Public health experts have warned that the actual number of people infected by the virus is certainly far higher than the number of reported cases, and could be up to 13 times as high in some regions.
The U.S. passes four million known cases, as hospitalizations and deaths rise.
The number of people known to have been infected with the virus in the United States passed four million on Thursday, another grim milestone in a pandemic full of them, according to a New York Times database.
And it’s not just cases that are rising. The numbers of hospitalizations and deaths reported in the U.S. each day have also been increasing.
Public health experts have warned that the actual number of people infected is certainly far higher than the number of reported cases, and could be up to 13 times as high in some regions.
Cases are trending upward in 39 states, as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and are decreasing in only two. In the past week, cases have risen most quickly, relative to population, in Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi. Texas has added more than 10,000 cases each day, on average.
More than 143,000 people have died of the virus in the United States, and experts say that the trend in hospitalizations and deaths often lags weeks behind the trend in cases. Even so, according to the Covid Tracking Project, the number of people hospitalized in the country on Thursday approached the high of nearly 60,000 on April 15, when the outbreak was largely concentrated in New York.
The United States reported its millionth case on April 28, more than three months after the first reported case. The country passed two million cases 43 days later, on June 10, and passed three million on July 7.
Texas and Florida have drawn attention, but the virus is surging in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, too.
As the coronavirus rages across the Southern United States, skyrocketing case counts in Texas and Florida have drawn the most national attention, but the virus is also surging in the three states between them along the Gulf Coast: Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.
Alabama recorded 61 new virus-related deaths on Wednesday, its highest daily total so far, and set a daily record for cases on Thursday, with 2,390. Louisiana has surpassed New York for the most identified cases per capita, though testing was scarce when cases peaked in New York this spring. And in Mississippi, deaths are increasing at one of the highest rates in the nation.
“We’re certainly not where we want to be in Louisiana,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said at a news conference Thursday, noting that the state had surpassed 100,000 total cases.
Mr. Edwards said many hospitals in his state had halted nonemergency surgery to save room for rising numbers of Covid-19 patients.
Many hospitals in smaller cities and rural areas have filled their intensive care wards and must transfer patients to bigger cities, said Susan Hassig, associate professor of epidemiology at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
There have been infections in the region since the early stages of the pandemic, Dr. Hassig said, but many went unrecognized, furthering the spread of the virus. “Some of it has always been there — we just weren’t finding it,” she said.
And preventive measures to curb the spread of the virus are often ignored. Dr. Hassig noted that at least 30 Mississippi state legislators had tested positive in recent weeks, including many who were still not wearing masks while continuing to hold public events. Practices like that have helped the virus make its way to areas that were initially unaffected, she said, and higher hospitalizations and death rates have followed.
The Gulf Coast states are not alone in setting new case records. California recorded new highs in both deaths and total number of cases on Wednesday, and Missouri, North Dakota and West Virginia recorded their highest daily case numbers, according to a New York Times database. On Thursday, the nation passed four million reported cases since the pandemic began.
Deaths in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana have so far largely been among older people, but more young people in the region are becoming infected now, Dr. Hassig said, and otherwise healthy younger people are dying from it as well.
Mortality rates have been higher among Black and Hispanic residents, she said, in part because they are, on average, less likely to have jobs they can perform from home and more likely to have underlying health issues than their white neighbors.
@ The New York Times
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Source: Vietnam Insider