Despite rise in infections, U.S. deaths at near lows
For two years, the coronavirus killed Americans on a predictable schedule: A few weeks after infections climbed, so did deaths.
But that pattern appears to have changed. Nearly three months since an ultra-contagious set of new omicron variants launched a springtime resurgence of cases, people are nonetheless dying from COVID-19 at a rate close to the lowest of the pandemic.
The spread of the virus and the number of deaths in its wake have diverged more than ever before, public health researchers said. Deaths have ticked up slowly in the northeastern United States, where the latest wave began, and are likely to do the same nationally as the surge pushes across the South and West. But the country remains better fortified against COVID-19 deaths than earlier in the pandemic, scientists said.
Because so many Americans have now been vaccinated or infected or both, they said, the number of people whose immune systems are entirely unprepared for the virus has significantly dwindled.
“In previous waves, there were still substantial pockets of people who had not been vaccinated or exposed to the virus, and so were at the same risk of dying as people at the beginning of the pandemic,” said Dr. David Dowdy, a researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Those pockets don’t exist anymore.”
That turn in the pandemic has nevertheless left many Americans behind.
Older people make up a larger share of COVID-19 deaths than they did last year. The virus continues to kill unvaccinated people at much higher rates than vaccinated people, despite many unvaccinated people having some protection from previous infections. And those with weakened immune systems also face greater risks.
COVID-19 is still killing an average of 314 people daily, one-tenth the number who were dying every day in January 2021, but, even so, an awful toll. At that rate, the virus is killing more than twice as many Americans every day as are suicides or car crashes. And many of those who survive the virus are debilitated, some for long after their infections.
With the country’s resources for fighting the virus drying up and many Americans forgoing booster shots, the decoupling of cases and deaths may not last. Immunity will wane and a more evasive variant could cut into people’s residual protection against severe disease.