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COVID-19 cases are declining in the US but "a new variant could appear"

2022-01-23T04:44:39.759Z


"Nationally, cases are declining, which I see as an optimistic trend," the CDC director said. But the falling numbers don't mean Americans are out of the woods.


By Kaitlin SullivanNBC

News

COVID-19 cases are finally going down in the United States, welcome news after nearly two months of a skyrocketing surge fueled by the highly infectious omicron variant.

“Nationally, the number of cases is declining, which I consider to be an optimistic trend,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said in a session on Friday. briefing on the coronavirus at the White House.

But the falling numbers don't mean Americans are out of the woods.

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That's because as cases decline, a large number of people will still be infected -- many people who got sick as cases peaked will be infected on the downslope, said Dr. Jonathan Li, an expert in infectious diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

“It is a great sign that the slope is going down, but the case rates are still very high,” he warned.

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On Friday, the seven-day average of cases in the United States was 743,913 cases, down 7% from the previous week, according to data from NBC News.

However, deaths increased slightly, from an average of 1,979 on January 14, to 2,131 on Friday.

According to Katriona Shea, a biology professor at Pennsylvania State University and a member of the Scenario Modeling Hub, a team dedicated to making projections about COVID-19, cases and hospitalizations are expected to peak before the end of January in most states.

Cases are already falling in parts of the Northeast, Walensky said.

"We're starting to see sharp drops in areas that hit their peaks first

, so in the Northeast areas (New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut) they're really starting to slow down."

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Shea said cases in the rest of the country and deaths are expected to drop shortly thereafter.

The large decline in cases in large states like New York may make the national average seem lower, though cases are still rising in many states, but she expects all states to peak shortly after the northeastern states.


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Still, people shouldn't see this as a time to let their guard down, he said.

“People think that if the peak is at the end of January, then we are safe.

But there may be a lot of damage on the other side of that peak."

The omicron variant now accounts for nearly 100% of new COVID-19 cases in the nation, according to the CDC.

Although preliminary evidence suggests this strain of the virus is less likely to cause severe illness, many more people are being infected than ever before, so the death toll will remain significant, he said.

People shouldn't expect a smooth decline either.

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"It wouldn't be surprising if we see other bumps in the road, temporary spikes that won't return to the level of the spikes we're seeing now, but are still brief periods of uptick within this overall declining trend," said Justin Lessler, professor in epidemiology at the Gillings School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

These brief spikes are likely due to delays in counting and changes in people's behavior, such as increased travel over holiday weekends, he said.


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According to Li, although much of the decline is due to immunity, behavioral changes also play a vital role.

If these behavioral changes, such as mask wearing, decrease, it could slow down the decline, he said.

The latest predictions from the group Scenario Modeling Hub, published Thursday, projected that by April cases could fall to the lows seen in June 2021, before the Delta variant wave hit.

However, the models cannot predict how the virus may evolve.

“A new variant could appear

,” Shea said.

“There was no sign of omicron.

That variant caused big changes and it is definitely possible for it to happen again.”


Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2022-01-23

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