Coping with COVID: U.S. surpasses 3 million cases

By Dennis Boone

Despite current case trends, lethality at this stage has reached its lowest point since March 30.

Depending on whether one sees increasing case counts as a step toward herd immunity or an indicator of failed efforts to control the spread, new figures from worldometers.com reflect a milestone for the U.S.: As of today, the nation has surpassed 3 million known cases of infection.

For some perspective on the rate of growth in the spread, it took 71 days for the number of positive cases in the U.S. to reach 1 million on April 27. The next million-case increment, when the nation saw its 2 millionth case roughly around June 7, came after 41 days. Only 29 days passed before crossing the 3 million threshold.

According to rt.live, which estimates the speed by which COVID-19 is growing is accelerating across the nation, only 10 states currently show the spread of the virus in decline. Missouri and Kansas are among the 40 where the spread is increasing, with growth factors of 1.16 in Kansas and 1.14 in Missouri.

Those figures represent the so-called Rt values that measure infection rates; a figure above 1.0 indicates a virus is continuing to spread, while less than 1.0 suggests it’s dying out. Applying those to larger populations, the figure in Kansas suggests that each person infected will infect, on average 1.16 more people.

Despite those case trend lines, the lethality of the virus at this stage has reached its lowest point since March 30. As of this morning, worldometers.com shows a 7-day rolling average for deaths in the U.S. at 511 per day. That’s down nearly 78 percent since its April 21 peak.

Health professionals and public officials will be closely monitoring how the numbers of deaths change over the coming two weeks, as the rough average of time between onset of symptoms and death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is roughly eight days.

Tracking back to the previous eight-day period leading up to the current one (June 27 through Sunday) of this week, the nation saw 4,228 COVID-19 related deaths from June 20-26. Applying the eight-day lag between first symptoms and death, that works out to a current fatality rate of about 1.32 percent of known cases.