After weeks of dramatic decline, COVID-19 cases have hit a plateau in the US – and in some places are ticking. Officials sound the alarm in hopes of preventing a fourth surge in the devastating pandemic.
“We at CDC see this as a very worrying shift in the trajectory,” Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news conference last week. Although the cases of their astronomical peak were lower in early to mid-January, the total numbers are still quite high, corresponding to the averages seen at the end of October, at the foot of the holiday.
“Things are tame,” she remarked. “This is not the time to relax restrictions.”
The reversal trend may be due in part to the B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant, first identified in the UK and presumably about 40 to 50 percent more contagious than earlier SARS-CoV-2 viruses . As expected, it has continued to spread and is now about 10 percent of the nationwide seizure, up from an estimated 1 to 4 percent a few weeks ago. CDC researchers previously estimated that B.1.1.7 would become the predominant variant in the country during the month of March. At the same time, researchers are exploring other possibilities regarding possible variants in California and New York.
“We may now see the initial effects of these variants in the most recent data,” Walensky added.
According to the latest figures, US business declined from an average of seven days on January 11 to nearly 250,000 new businesses a day. According to CDC data, the average on January 8 followed the record-breaking daily high of more than 315,000 cases. The average of seven days is about 67,000, with more than 73,000 new daily affairs at the end of last week before the slump in the weekend. But the average of 67,000 is higher than earlier last week, when it was around 63,000 to 65,000.
Disturbing trend
“In fact, business has increased over the past three days compared to the previous week,” Walensky said Friday.
This is the first pull-up since the strong fall since mid-January. Matters remained high on Saturday, hanging around 70,000. Experts will be watching closely how the trend line fluctuates this week. Even though the cases are simply plateau rather than continuing to rise, they are still very high.
“If we have a peak of 70,000, we are in that very precarious position that we were right before the storm, where anything that could disturb us could give another boost,” said Anthony Fauci, an expert on infectious diseases , said. “You know, we do not want to be people who always look at the dark side of things, but you want to be realistic.”
Fauci and Walensky both stressed the need for continued vigilance and continued risk health measures. Although vaccination efforts are still on the rise – and a third vaccine was allowed to be used this past weekend – so far only about 15 percent of the country has received at least one dose of vaccine. Vaccinations will not roll out fast enough to prevent a possible fourth surge.
And while a potential new surge could eventually be driven by current regarding variants, another surge would give the virus even more opportunities to mutate and become more dangerous.
“Viruses will not mutate if you do not give them the chance to spread and recur,” Fauci noted. “So social measures are of utmost importance.”