NYT Excerpt
Covid-19: U.S. Virus Cases Fall as Variants Spread
Last Updated Feb. 12, 2021
Some experts, looking abroad at how new viral variants sent cases surging in Britain, Ireland, South Africa and northern Brazil, said the United States could merely be in a lull before a new spike begins. Even after an epidemic’s peak, it remains dangerous: Sometimes just as many people are infected after the peak as were before.
Nicolas A. Menzies, one of several scientists running the Prevention Policy Modeling Lab at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which tracks levels of herd immunity, said he felt it was “more probable than not” that infections would climb again.
It is important to spot regions where variant strains are turning up, he said, since they would be the most likely to have early surges. Thus far, the variant that has been prevalent in Britain and a new variant have been found most often in Southern California and Florida, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cases are slowly declining in both regions. But it’s “still too early to tell,” he said.
The United States continues to average 181,000 new cases each day, more than any point of the pandemic before December. Deaths from the coronavirus also remain extraordinarily high, with more than 4,300 deaths announced on Wednesday, the second-highest daily total of the pandemic.
Another 3,730 deaths were announced across the country on Friday, and Florida became the fourth state where the death toll has surpassed 25,000.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/22/world...oronavirus
Covid-19: U.S. Virus Cases Fall as Variants Spread
Last Updated Feb. 12, 2021
Some experts, looking abroad at how new viral variants sent cases surging in Britain, Ireland, South Africa and northern Brazil, said the United States could merely be in a lull before a new spike begins. Even after an epidemic’s peak, it remains dangerous: Sometimes just as many people are infected after the peak as were before.
Nicolas A. Menzies, one of several scientists running the Prevention Policy Modeling Lab at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which tracks levels of herd immunity, said he felt it was “more probable than not” that infections would climb again.
It is important to spot regions where variant strains are turning up, he said, since they would be the most likely to have early surges. Thus far, the variant that has been prevalent in Britain and a new variant have been found most often in Southern California and Florida, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cases are slowly declining in both regions. But it’s “still too early to tell,” he said.
The United States continues to average 181,000 new cases each day, more than any point of the pandemic before December. Deaths from the coronavirus also remain extraordinarily high, with more than 4,300 deaths announced on Wednesday, the second-highest daily total of the pandemic.
Another 3,730 deaths were announced across the country on Friday, and Florida became the fourth state where the death toll has surpassed 25,000.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/22/world...oronavirus
