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.

Labels

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

New story in Health from Time: Here’s How Quickly Coronavirus Is Spreading in Your State

The novel coronavirus pandemic is a global crisis, a national emergency and a local nightmare. But while a great deal of the focus in the U.S. has been on the federal government’s response, widely criticized as slow and halting , the picture on the ground remains very different in different parts of the country. A TIME analysis of the per capita spread of the epidemic in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. found considerable range in the rate of contagion, and, in some parts of the country, a significant disparity compared to the national figure. The U.S., unlike nations such as South Korea and now Italy , has yet to show signs of bringing the runaway spread of the virus under control. However, while no single state is yet showing strong signs of bending the curve , some are faring much worse than others. The following graphic plots the rise in the total confirmed cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents in each state, plotted by the day that each state reported its first case....
Read more

New video by gymvirtual on YouTube

Rutina para adelgazar | Ejercicios para perder peso en casa ♥ ♥ LÉEME / DESPLIÉGAME ♥ ♥ Hola a todos, hoy os traigo una rutina de cardio de 25 minutos para quemar grasa y adelgazar en casa. En la web https://ift.tt/39VJREp encontraréis los calendarios de entrenamiento tanto para principiantes como para avanzados. Si quieres conseguir tú transformación en solamente 12 semanas, entra ya en http://www.pgv12.com y elige el PLAN PGV12 que más se adapte a ti. Nuestro lema: YO PUEDO CON TODO Los hashtags: #GymVirtual #YPCT #YoPuedoConTodo #PGV12 ♡♡ ¡SUSCRÍBETE! ♡♡ http://www.youtube.com/user/gymvirtual ................................................................................................................................. ♡♡ PLAN DE ENTRENAMIENTO + NUTRICIÓN 12 SEMANAS♡♡ http://www.pgv12.com ................................................................................................................................. ♡♡¡ECHA UN VISTAZO A NUESTRA TIENDA ONLINE! ♡♡ https://ift.tt/2Un...
Read more

New story in Health from Time: After Cruise Ships and Nursing Homes, Will Universities Be the Next COVID-19 Tinderboxes?

The fall semester has yet to begin, but student athletes training for the season can already be found on college campuses across the U.S. And so can COVID-19. Since the start of July there have been at least two outbreaks among student athletes, coaches, and staff—with 37 infected at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill and 22 at Boise State . Clusters of infection have been traced to college town bars popular with students. A common misconception is that young people with COVID-19 don’t die and therefore college re-openings pose little risk. Sadly, this isn’t the case. COVID-19 deaths in the young are rare, but they happen. Universities across the U.S. are mourning the loss of students in the lead-up to the school year, including Joshua Bush , a 30-year old nursing student at the University of South Carolina, Trevor Syphus Lee , a 27-year old senior at Utah Valley University, and Juan Garcia , a 21-year old Penn State undergraduate. One might imagine th...
Read more