By Mark Van Sumeren
May 2, 2022 – Covid scorecards published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tell the story of Covid’s impact on the United States. On the one hand, the CDC’s Community Transmission scorecard shows significant virus spread across much of the country. Nearly half of all counties rate “High” or “Substantial” for virus transmission.
Yet, the CDC’s Community Level scorecard reports that nine of every ten counties rate as “Low” for virus transmission coupled with health system impact. Only fifty-six counties (1.7%) rate “High” in this measure. Counties in New York and Maine account for most “High” ratings.
What message can we glean from these seemingly conflicting scorecards? The virus is active and circulating across the country. Yet, one or more factors likely have limited its severity:
- The mildness of the variant itself
- Protection from vaccination or prior infection
- Effective treatment protocols
Long a forerunner for Covid’s spread in the United States, New York provides insight into the current situation. New York has posted rising cases for two months and was among the first states hit by the latest variants. Daily cases have surged 330% and have yet to show signs of receding. Still, these spreading infections have not strained the New York health system. Covid patients occupy less than half the inpatient beds in New York they had in January. Covid admissions to New York hospitals, while increasing throughout April, are rising only half as quickly as newly diagnosed infections.
Vaccinations have played a role in this dichotomy between infections and hospitalizations. According to data from New York state, vaccine effectiveness in preventing infections fell from 80% to 67% during this latest variant wave. However, vaccine effectiveness in preventing hospitalization remained high, slipping from 91% to 87%.
Reinforcing the limited impact on hospitalizations, nearly half of all counties in the United States reported no Covid admissions for the seven days through April 27; 92% admitted ten or fewer Covid patients.
Nationally, deaths with Covid have been falling since January. Indeed, the death rate was ten times higher earlier this year than last week. We have not seen the rate this low since last July.
Rising Covid infections in the United States differ from the experience in much of the rest of the world. Cases globally fell last week, a pattern repeated in Asia, Europe, Oceania, and South America. Only twenty large countries (populations of 15 million or more) reported more cases last week than a week earlier; all others showed declining cases. (Taiwan continues to outpace the rest of the world, with an alarming 250% increase in cases week-to-week.) Last week, the United States ranked twelfth among these large countries in cases per capita. The five countries with the highest rates – Australia, South Korea, Germany, Italy, and France – suffered at least three times as many cases per capita as any other large country. Notably, cases fell last week in four of these five countries. Only Germany posted more cases than a week earlier.
Given the timelines of earlier Covid waves, we might anticipate that cases in the United States would begin receding sooner rather than later. New York and other Northeast states would likely witness declining infections before the rest of the country, given that the waves in these states first launched two months ago. The latest ensemble forecast predicts that cases will stabilize within the next two weeks.
Time will tell.