Virus cases skyrocket again in major cities

For a few months, coronavirus- weary Chicago residents got a reprieve from the strict regulations that shuttered the nation’ s third-largest city during the spring.

After infections plummeted in early June, restaurants welcomed dine rs back inside. Movie theaters, fifitness centers and bowling alleys reopened their doors. And t he barriers came down on the bike pathway along the cit y’s cherished lakefront.

But with new coronavirus cases surging beyond the springtime peak, Chicago is now hunkering down. Statewide measures have closed some businesses and limited the capacity at others, while officials are urging residents to stay home. Again.

“We’ve been through a heck of a lot this year,” Lori Lightfoot, the city’s Democratic mayor, said during a recent news conference. “And it’s not over.”

Across much of America, the picture is similar. Major metropolitan areas were the face of the pandemic before being overtaken by spikes in less populated parts of the country in September. Since then, the nation’s worst outbreaks have been concentrated in rural parts of the Upper Midwest.

Yet dramatic increases have been reported in many major American cities in recent weeks, with some being hit harder than they were during their previous peaks. Testing has greatly ramped up since the start of the pandemic, but that alone does not explain the growing caseloads.

“The dreaded fall wave, in many places, is upon us,” said Josh Michaud, an epidemiologist and associate director for global health policy at the nonprofifit Kaiser Family Foundation. “And that includes in metropolitan areas.”

In Cook County, where Chicago is located, the seven- day average of new cases hit a record high of 4,654 on Nov. 17 — far outpacing the peak of 1,690 during the spring surge. Deaths are lower than in the spring but climbed in recent weeks.

At North shore University Health system, infectious- disease specialist Kamaljit Sandhu Singh said he and other health care workers were “exhausted physically and mentally” as hospitalizations and ICU admissions rose. He said the pandemic reminded him of the Vietnam War: “I could never wrap my brain around the number of soldiers’ lives lost, but the pictures were compelling.”