The rapidly changing coronavirus has begun the summer in the United States with many infections but relatively few deaths compared to its previous incarnations.
The rapidly changing coronavirus has begun the summer in the United States with many infections but relatively few deaths compared to its previous incarnations.
COVID-19 is still killing hundreds of Americans every day, but it is not as dangerous as it was last fall and winter.
“It’s going to be a good summer and we deserve that break,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics science at the University of Washington in Seattle.
With more Americans protected from serious illness through vaccination and infection, COVID-19 has turned, at least for now, into an unpleasant and uncomfortable nuisance for many.
“He’s feeling really good right now,” said Dr. Dan Kaul, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor. “For the first time I remember, practically since it started, we don’t have any patients (COVID-19) in the ICU.”
When the nation marks the fourth of July, the average number of daily deaths from COVID-19 in the United States is around 360. Last year, during a similar summer lull, it was about 228 in early July. This remains the lowest daily death rate in the United States since March 2020, when the virus began its spread in the United States.
But last year there were far fewer cases reported at that time: less than 20,000 a day. Now, there are about 109,000, and there is likely to be a lower count, as home tests are not routinely reported.
Today, in the third year of the pandemic, it is easy to feel confused by the mixed picture: repeated infections are increasingly likely and a significant portion of those infected will face persistent symptoms of long-term COVID-19.
However, the serious danger of death has diminished for many people.
“And that’s because we’re now at a point where everyone’s immune system has seen the virus or vaccine two or three times,” said Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. . “Over time, the body learns not to overreact when it sees this virus.”
“What we’re seeing is that people are getting less and less sick on average,” Dowdy said.
Up to 8 out of 10 people in the United States have been infected at least once, according to an influential model.
The COVID-19 mortality rate has been a mobile target, but has recently fallen within the range of an average flu season, according to data analyzed by Arizona State University health industry researcher Mara Aspinall.
At first, some people said the coronavirus was no more deadly than the flu, “and for a long time, that wasn’t true,” Aspinall said. Back then, people had no immunity. The treatments were experimental. Vaccines did not. exist.
Now, Aspinall said, accumulated immunity has reduced the mortality rate to solidly in the range of a typical flu season. Over the past decade, the flu mortality rate has been between 5% and 13% of those hospitalized.
Big differences separate the flu from COVID-19: the behavior of the coronavirus continues to amaze health experts and it is still unclear whether it will set in in a flu-like seasonal pattern.
Last summer, when vaccines were widely available in the U.S., it was followed by the rise of the delta and then the arrival of the omicron, which killed 2,600 Americans a day at most last February.
Experts agree that a new variant could emerge capable of escaping the accumulated immunity of the population. And the rapidly spreading omicron subtypes BA.4 and BA.5 could also contribute to a change in the number of deaths.
“We thought we understood it until these new subvariants emerged,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, an infectious disease specialist at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas.
It would be prudent, he said, to assume that a new variant will arrive and arrive in the nation in late summer.
“And then another late fall-winter wave,” Hotez said.
In the coming weeks, deaths could rise in many states, but it is likely that the United States as a whole will see a slight decrease in deaths, said Nicholas Reich, who adds coronavirus projections for the COVID-19 Forecasting Center in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control. and Prevention.
“We’ve seen COVID hospitalizations increase to about 5,000 new admissions each day from just over 1,000 in early April. But deaths from COVID have only increased slightly over the same period of time,” said Reich, a professor. of Biostatistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Unvaccinated people have a six-fold higher risk of dying from COVID-19 compared to people with at least one primary series of vaccinations, the CDC estimated from available April data.
This summer, be aware of your own vulnerability and that of those around you, especially at large gatherings, as the virus is spreading so rapidly, Dowdy said.
“There are still people who are at a lot of risk,” he said.
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The Associated Press Department of Health and Science is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Carla K. Johnson, The Associated Press