New Cases: 701,061 (⬆︎ .54%)
New Deaths: 11,770 (⬆︎ .42%)
USA
New Cases: 76,786 (⬆︎ .25%)
New Deaths: 952 (⬆︎ .17%)
Vaccination Scorecard
Total Vaccinations: 99.6 million (⬆︎ 2.05%)
Total Eligible Population: 37.3%
Total Population: 30.0%
The uptick threatens to derail our progress - or at least delay our movement through the pandemic and towards recovery - and we're not doing ourselves any favors by not keeping our guard up, or by letting parts of the process flag.
NYT: (pay wall)
A decline in testing may be masking the spread of the virus in some U.S. states
Declines in coronavirus testing in many states in the South and the Great Plains are making it harder to know just how widely the virus may be spreading in those states, even as restrictions are lifted and residents ease back into daily life, experts say.
States in both regions are reporting few new cases relative to their population, compared with harder-hit states like Michigan or New York. But they are also testing far fewer people.
Kansas, for example, is now testing about 60 people a day for every 100,000 in population, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, and Alabama only a bit more. The picture is similar in Iowa, Mississippi and elsewhere.
By contrast, New York is averaging 1,200 tests a day per 100,000, and Rhode Island 1,677 per 100,000.
Testing has been falling in Kansas since Jan. 1, even though hospitalizations were at their highest level of the pandemic then, according to Tami Gurley, co-chair of the virus task force at the University of Kansas Medical Center. The state is now doing fewer tests relative to its population than any state except Idaho.
The tests they are doing in these low-rate states are finding virus.
Twelve percent of Kansas’ coronavirus tests are coming back positive. Alabama’s positivity rate is 12.8 percent. The rate in Idaho is 27.3 percent, the highest in the country. In New York, it’s just 3.5 percent.
So in the states that are doing relatively little testing, it’s possible that their daily case counts are low in part because asymptomatic or mild-symptom cases are going undetected.
Ms. Gurley says she is closely following hospitalizations, as a better indicator of the spread of the virus than new-case reports.
“We think that people are more focused on getting vaccines than getting tested,” she said. “It certainly makes it harder to figure out where we are going. We feel like we are at the point of another uptick in cases.”
Many states in the South and Midwest have relaxed their restrictions, including mask mandates, even though the national data signals that another surge in cases may be coming, according to Edward Trapido, an epidemiologist and associate dean for research at the Louisiana State University School of Public Health.
And many states are shifting resources away from testing to bolster vaccination efforts and meet President Biden’s goal of making all adult Americans eligible for a shot by May 1.
As a result, Dr. Trapido said, in many places these days, only the sickest patients are seeking out a coronavirus test.
“As vaccines have become widespread, people are becoming comfortable about not being tested,” he said. “There is a natural experiment going on. It’s a battle between getting people vaccinated and keeping the percent positive low. When I see a slight change in the curve upward, I get alarmed.”
Ms. Gurley said the shift in emphasis away from testing and toward vaccination may stem in part from widespread public fatigue with pandemic precautions and the political imperative in many states to reopen swiftly.
If all you want to do is prevent deaths from the virus, that may make sense, she said, but “if your end goal is to prevent spread, then we need more testing.”
Opinion: Here’s why Michigan’s covid spike is so scary
Rising coronavirus infection rates nationwide prompted Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to confess on Monday to a sense of “impending doom.” The state most responsible for such alarms right now might be Michigan. The CDC on Tuesday said Michigan led all states in new cases per 100,000 in the previous week. And hospitalizations had surged 53 percent, with 2,144 adults hospitalized, compared with a week earlier.
Cases are multiplying faster than they were last fall, when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) instituted a “pause to save lives,” with measures that included stopping in-person high school classes and banning indoor dining. That intervention prevented more than 100,000 covid cases, a University of Michigan study estimated. No similar measures have been launched in the Wolverine State this time, but it isn’t too late for the governor, with the help of Michiganders, to rein in the rapidly increasing threat.
Is there something about Michigan this is prompting the spike in infections? No, it’s the same dynamics happening elsewhere. They just seem to be happening in Michigan first. Restaurants and bars are pushing their permitted 50 percent maximum capacity (capped at 300 patrons). Much of the clientele in those restaurants appears to young people — and young people are increasingly among the hospitalized in Michigan. From March 5 to March 27, more than half of all covid cases in Michigan were people under age 39. Anecdotally, I can report that people here have lately become much more casual about wearing masks.
It feels as though we haven’t learned the lessons of 2020. Or that the sense of coronavirus vaccines coming to the rescue has made us forget those lessons.
This time around, there are coronavirus variants involved. In mid-January, Michigan recorded its first case of B.1.1.7., the so-called U.K. variant. Although Michigan has had the highest per capita case rate of the variant for the past month, it has been observed in every state in the country except Oklahoma, its share of reported cases rising 7.5 percent daily. The proportion of U.S. coronavirus cases caused by this variant could thus double in just over a week.
Despite official optimism about vaccination programs nationwide, the country is still nowhere near the 70 to 90 percent inoculation rate needed to achieve the “herd immunity” needed to kill off the pandemic. Full vaccine coverage in Michigan is about 16.4 percent — similar to the national average. And there’s little room for error.
Vaccine hesitancy in Michigan is higher than the national average, according to a U.S. Bureau Census survey last month: Seventeen percent of Americans 18 and older say they “probably” or “definitely” won’t get vaccinated, compared with 25 percent of Michiganders. Vaccine hesitancy in Michigan is more common among people age 40 to 54, as well as Black residents, according to the survey.
Worse, inequity has marked the state’s vaccination program. Whether as a result of insufficient supplies, inadequate outreach or vaccine hesitancy — or a combination of all three — vaccination among Michigan’s Black residents is lagging badly. The Atlantic noted last month that first doses had been administered to 61 percent of Michiganders age 65 to 74, and 62 percent of those 75 and older, but just 28 percent of Black residents 65 and older had received at least one shot. The communities hit hardest by the pandemic starting last spring are yet again more vulnerable to this surge.
Michigan has retained its mask mandate, but in other ways the state has aggressively reopened since the beginning of the year. Gyms reopened on Jan. 16 (the day the first B.1.1.7 case was discovered). Eat-in dining reopened on a limited basis on Feb. 1. High school sports — connected to several outbreaks across the state — have been allowed to continue.
Whitmer faced dangerous threats last spring for her forceful measures to combat the pandemic last year. With coronavirus infections increasing in Michigan and many other states, she and other governors urgently need to consider putting the brakes on reopening. Guidelines should be established that firmly tie activities allowed — traveling, going to the gym, eating in a restaurant — to specific vaccination rates. That would create the kind of benchmarks that both explain what the “right thing” is and incentivize public officials and the public to make it happen.
If there is good news about the current outbreak, it is a truly silver lining: Older Michiganders, the most vulnerable population throughout the pandemic, are experiencing far lower rates of hospitalizations. That has happened because of the extraordinary push to vaccinate them first. Vaccines by the tens of millions will be distributed in the coming weeks. We just have to hold on — and not abandon measures and behaviors that kept people safe until now, in Michigan and all across the country.
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