Skip to main content

New story in Health from Time: 5 Million People in the U.S. Have Tested Positive for COVID-19 as Surges Continue Around the Country



More than 5 million people in the U.S.—about 1.5% of the country’s total population—have tested positive for COVID-19 as of Aug. 9, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Over 162,000 people have died.

The U.S. now accounts for roughly 25% of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide. Its overall case count is millions higher that of the next-hardest-hit country: Brazil, which according to official records has about 3 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of Aug. 9.

New U.S. cases are also accumulating faster than they did in the pandemic’s early months. The country recorded 1 million diagnoses on April 28. It then took about six weeks to hit 2 million cases, and another month to hit 3 million. From there, only about two weeks passed before the country hit the 4 millionth case mark—and now, another two weeks later, the tally is up to 5 million.

Part of that uptick is due to better testing capacity. When the pandemic first hit the U.S., many people with relatively mild cases could not get tested, leaving gaping holes in the official data. The testing situation has improved somewhat, helping the data better reflect what’s actually going on across the country, but testing delays are still a significant issue. That means official case counts are still underestimates, albeit staggeringly high underestimates.

Testing also can’t fully explain why so many states are seeing surges right now. If testing practices alone were behind the skyrocketing numbers in places like Florida, California and Texas, the raw number of positive cases would be expected to go up—but the proportion of tests coming back positive would likely go down, since more negative test results would also be captured by the data. That’s not happening in many hotspot states, like Florida and Texas, where between 15 and 20% of tests are coming back positive on any given day, according to Johns Hopkins data.

More than 1,000 Americans are also dying from coronavirus each day. That’s an improvement over this spring, when well over 2,000 people were dying each day, but it’s a worrying reversal of the progress seen in late May and June, when daily death counts dropped to around 500. The fact that deaths have gone back up suggests there is more disease circulating in the population, not simply more testing picking up on baseline levels of infection.

The surges the U.S. is seeing right now are likely a result of the continued push toward economic reopening in many parts of the country, coupled with overwhelmed public-health systems and individuals letting up on disease-prevention practices like social distancing and wearing masks. The World Health Organization has said young adults, teenagers and children are accounting for a higher proportion of cases as the pandemic goes on, citing “a rise in risky behavior after easing of public health and social measures.”

Without significant behavioral changes—and state and federal policies that facilitate that change—the U.S. will likely continue to see case counts rise for the foreseeable future.

Popular posts from this blog

New story in Health from Time: 3 More People Diagnosed With Coronavirus in Northern California

Three more people in Northern California have been diagnosed with the coronavirus known as 2019-nCoV, health officials in the area said Sunday, doubling the number of cases in the state and bringing the total across the country to 11 . The patients, whose symptoms are not yet serious enough to warrant hospitalization, are being kept in their homes, where they are being closely monitored, the San Francisco Chronicle reports . Two of the patients are a husband and wife from San Benito County. The husband fell ill after he returned home from Wuhan, China, where the outbreak began. It is believed he transferred the virus to his wife, who had not been to China. The other patient became sick while visiting family in Santa Clara County. She also previously visited Wuhan. Since arriving in the United States on Jan. 23, she has only left her home twice to seek out medical assistance. Officials from both counties said they are working to identify anyone who may have come into cont...

New video by blogilates on YouTube

Day 8 - 14 | Blogilates 2020 Challenge You guys are CRUSHING the #2020Challenge so far! Idk about you but my abs are soooooore! This week, we're doing 20 reps of abs every day + 20 reps of another new exercise every day! If you need a little extra motivation, text my number (510-692-4556) and tell me all about it so we can come up with a solution together! This link also works: https://ift.tt/2Qjqw7G This week's moves are: Jan. 8th (starts 0:48) - 20 butterfly bridges + 20 criss cross (butt + abs) Jan. 9th (starts 2:43) - 20 oil riggers + 20 rollovers (arms + abs) Jan. 10th (starts 8:29) - 20 lunges + 20 leg outs (legs + abs) Jan. 11th (starts 11:03) - 20 walnut crushers + 20 single leg drops (back + abs) Jan. 12th (starts 13:41) - 20 sprinters + 20 crunches (obliques + abs) Jan. 13th (starts 16:27) - 20 squat jumps + 20 russian twists (cardio + abs) Jan. 14th (starts 18:57) - 20 plank jacks + 20 butt ups (total body + abs) Here is where I get all of my music! Epidemic Sound: ...

New story in Health from Time: Coronavirus Cases Outside China Are Accelerating Rapidly. Here’s What to Know

A surge in deadly coronavirus cases outside China is raising concerns that the outbreak has reached a new stage and could continue its global spread to even more vulnerable countries. In the central Chinese province of Hubei, where the virus is believed to have originated, the number of cases appears to be stabilizing, according to government figures. But the number of people infected elsewhere in the world is rising quickly, with clusters in South Korea , Italy, Iran and a cruise ship docked in Japan. As of Monday, more than 2,200 cases of the virus, officially called COVID-19, have been reported outside of mainland China, where the overwhelming majority of the 79,000 cases have been located since officials first discovered the disease in December. The number of deaths outside China has also increased to 166, including 50 in Iran and four in Italy. In a news conference Monday, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the WHO...