As US infections climb, new warnings sounded
Protests draw attention, but pandemic still here
The coronavirus that was pushed to the awareness sideline by a watershed moment in U.S. race relations has quietly reached 2 million U.S. infections.
The Johns Hopkins virus dashboard counted more than 27,000 new cases Wednesday, a day with almost 1,000 U.S. deaths. More than 113,000 Americans have died.
Despite a decline in U.S. deaths for six weeks in a row, Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said the U.S. must be prepared for 100,000 victims in the next few months.
“The pandemic is still here. Between 800 and 1,000 people are dying a day,” Jha tweeted. “We can’t become immune to this.”
Even the 2 million infections is a lowball number, said Melissa Nolan, an infectious-disease expert and professor at the University of South Carolina. The latest information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that for every four symptomatic cases, there is one asymptomatic case, which would suggest that the true infection burden nationally would be about 2.4 million, Nolan said.
While good news on the numbers emanates from cities such as New York and Chicago, surges are found in states such as Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida and South Carolina. A record 1,698 new cases were announced Thursday by the Florida Department of
Health.
Health experts understand the urgency in reopening the U.S. economy. About 1.5 million Americans filed firsttime applications for unemployment insurance last week, pushing the tally over the past 12 weeks to a recordsmashing 43 million people.
But reopening comes at a cost. Nolan said more cases have emerged related to Memorial Day and summer vacation travel, and gatherings for a wide variety of events ranging from the historic protests sweeping the nation to pool parties.
Nolan said the next two weeks will provide an indication of whether a fullscale second wave of infections – which would mean an exponential growth in cases – is occurring or if it’s a short-term spike. Either way, the solution for now is hand-washing, social distancing and related measures that public health officials have preached for months.
“The next year will be a new normal for us all,” Nolan said. “We are going to see some transitions that will hopefully with time allow us as a nation to eventually return to life as we knew it.”
Meanwhile, India is reporting a spike with nearly 10,000 new cases Thursday. South Korea, the world’s success story for its triumphant effort to flatten the curves for new cases and deaths, is experiencing an infection boom.
“As the virus is spreading quickly, there is a limit in containing the spread just by tracking people who have made contact with COVID-19 patients,” said Yoon Tae-ho, a senior health official in South Korea.