New U.S. virus cases fall; testing lags
About 43,000 reported daily, university states
NEW YORK — The number of Americans newly diagnosed with the coronavirus is falling even as the disease continues to claim nearly 1,000 lives in the U.S. each day.
About 43,000 new cases are being reported daily across the country, down 21 percent from early August, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
“It’s profoundly hopeful news,” said Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious-diseases expert at the University of California, San Francisco, who credits the American public’s growing understanding of how the virus spreads, more mask-wearing and, possibly, an increasing level of immunity.
“Hopefully all those factors are coming into play to get this virus under control in this country that’s really been battered by the pandemic,” she said.
But insufficient testing is probably concealing the full extent of the crisis, said Dr. Jonathan Quick, who leads the pandemic response for the Rockefeller Foundation.
“We’re grossly under-testing in some of the places that are still having high caseloads,” Quick said, singling out Mississippi, Texas, Georgia and North Dakota as hot spots.
Even at 43,000 new cases per day, the U.S. remains far above the numbers seen during the spring, when new daily cases peaked at about 34,000, he said.
Jeffrey Shaman, a public health expert at Columbia University, said he is skeptical enough people are immune to significantly slow the spread. But he agreed that changes in Americans’ behavior could well be making a difference, recalling the impact that people’s actions had in containing Ebola in West Africa several years ago.
The decline in newly reported cases in the U.S. comes even as deaths from the virus remain alarmingly high. Officials have reported an average of 965 deaths per day from COVID-19 recently, down from 1,051 deaths a day in early August.
Deaths from the coronavirus are a lagging indicator; they trail new infections because of the time it takes for people to get sick and succumb to the disease.
The percentage of tests coming back positive for the disease has also declined over the past two weeks, from 7.3 percent to 6.1 percent. In other developments:
■ Don’t lick your fingers! That’s what Kentucky Fried Chicken signaled to customers as the company suspended its “It’s Finger Lickin’ Good” tagline after 64 years, deeming it “the most inappropriate slogan for 2020” amid the pandemic. The suspension will affect the slogan’s use in global advertising “for a little while,” the company said in a statement.
■ Oregon is joining the list of states applying for the federal government’s new assistance for unemployed workers. State officials say, if approved, people would receive $300 per week, for an estimated three to five weeks.
■ Wisconsin’s statewide mask mandate should end because Gov. Tony Evers doesn’t have the legal authority to order it, three western Wisconsin residents represented by a conservative law firm argue in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
■ Dorm-room parties are being blamed for a coronavirus outbreak at the University of Miami, where some students who tested positive have been relocated into isolation rooms and two entire floors of a residential tower are under quarantine.