The lack of a trend in new U.S. cases continues. The U.S. remains at 29 new cases per 100K population per day, same as it was five days ago.
Hospitalizations are down to just above 5000 per day. Deaths are just below 400 per day.
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 8/23/2022, 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
If that’s a top or peak of this latest wave, then it’s pretty subtle. The daily new case count has been more-or-less unchanged for the past three months.
And yet, I’d hesitate to say that this is the new normal, because rates and trends are all over the place internationally. Maybe each country will just find its own level.
But this does seem to be the gift that keeps on giving. At 5000 new hospitalizations a day, on the face of it, COVID still accounts for more than 5% of daily U.S. hospitalizations. The diagram below, that I produced back in June, remains true. Assuming most of those 5000 cases are people hospitalized for COVID, then COVID-19 is still nearly the single most common cause of non-maternal hospitalization in the U.S.
Source: USDDHS, AHRQ, HCUP. COVID-19 estimate is mine.
