Winter wave ebbs, spring surge feared
Experts:Variants could launch another outbreak
Washington — The catastrophic winter wave of the coronavirus pandemic that was killing more than 20,000 people a week in the United States has subsided dramatically, giving a reprieve to stressed hospitals and in recent days driving new infection numbers below 100,000 for the first time since early November.
Still, infectious-disease experts caution that the virus remains a threat, with the pathogen circulating at high rates and killing more than 2,000 people a day. The fading dark days of this pandemic winter could yield to another wave of infections propelled by mutated variants of the virus that have taken root, with 997 infections attributed to them nationwide by Thursday night.
In this pivotal moment, government officials and the public again face decisions about whether to maintain pressure on the virus or try to return to something approaching normal life — easing the restrictions that can help limit the contagion. The scientific community is urging the public to stick with infection-slowing interventions — social distancing and mask-wearing — to try to stave off a spring surge.
“While it’s great that we’ve made progress, and we certainly should acknowledge that, this is not the time to be spiking the football,” said James Lawler, an infectious-disease physician at the University of Nebraska
Medical Center. “Our case counts are still what they were in early November, which at the time we thought was horrendous.”
COVID-19 hospitalizations peaked nationally Jan. 6, with 132,000 patients. That figure has dropped below 80,000 in recent days. The favorable trend follows a sharp drop in new infections. On Thursday, every state recorded seven-day average infection rates at least 30% lower than four weeks earlier.
There are multiple potential explanations for the improved numbers, starting with the disastrous scale of the winter wave that by January was killing more than 3,000 people a day. Such a wave inevitably crests.
Vaccines probably played a limited role, experts said. The calendar may have been the biggest factor: As expected, holiday-season gatherings contributed to spikes in hospitalizations, although not at the catastrophic levels that some public health experts feared. Those holidays are now an increasingly distant memory.
The daily death toll has not dropped as quickly as other metrics. Death rates lag changes in infections by several weeks. More than 18,000 people are still in intensive care units across the country battling COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The national and state numbers do not necessarily translate to local conditions. On Thursday, more than 100 counties across the country reported that their seven-day averages of new cases had risen by more than 10% since a week ago.