If progress in the New York metropolitan area in fighting coronavirus is removed from the equation, the numbers show that the rest of the United States is headed in the wrong direction, with an increase in the infection rate even when states are They are preparing to withdraw their containment measures, an analysis by The Associated Press revealed Tuesday.
Scientists warned that those numbers will only increase as governors and local officials across the country reduce their restrictions on staying home and reopen businesses.
Some states began to remove confinement restrictions that have left millions of people without jobs, even as the country registers thousands of infections and deaths daily. Public health experts warned that the reduced measures could result in tens of thousands of additional deaths.
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The New York metropolitan area, with about 20 million people in more than twenty counties, including the northern suburbs of the city – Long Island and northern New Jersey_, has been the most affected site in the country, with at least a third of the nation’s 70,000 deaths.
As the New York metropolitan area – which is still in confinement – is included, it appears that new cases of coronavirus in the United States are declining, according to the AP analysis. The text found that the five-day moving average of new infections has dropped from 9.4 per 100,000 people on April 9 to 8.6 on Monday.
But removing the New York metropolitan area from the analysis changes things. Disregarding that area, the rate of new cases in the United States increased in the same period from 6 per 100,000 people to 7.5.
While the daily death toll in the metropolitan area has declined in recent weeks, in the rest of the United States the rate is virtually unchanged, according to the AP analysis.
Some parts of the country far from New York City show disturbing trends.
Deaths in Iowa rose to a new daily high of 19 on Tuesday and 730 workers at a single Tyson Foods meat processing plant tested positive for the virus.
“Make no mistake: This virus continues to circulate in our community, perhaps more than in previous weeks,” said Linda Ochs, director of the Shawnee County Health Department.
The daily number of new cases in the United States exceeds 20,000 and deaths are above 1,000, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.
On Monday, a widely cited model from the University of Washington practically doubled its projection of deaths in the United States from the coronavirus to about 134,000 as of early August, with a range of 95,000 to almost 243,000.
Physician Christopher Murray, director of the institute that created the projections, said the increase is mainly due to the fact that most states are expected to reduce the restrictions by next week.
Without confinement orders and similar measures, Murray said, “We would have had exponential growth, much larger epidemics and deaths in shocking numbers.” But cooperation is declining, and phone location data reveals that people are hanging out more, even before their states reopen, he said.
“Increased mobility in the last week or 10 days is likely to lead to some transmission” of the virus, Murray said.
