FWIW, the U.S. now stands at 33 new cases per 100K population per day, based on the official counts of tests. Plus-or-minus reporting variations due to Memorial Day, it has been at that level for the past three weeks.
Data source for this and other graphs of new case counts: Calculated from The New York Times. (2021). Coronavirus (Covid-19) Data in the United States. Retrieved 6/7/2022, from https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data.” The NY Times U.S. tracking page may be found at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
Separately, the CDC’s most recent update on variants shows that BA.2.12.2 (call it Omicron-II) has been pushing out Omicron-I (BA.2) quite slowly.
This week’s estimate, 62%. (It’s not very different from last week’s estimate, but last week’s estimate has been revised downward). It took five weeks to go from 30% to 60%. That five-week doubling time compares to a one-week doubling time when Omicron took over from Delta.
Source: CDC COVID data tracker, accessed 6-8-2022
Per the CDC, we’re now seeing about 4000 COVID-19 admissions per day. That implies a 4 percent case hospitalization rate, based on the official case counts. Or, one-in-25 with an officially recorded positive test ends up admitted to the hospital. Likely that’s part-and-parcel of the apparent under-reporting of new cases, as illustrated in yesterday’s post. It certainly looks like the new normal is to deal with COVID without using the health care system. This would mean that the official counts are enriched in those severe cases that require medical attention ( and so get a formal test and diagnosis).
Deaths remain well under 300 per day.
