Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are rising in a majority of American states, in what appears to be the first widespread increase since the Omnicron variant surge in January.
“Most of the cases are relatively mild,” said Dr. Eric S. Toner, a senior scholar at the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The New Tork Times notes that while the first increase of cases stemming from the effects of the highly contagious BA.2 subvariant was seen in the Northwest, it has grown more geographically diverse. In the last two weeks, cases more than doubled in states from West Virginia to Utah.
Hospitalizations are also on the rise nationwide after plummeting earlier in April to their lowest point since March 2020. Over 20 states have seen hospitalizations ticking up, with the number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus in the Northwest increasing in mid-month by 40 percent or more.
In Florida, reports the Tampa Bay Times, with 899 hospitalizations, the state has seen a 21-percent increase over last week’s figures. The Positivity rate in Florida jumped from 8 percent last week to 10.1 percent.
Florida’s rising numbers reflect on what Dr. Toner said in an interview on Friday: “It’s not over yet. It may be a mistake to relax all of our protective measures too quickly.”
The unreliability of case counts growing
There has been a shift in the metrics used that most accurately tell the story of the coronavirus pandemic. VOX is reporting that the “old stand-by,” case counts, just aren’t as reliable anymore.
This dilemma is due to the increase in the number of at-home tests for the virus that go unreported. This has prompted health officials to focus on at least three data sets.
Together, they focus on “what’s happening now, what’s likely to happen, and how well we’re doing at dealing with what’s already happened over the course of the pandemic.”
- Hospital Data – covers the present, showing the level of severe illness in a given area and the strain being put on the local health care system.
- Data on Emerging Variants – concerns the future and the potential for radical mutations to send the pandemic spinning out into a dangerous new direction.
- Long Covid – reaches from the past and further into the future, as scientists attempt to gain a better grasp of the collateral damage the virus has left in its wake after infecting roughly 60 percent of the US population in the past two years.
And again – this focus on new metrics is necessary because while the percentage of positive tests has been a key metric since the pandemic began – today, with so many people testing at home – people are never reporting the results to anyone,
“It is clear that Covid is here, and will be here for some time,” Dr. Toner said. “Some degrees of caution is wise if one is at elevated risk and in a crowded place. Doing things like wearing a mask still make a lot of sense.”
