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Coronavirus in the US: we are even close to reducing Covid-19 levels by fall, medical experts say
Now for the bad news, testing has also declined in many of those same states. And the total number of new cases every day is still too high as the US faces three major challenges this fall.
“The fall really won’t look good,” said epidemiologist Dr. Celine Gunder.
There were 34,450 new cases reported nationwide on Sunday, according to Johns Hopkins University. This is better than the last two weeks of July, when more than 60,000 new cases were reported every day in the United States.
But according to the Covid Tracking Project, nationwide testing dropped 10% last week from the previous week.
And of the confirmed cases that we do know of, 34,450 is still a huge number, health experts said Monday.
“We have never been able to reduce the number of cases. Remember, we’re talking about 35,000 cases a day. Today we are likely to hit over 40,000 cases a day, ”said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. at the University of Minnesota.
“Back in April … we had 22,000 cases a day and we thought, ‘My God, it won’t get any worse.’ And what is happening here, we will see such ups and downs, ups and downs. But every time it goes up, it goes a little higher. Every time he goes down, it doesn’t. down so far. ”
3 big challenges this fall
Epidemiologists say the US needs to get the virus under control because the US will soon face several challenges at once:
“You are going to refer all of these patients to hospitals and doctors with symptoms that could be coronavirus or flu,” Gaunder said.
“And we have to treat them all like they have coronavirus. So this is a very dangerous and scary situation. “
Academic struggle: While millions of students are struggling with online learning, many schools that have returned students to classrooms are plagued by epidemics.
Mayor Kelly Geertz said Athens-Clark County, Georgia, where the University of Georgia is located, is seeing a “spike” in cases after lower case numbers and deaths persisted throughout the summer.
“It is clear that this is the return to campus of a large number of students who are not here in the summer,” the mayor said.
Michigan State University students were asked to be quarantined after the local health department reported 342 new cases among people associated with the university since Aug.24, East Lansing Mayor Aaron Stevens said.
Good news about vaccines
While health experts emphasize that the Covid-19 vaccine may not be available to the general public until 2021, there are promising signs among several vaccines currently in phase 3 trials.
Pfizer CEO Albert Burla told CBS ‘Face the Nation that by the end of October, researchers are “very likely” to know if his experimental vaccine is working.
“Then, of course, the regulator’s job is to issue (a) a license or not,” Burla said.
“I think we should strive to make the population as diverse as possible,” Burla told CBS, stressing the importance of having a diverse group of volunteers given the increased impact of Covid-19 on communities of color.
“We’re pretty good now. In fact, we have a population of which in the world only 60% are Caucasians, about 40% are minorities. “
Moderna, which is also in phase 3 testing its vaccine, said its minority population has improved as well. About 59% of the participants are white, 22% are Hispanic, 11% are black, 5% are Asian and 3% are from other populations.
CNN’s Dakin Andone, Lauren Mascareñas, Naomi Thomas, Maggie Fox, and John Bonfield contributed to this report.
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