will be an average of 10,000 deaths per week for the next few weeks. That is fewer than in previous weeks, but it does not mean a peak has been passed, Reich said. In the seven-day period that ended Sunday, about 12,700 deaths tied to the virus occurred across the country.
“There’s this idea that it’s going to go up and it’s going to come down in a symmetric curve,” Reich said. “It doesn’t have to do that. It could go up, and we could have several thousand deaths per week for many weeks.”