U.S. infection rate rising outside NY as states open up

Take the New York metropolitan area’s progress against the coronavirus out of your equation and the numbers show all of those other U.S. is moving in the incorrect direction, with the known infection rate rising even while states move to lift their lockdowns, an Associated Press analysis found Tuesday.

New confirmed infections each day in the U.S. exceed 20,000, and deaths each day are more than 1,000, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University. And public health officials warn that the failure to flatten the curve and drive down the infection rate in places could cause a lot more deaths - perhaps thousands - as persons are allowed to go out and businesses reopen.

“Make no mistakes: This virus continues to be circulating inside our community, perhaps even more now than in previous weeks” said Linda Ochs, director of medical Department in hard-hit Shawnee County, Kansas.

Elsewhere all over the world, Britain’s official coronavirus death toll, at a lot more than 29,000, surpassed that of Italy to be the best in Europe and second-highest on the globe behind the United States. The state number of dead worldwide surpassed a quarter-million, by Johns Hopkins' count, although true toll is thought to be much higher.

THE BRAND NEW York metropolitan area, consisting of about 20 million persons across a region that encompasses the city's northern suburbs, Long Island and northern New Jersey, has been the hardest-hit corner of the country, accounting for at least one-third of the country's 70,000 deaths. People across the densely packed region live practically on top of one another in apartment buildings and ride together on subways, buses and trains.

When the still locked-down metropolitan area is roofed, new infections in the U.S. seem to be declining, in line with the AP analysis. It discovered that the five-day rolling average for new cases has decreased from 9.3 per 100,000 persons three weeks hence on April 13 to 8.6 on Monday.

But subtracting the brand new York metropolitan area from the analysis changes the story. Without it, the rate of new cases in the U.S. increased over the same period from 6.2 per 100,000 persons to 7.5.

The daily number of new deaths in the U.S. declined noticeably in recent weeks. If the NY area is overlooked, deaths have essentially plateaued. The rolling five-day average outside the metro region for new deaths dropped slightly from 1.86 per 500,000 persons on April 20 to 1 1.82 on Monday.

Testing for the virus in the U.S. has been expanded, and which has probably contributed to the increasing rate of confirmed infections. Nonetheless it doesn't explain the complete increase, said Dr. Zuo-Feng Zhang, a public health researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles.

“This increase isn't because of testing. It’s a real increase,” he said.

Pockets of America far from NEW YORK are seeing ominous trends.

Deaths in Iowa surged to a fresh daily most of 19 on Tuesday, and 730 personnel at an individual Tyson Foods pork plant tested positive. On Monday, Shawnee County, home to Topeka, Kansas, reported a doubling of cases from the other day on a single day that business restrictions commenced to ease.

Gallup, New Mexico, is under a strict lockdown until Thursday as a result of an outbreak, with guarded roadblocks to avoid travel in and out the city and a ban on a lot more than two people in a car. Authorities have been sending water tankers into town, hospital space is running short, and a high school gym has been changed into a recuperation center with 60 oxygen-supplied beds.

On Monday, one widely cited model from the University of Washington practically doubled its projection of deaths in the U.S. from the coronavirus to around 134,000 through early August, with a variety of 95,000 to nearly 243,000.

Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the institute that created the projections, said the increase is largely because most states are expected to help ease restrictions by in a few days.

Without stay-at-home orders and similar measures, Murray said, “we'd experienced exponential growth, much bigger epidemics and deaths in staggering numbers.” But cooperation is waning, with cellphone location data showing people are receiving out more, even before their states reopen, he said.

“The rise in mobility within the last week to 10 days is likely resulting in some transmission” of the virus, Murray said.

President Donald Trump, asked about the projections before he left on a trip to Arizona to go to a mask factory, disputed the accuracy of models generally. And he said keeping the economy closed carries deadly costs of its own, such as substance abuse and suicide.

“We need to get our country open,” Trump said.

Zhang said it worries him that the rate of new cases is increasing concurrently some states are easing up: “We’re one country. If we’re not moving in the same step, we’re likely to are having issues."

He said he's particularly worried about Florida and Texas, places where cases have already been rising steadily and the prospect of explosions seems high.

While death rates in places have already been trending down, that could change as cases rise rapidly and hospitals become overwhelmed, he said.