Coronavirus infections rise in northern states, Mountain West, as holidays near

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Coronavirus infections rise in northern states, Mountain West, as holidays near

Wed, 2021-11-10 09:29 — mike kraft

Coronavirus infections rise in northern states, Mountain West, as holidays near U.S. could face a fifth major wave of cases, but vaccinations and new treatments would likely temper its severity. Washington Post

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The late summer and early autumn easing of the nation’s burden of new coronavirus infections has come to a halt over the past two weeks, according to health department data analyzed by The Washington Post. Dramatic drops in caseloads in the Deep South, including the high-population states of Florida and Texas, have been offset by increases in the Mountain West and the northern tier of the country.

Twenty-four states have seen at least a 5 percent increase in cases over the past two weeks, led by New Hampshire with a 63 percent increase, Vermont with 50 percent, New Mexico with 48 percent, Minnesota with 42 percent and Nebraska with 37 percent. The aggregate national caseload, having eased for two months, begin ticking up after hitting a low of about 69,000 new cases a day in late October. On Tuesday that average topped 75,000.

The looming question is whether this is the start of what would be the fifth national wave of infections since the start of the pandemic — and if so, what the amplitude of that wave might be.

No one can reliably answer that. Some pandemic modelers have stopped forecasting cases more than a week into the future because they’ve been wrong so many times. Infectious-disease experts say a winter surge is very unlikely to be as severe as last year’s, which at one point in January was killing more than 4,000 people a day. Most people are now vaccinated, school-age kids are getting shots for the first time and the waning of immunity can be offset through newly authorized boosters. Doctors will likely have new drugs at their disposal to prevent most cases of covid-19 from becoming severe or even fatal.

But the disease burden has never been evenly distributed across the country. The places hardest hit recently tend to have low vaccination rates, and include much of rural America.

A year ago, news that two vaccines were remarkably effective against the coronavirus seemed like a light at the end of the tunnel. But the picture that has emerged since is more complex. ...

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