Author: chogan@directresearch.com

 

The Omicron wave appears to be unfolding on schedule in the U.S., plus or minus a few outlier states.

The U.S. east coast (Northeast and South Atlantic regions) led the way on the upswing.  Ten days ago, those regions had the highest  new case rates in the nation.  Now they have the lowest.

By contrast, the entire mid-section of the country started later, and is still more-or-less in the upswing portion of this wave.  Those regions are only now starting to top out.

The net result of all of that, for the U.S. as a whole, is that new COVID-19 cases fell seven  percent in the past seven days.

 

Continue reading Post #1408: COVID-19 trend to 1/20/2022. Everything remains on schedule

 

Daily new COVID-19 cases continue to fall throughout the Northeast region, and are falling particularly rapidly in the NY/NJ area.  By contrast, case counts continue to rise through much of the Midwest, South Central, and Mountain regions.

The result is that the U.S. average new case count continues to decline.  For the past seven days, case counts are down about 3 percent on average. Continue reading Post #1407: COVID-19 trend to 1-19-2022

 

Only about half of states reported new case numbers today, owing to yesterday’s King Day holiday.  That makes it hard to be precise about the exact trend.  That said, a few things are fairly clear.

New case counts are now falling rapidly in New York and New Jersey, and in much of the South Atlantic region.  These are the areas that led on the upside of the Omicron wave, and they are now leading it down.  New York and New Jersey are down by about one-third from their peak rates, seven days after the peak.  The rapid rate of decline is certainly a good sign.

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 1/14/2022, 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.

Most of the very largest states reported data.  The major exceptions were Florida and Illinois.  Given that, I’m fairly confident in saying that the U.S. new case count has peaked.  There was essentially no difference between a curve constructed for all states (where I extrapolate the missing data) and a curve constructed solely from the states reporting valid data for yesterday.

Finally, we get confirmation of a short-term peak from the U.S. hospitalization data.  Through yesterday, it appears that total new COVID-19 admissions peaked more-or-less at the same time as new cases.  Which is just about right, for the timing of it.

Source:  Calculated from US DHHS unified hospital dataset.

That said, we’re hardly out of the woods.  Only on state (Maine) has a new case rate below 100 new cases / 100K / day.  Some states (notably Wisconsin)  remain in the rapid-growth phase of their Omicron waves.

But as a country, it looks like we’re over the hump.  We’re running a bit behind Canada and the United Kingdom.  But better late than never.

Source: Google

And, thanks to a generally lower severity of illness of Omicron, so far we’ve done it without stressing large segments of U.S. ICU bed capacity.  In two-thirds of states, COVID-19 cases occupy 30% or more of all available ICU beds.  But in only one state (MD ) do COVID-19 cases occupy more than 40%.

Source:  Calculated from US DHHS unified hospital dataset.

When I think about how this might have turned out – if we’d gotten a variant as infectious as Omicron and as lethal as Delta — I have to conclude that we dodged a bullet with this one.

 

The U.S. stands at 249 new COVID-19 cases per 100K per day, virtually unchanged from yesterday.  Cases are now up just 21% in the past seven days, and the national curve clearly shows the inflection points suggesting that a peak is near.

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 1/14/2022, 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.

But wait!, you might say.  With manufacturers now selling between 100M and 300M home test kits per month (Post #1397), how can you be sure this peak is real?  Maybe we’re just seeing a drop in the official counts because home testing has become so common?

One thing suggesting that this peak is real is the sequencing.  Regions are moving through their respective Omicron waves in an orderly progression.  New York was the first to be hit, and now it’s the first to peak.   Regions that started later are still in their rapid-growth phase.  That U.S. curve reflects an average of areas that are already past their peak (Northeast region), all the way to areas where growth is still near-vertical (Pacific region)

A second thing suggesting that the peak is real is the parallel behavior of new COVID-19 hospitalizations.  They haven’t quite peaked yet, but they appear to be close.

Source:  Calculated from U.S. DHHS unified hospital dataset.

And, it’s a good thing we’re nearly at the peak.  In more than half the states, COVID-19 patients are taking up more than 30% of ICU beds.  That’s what the right-hand end of the green line below is showing.

That said, there’s still no sign of the intense stress on hospital ICU beds that marked the last two major waves.  The yellow line (states with an average of 40% or more of ICU beds filled with COVID-19 patients) and red line (50% or more of ICU beds) are both flat.   So there are a lot of COVID-19 hospitalizations, but unlike prior waves, they are spread across the entire U.S. at the same time.

 

By my count, the U.S. now stands at 247 new COVID-19 cases per 100K per day, up less than 3% from yesterday, and up 33% over the past seven days.

Beneath the U.S. average is a spectrum of growth rates, from outright declines in new cases in the Northeast, to near-vertical growth in new cases in the Pacific region.  Regions are peaking in more-or-less the order that they started, which has been the norm for prior COVID-19 waves in the U.S. Continue reading Post #1401: COVID-19 trend to 1/13/2022: Maybe a week from the U.S. peak?

 

For the second day in a row, total U.S. new COVID-19 case counts did not materially increase.  We now stand at 241 new cases / 100K / day, roughly the same as two days ago.  For the past seven days, the case count rose just 35%.

Yesterday’s pause was clearly mostly an artifact of data reporting.  Today, by contrast, I can point to a handful of high-population states — starting with New York and Illinois — whose true declining new case counts contributed to the stable U.S. average.

Cases are still rising in most of the country, for sure.  But a handful of places — NY, NJ, DC and now a few others — seem to be turning the corner.

Combine this with a couple of days of non-rising new hospitalizations (Post #1398), and even if this isn’t quite the peak, it’s a nice change of pace.

We’re due for it.  This is the week that the winter wave peaked last year.  And we’re now nearly four weeks into our wave, whereas both Great Britain and Canada appear to have peaked at just over three weeks.

Edit:  It now appears that the NY Times may be suggesting that we are at or near the peak, per this reference.

Continue reading Post #1399: COVID-19, no trend at 1/12/2022