Data shows that daily Covid cases in the United States have increased by 59 percent in two weeks, with New York recording the most infections in 24 hours since January — but hospitalizations are only a tenth of what they were during the last Covid outbreak.
According to data from states, counties, and local health agencies, the United States currently has an average of 67,900 infections every day, up from 46,300 just 14 days ago.
Almost every state is now seeing an increase in cases – 11 states are now seeing cases double every two weeks — with Rhode Island, Maine, and Vermont experiencing the most severe outbreaks.
Officials in New York, the epicenter of the much more transmissible Omicron sub-variant BA.2.12.1 outbreak, registered 10,251 cases yesterday, the largest daily total since January.
However, there are only 18,000 individuals with the condition in hospitals across the country, which is only about 11 percent of the peak levels seen during the last Covid wave. Many of the patients were admitted with some other ailment, such as a broken limb, but later tested positive for the virus.
Every day, roughly 551 people in the United States die from the virus, which is about 22 percent higher than the previous peak.
Dr. Deborah Birx, a former White House Covid expert, warned earlier this week that southern areas could expect a spike in Covid cases this summer, with the north following suit coming winter.
Should the city’s outbreak spread across the state, New York City’s health commissioner has already threatened to reinstate face masks in eateries and require proof of vaccination. However, economic groups advised against the measure yesterday, claiming that it would affect numerous enterprises.
The Covid variant BA.2.12.1 is likely to be responsible for around two out of every five cases in the United States, up from less than one out of ten a month earlier.
According to studies, it is around 25 percent more transmissible than the sub-variant BA.2, which has resulted in an increase in cases in many European nations.
The increase in the United States comes as South Africa, which was at the epicenter of the original Omicron outbreak, sees its cases nearly treble in a month, owing to fading immunity and the spread of other Omicron strains.
Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan, who drew controversy when he declared children under the age of five would be masked ‘indefinitely,’ has announced that if things grow worse, restrictions will be reinstated for all New Yorkers.
“It’s clear that if we moved into a high risk and high alert environment, we’d be seriously considering bringing those mandates back,” he said.
This week, the city’s warning level was raised from low to medium.
It will go on high alert if more than 10 persons per 100,000 are hospitalized with Covid, or if Covid patients occupy 10 percent of all hospital beds in the city.
The current hospitalization rate is seven per 100,000, which is close to the high alert threshold. Hospital occupancy, on the other hand, remains low at 3.12 percent, albeit it is increasing.
Currently, 87 percent of adults and 78 percent of all New Yorkers have received all of their vaccines.
Dr. Birx said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” earlier this week: “We should be preparing right now for a potential surge in the summer across the Southern united states because we saw it in 2020, we saw it in 2021.
“We have to make it very clear to the American people that your protection against infection wanes.
“What has happened each time is we have had a summer surge across the South and a winter surge that starts in the Northern plains and moves down accelerated by thanksgiving and the holidays and Christmas and Hanukah, and that’s predictable.”
Dr. Birx also mentioned South Africa, where infections had quadrupled in a month despite dropping antibody levels.
“I follow South Africa very closely, they’re good about testing, they’re good about sequencing and finding their variants,” she told CBS.
“[But] they are on an up slope again, with each of these surges about four to six months apart.
“That tells me that natural immunity wanes enough in the general population after four to six months that a significant surge is going to occur again.”
It comes as, In spite of its refusal to enforce lockdowns, Sweden has reported one of Europe’s lowest pandemic death tolls, according to World Health Organization estimates.
When the Scandinavian nation ignored scientific advice and refused to shut down in 2020, instead of relying on people’s common sense and light social constraints, it became an international outcast.
The WHO’s review of excess mortality — persons who died directly or indirectly as a result of Covid — now reveals that the contentious hands-off strategy was justified.
Sweden’s pandemic death rate, at 56 per 100,000, ranked 101st out of 194 nations studied by the UN health agency, significantly below the global average of 90.
It also places Sweden below the majority of other major European countries that have been closed down many times, including Italy (133), Germany (116), Spain (111), the United Kingdom (109), Portugal (100), the Netherlands (85), Belgium (77), and France (63).
However, countries were previously rated only on Covid death rates, which were distorted by testing disparities.
This method, known as “excess deaths,” is widely used to estimate pandemic mortality rates since it takes into account patients that were never swabbed or diagnosed.
Sweden based its population protection on residents’ sense of civic duty, saying that blanket lockdowns were neither “necessary” nor “defensible.” Residents were encouraged to maintain social distance, but schools, bars, and restaurants remained open.
Sweden, on the other hand, did worse than its Scandinavian neighbors, with Denmark reporting only 32 excess fatalities per 100,000 and Norway reporting one death per 100,000 less than projected.
The WHO findings “largely vindicated” Sweden’s approach, which resulted in “much better” outcomes than predicted and compared to the rest of Western Europe.
They did say, however, that the extra death rate in other Nordic countries — which have some of the lowest fatality rates in the world — should be investigated further to figure out why.
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