For two years, the coronaviruses killed Americans on a brutal schedule, a few weeks after infections rose so did deaths, cutting an unforgiving path across the country.
The pattern seems to have changed. People are dying from Covid at a rate close to the lowest of the epidemic nearly three months after the launch of a new Omicron variant.
The number of deaths and the spread of the virus have changed more than before. Deaths have risen slowly in the northeastern United States, where the surge began, and are likely to rise nationally as the surge pushes across the South and West. Scientists said that the country is better protected against Covid deaths than before.
The number of people whose immune systems are completely unprepared for the virus has gone down because so many Americans have been exposed to the disease.
The risk of dying from the H1N1 virus was the same for people who had not been exposed as it was for people who had. Those pockets are no longer around.
Many Americans are behind due to the turn in the epidemic.
Older people are more likely to die from Covid than they were last year. Unvaccinated people are more likely to be killed by the virus than people who have received a vaccine. Those with weakened immune systems are at increased risk.
Even though Covid is killing an average of 314 people a day, it's still an awful toll. The virus is killing more people than suicide or car crashes. Some of the people who survive the virus are debilitated for a long time.
The country's resources for fighting the virus are drying up and many Americans are not getting booster shots There is a chance that a more evasive variant will cut into people's protection against severe disease.
The effectiveness of the immune response will be lessened as the time goes on, according to Dr. It's possible that we can be caught off guard later this year.
The link between Covid cases and deaths began to weaken over the winter, scientists said, but the sheer volume of Americans getting infections meant that deaths continued to soar.
In the spring, Covid has been killing fewer Americans than in any other time of the year. The country is now recording 10 times as many cases as it was at that time, indicating that a smaller percentage of cases end in death.
The case fatality rate is estimated to be one-third lower than it was last summer and one-quarter lower than it was in December. The prevalence of at- home testing has made that even more true.
The percentage of test results that are positive is known as test positivity. The measure is imperfect, but it shows the large number of Americans who have contracted the disease.
The ratio of deaths to test positive fell from the beginning of the Pandemic to the beginning of the Spring.
The average case of Covid-19 is becoming less severe.
Scientists said that it's a better reflection of gains in immunity than it is of the virus's weakened state. The government's estimate of the number of Americans who have contracted the virus increased from one-third in December to over one-half two months later.
Over 200,000 people were killed by Covid this winter, and many more were seriously ill. The immune systems of those who survived infections were better able to fight the virus.
Dr. Joe Gerald is an associate professor of public health at the University of Arizona. A lot of people who weren't vaccine-naive were exposed to Omicron over the course of a few months.
There were more deaths in the Northeast where the Omicron subvariants first took hold. The average number of Covid deaths in New York increased from April to June. The number of deaths in New England went from five to 34 in a single day.
In the United States, where cases have been climbing, deaths have not changed. National Covid deaths increased after cases did.
The deaths didn't spike as they had during earlier points of the Pandemic.
Virginia Pitzer is an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health. In Arizona, the share of Covid cases being recorded in vaccine recipients grew to 60 percent in April from 25 percent in the previous month.
Every Covid wave is a collection of staggered regional surges complicating national trends in a country as large as the U.S. The Omicron wave in the winter may have helped to obscure rising mortality levels in the Northeast.
Some states have moved from reporting Covid deaths daily to doing so weekly, and this has caused more frequent daily swings in the data.
It took a number of states weeks to report all of the deaths from Covid. The national death curve could have been impacted by that.
It is more difficult to understand the pace and trajectory of the outbreak due to the fact that the U.S.'s surveillance system is not as strong as it should be.
There are many reasons why Covid deaths have not fallen further. The virus is reaching people who are more vulnerable because of their vaccine status because of the high levels of infections being taken. As people age and develop weakened immune systems, they are more susceptible to bad outcomes.
The people who have come through with Covid are less sick than they were this winter. It feels like a different disease for a lot of people, with the exception of people who are unvaccinated or who are immune suppressed.
Some Americans are at higher risk due to the lack of access to booster shots. Black and Hispanic people who are eligible for boosters have been given the shots at a lower rate than whites. Patients who don't have a primary care doctor or who live far from a pharmacy can have difficulty getting the pills.
The increase in the number of hospitalized Covid patients is likely to lead to more deaths. It's not clear how much the wave will hit the South, where immunity from previous infections has grown.
The professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida said that vaccination rates in southern states are low. There's a lot of immunity built up through previous infections.
The number of infections this winter and spring has created many problems. A recent study shows that one in five adult survivors of Covid under the age of 65 have dealt with some version of long Covid. Doctors' absences this spring have strained hospitals that already had staffing problems.
The doctor said that he had symptoms from a fight with Covid until April. He was infectious again within a month. He said that because of Covid absences, his team of five doctors at one of the hospitals where he works had been reduced to two.
Patients with Covid were spending less time in the hospital during the latest wave.
She said they had been presenting in a different way. Patients had the most pressing difficulties due to Covid in the past. She said that more patients needed care because of Covid's actions.
The wave feels qualitatively and quantitatively different according to Dr. The I.C.U. is not filling up with patients who are on death's door.
Sarah Cahalan reported.
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