The CDC projects that anywhere between 9,800 to 35,700 deaths from Covid will occur in the U.S. during the week that ends on February 12. This means deaths could drop by up to 25% over the next three weeks
America's Covid situation could reverse fortune soon, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) releasing another projection this week showing a potential plummeting of deaths from the virus. The agency released projections on Wednesday showing that daily deaths in the U.S. could drop to as low as 1,400 per day by the week of February 12 - down 25 percent from the 1,867 current daily death average.
The CDC's projections estimate that somewhere between 9,800 and 35,700 new Covid deaths will occur during the week that ends on February 12, or in three weeks. That means that anywhere between 1,400 and 5,100 Americans will die every day that week if the projections hold true.
Projected totals match figures cited by the White House earlier this week that somewhere between 58,000 and 305,000 Americans will die from the virus between now and mid-March - or 1,000 to 5,000 deaths per day on average over the next two months.
Higher ends of these projections, while scary, seem outlandish when considering the current state of the pandemic. The highly infectious Omicron variant is a more mild strain, with CDC data revealed last week finding that the variant is 91 percent less likely to cause death that the Delta strain. Omicron accounts for 99.5 percent of active cases in the U.S. as well, and CDC director Rochelle Walensky even said last week that recent upticks in Covid deaths are more the responsibility of the more severe Delta variant.
The U.S. reaching 5,000 daily deaths would require mortality to triple in the U.S., even as daily cases start to decline and the virus starts to recede.
America is currently logging an average of 739,234 new cases every day - a six percent drop for the 787,887 deaths being averaged this time last week. On Wednesday, the nation recorded 979,920 cases. While it is a higher total than some previous Wednesdays, some lagging cases from the holiday weekend are still trickling in.
Daily deaths are up eight percent over the past week, from 1,717 deaths last week to 1,867 as of Wednesday.
The CDC also projected that 9,600 to 36,900 Covid hospitalizations will be reported during the week that ends of February 11. Hospitalization figures in the U.S. have become unreliable as many Covid positive people receiving treatment for other conditions are added to the tally
The CDC also projected that 9,600 to 36,900 Covid hospitalizations will be reported during the week that ends of February 11 - or between 1,371 to 5,271 hospitalizations per day. While the U.S. is technically recording a pandemic-high number of hospitalizations at the moment - averaging 158,638 Americans receiving care while Covid positive every day - the figure is unreliable as many people receiving treatment for another condition at a hospital are testing positive while present and being added to the total.
Daily cases are no longer included in these projections by the CDC. It represents a shift away from using daily case counts as a barometer for the current state of the pandemic in the U.S., as the rampant spread of a more mild variant has made daily case counts often appear much more worrying than they truly are. Some media organizations, like the Associated Press, have even abandoned reporting on new daily case records in U.S. states.
A potential decrease in cases and deaths in the coming weeks has been on the cards for the U.S. Experts, including Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, have predicted that daily cases in the country would eventually recede as the rapidly spreading Omicron variant would eventually run out of people to infect.
Data from the UK and South Africa shows that the Omicron surge will likely rapidly decline after reaching its peak. Cases in the UK have slashed since reaching their peak in early January - down from around 180,000 cases per day to 100,000.
The situation across the pond has brightened so much over the past few weeks that almost all Covid restrictions in the country have been lifted. Work from home orders, mask mandates and some indoor capacity restrictions have already been dropped.
South Africa experienced the first major case surge associated with the new variant in late November. Officials in the country were the first to discover the highly infectious, vaccine resistant, variant after dozens of breakthrough infections were discovered and sequenced.
Cases in the country rocketed, reaching over 23,000 per day in mid December. Cases are already down to around 3,300 per day as of Wednesday, as the massive
