The United States is seeing a large decline in the new COVID-19 cases. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, new cases of the disease have declined for the fifth consecutive week, falling more than 24 percent. Yahoo News Medical Contributor, Dr. Kavita Patel, explains some of the reasons why this is happening and whether we could see a fourth increase driven by new variants.
Video transcription
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KAVITA PATEL: We are seeing the virus recede or, at least, seeing very solid evidence across the country that cases are falling at a very dramatic rate. Almost half the week, if not more. And there are several factors contributing.
Number one, and probably the most likely, are the ups and downs we’ve seen with previous peaks. Typically, as cases are skyrocketing and hospitals are overburdened, cities, counties and states are taking much stricter measures. Eliminating indoor meals, eliminating any group settings where people can gather. And it helps materially to reduce cases. This is probably a big factor in this recent decline.
The second is, and there is some speculation, what we call the seasonality of the virus. What that means – and perhaps an easier way to think about it is to think about the flu. Almost every winter, we see an increase in cases of influenza viruses, but we don’t see that much flu – although it does exist – in the summer. Therefore, there is speculation that the coronavirus has some seasonality. It is not the way we see the flu, but similar, so it can be a driver.
A third, but less likely, is, to some extent, not just vaccines, but some notion that many people have already been infected. At the moment, we think we are underestimating the number of infected Americans. We think it’s about 10% in our tests. But there are many who think this is double or triple in reality. And really, at the end of the day, the more people have been infected, the less physical bodies the virus will have to try to infect. But it is difficult to know without some data to back up. But in general, we are seeing a decrease.
We must continue to see these numbers reach at least the point where we started in March. If you remember, even when we had about 1,000 cases a day, we were concerned about the coronavirus. It has only gotten worse since then, but we should not be complacent because we are still in a very vulnerable period, where cases are decreasing, but still exist. Much of the country is still in what I would call the red category, with enough cases to be careful about reopening. And, also, these variants that we know are more transmissible and highly likely to be contagious to other people.
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The next speculation is whether or not we will have a fourth wave. I think we will see, in some parts of the country, an increase in cases in the coming months. It probably won’t be as dramatic as the peak of this holiday season. But remember, in March and again in July, we saw a certain degree of locality for the waves. We saw parts of the east and west coast most affected in March. And then, in July, we saw other parts of the country that had not been affected in March.
We can see a similar pattern and this will have a lot to do with the level of vaccination in these communities, as well as the extent of these variants. They are everywhere. But the extent to which they are causing current infections is likely to depend on the community you are in. So again, a fourth wave seems very likely, but to a much lesser extent than the most recent. And, hopefully, a much lower grade than the previous two in March and July.
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