Fourth Surge May Be a Second Wave
The CDC announced on April 7 that a coronavirus variant first detected in the U.K is now dominant in the U.S. In some ways, we re almost in a new pandemic, said one prominent public health expert earlier about the more transmissible variant. April 12, 2021, 7am PDT | Irvin Dawid Share B117, the coronavirus variant first detected in the United Kingdom in December, is now the most common variant in the United States, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, reported Stephanie Soucheray for CIDRAP News on Wednesday, April 7.
Pandemic Geography: What s Going on in Michigan?
Public health experts may speculate about whether the U.S. is headed for a fourth surge or moderate increase in cases, but the resurgence is well underway in Michigan where the virus was spreading the fastest. Only N.Y. has more daily infections. April 4, 2021, 5am PDT | Irvin Dawid Share
Global coronavirus infections are rising rapidly, 23% in the last two weeks, according to The New York Times database on April 3. Steady increases in cases are concentrated in Brazil and surrounding countries, the northern US and Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia, according to the weekly newsletter posted April 2 by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. These epidemics can be largely attributed to the spread of variants, and in the case of the US, an overly hasty re-opening may be to blame.
A Fourth Coronavirus Surge is Likely
The plunge in daily new coronavirus cases has ceased and may be climbing again, but the news is brighter when looking at the summer. Most of the public health experts interviewed by The New York Times believe a surge is likely but not inevitable. March 1, 2021, 10am PST | Irvin Dawid Share
“We may be done with the virus, but clearly the virus is not done with us,” Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a Feb. 26 press briefing by the White House COVID-19 Response Team. She added that the latest data suggests that these declines may be stalling, potentially leveling off at, still, a very high number.
All the coronavirus data is moving in the right direction in most of the U.S., yet 130,000 additional Americans are projected to die from COVID-19 by June according to one widely used model.
Will Israel Show Us the Way Out of the Pandemic?
If vaccinations are key to ending the pandemic, Israel may get there first as it has the highest rate by far of any nation. Paradoxically, it also has the world s second-highest rate of daily new COVID-19 cases. February 14, 2021, 5am PST | Irvin Dawid Share Israel, which has seen several waves of the virus, had raced ahead of other nations and given the first doses of Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine to more than a third of its population [of 9 million] by the end of January, according to the description accompanying The Washington Post s global coronavirus tracker on Feb. 12 (found just below the seventh chart titled,