If you thought the pandemic was over in the US, think again. After almost three months of steady decline, the number of daily new cases of COVID-19 across the nation is rising. In several states, led by Michigan, the number of people in hospitals is also climbing.
That leaves the US at a critical juncture, experts warn. Even as the vaccine rollout picks up speed, the reopening of businesses, including bars and restaurants in many states, increased travel, a widespread sense of COVID fatigue, plus the spread of more transmissible and deadly variants, means that the US could be at the start of a fourth coronavirus surge.
“I am going to pause here, I’m going to lose the script, and I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom,” a visibly shaken Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said at a White House COVID-19 briefing on Monday. “We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope, but right now I’m scared.”
Health officials on Monday urged Americans to continue getting vaccinated, wearing masks, social distancing, and following CDC travel guidelines to prevent a fourth surge.
“We really need to hold on to the public health measures as we get more and more people — from 2- to 3-plus million people — vaccinated every day,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “It will be a race between the vaccine and what’s going on with the dynamics of the outbreak. We can win this by just hanging in there a bit longer."
After a steep decline in new COVID-19 cases from the start of January, daily new cases across the nation began to level off and then ticked upward last week. Another key indicator of a renewed surge, the positive percentage of daily COVID-19 tests, has been rising for about three weeks.
Surges in the number of people in the hospital and daily reported COVID-19 deaths typically lag behind rises in cases by a few weeks.
“When we see that uptick in cases, what we’ve seen before is that things really have a tendency to surge, and surge big,” Walensky said. “We know that cases can sometimes be a week or two behind the behavior that leads to those cases — the mixing that leads to those cases — we know that travel is up, and I just worry that we will see the surges that we saw over the summer and over the winter again.”