Third wave of coronavirus infection takes hold in US

WASHINGTON • After weeks of warnings that cases were again on the rise, a third surge of coronavirus infection has firmly taken hold in the United States.

The nation is averaging 59,000 new cases a day, the most since the beginning of August, and the country is on pace to record the most new daily cases of the entire pandemic in the coming days.

But if earlier surges were defined by acute and concentrated outbreaks - in the north-east in spring, and in the south during the summer - the virus is now simmering at a worrisome level across nearly the entire country.

Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming each set seven-day case records on Tuesday. Even New Jersey, once a model for bringing the virus under control, has seen cases double over the past month.

"It is a really dangerous time," said Dr Tom Inglesby, an infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

"(Cases in) the majority of states are on the rise," he said, adding that at the same time, "there are very few places where things are stable and going down".

The latest wave threatens to be the worst of the pandemic yet, coming as cooler weather forces people indoors and with many Americans feeling exhausted by months of restrictions. Unlike earlier waves, which were met with shutdown orders and mask mandates, the country has shown little appetite for more new restrictions.

"We're seeing spread virtually everywhere," said Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio, where 69 of 88 counties are now considered "high incidence", meaning at least 100 virus cases per 100,000 people in the past two weeks.

Yet Mr DeWine, a Republican who was among the first governors to shut down businesses in spring and who imposed a statewide mask mandate in summer, has not announced new measures to curb the spread of the disease.

"The fastest way we can do it is not for me to issue some order that you can't enforce or would be difficult to enforce, but rather, for every Ohioan to take this seriously," he said, grabbing his cloth mask and holding it up.

The newest surge sets the stage for a gruelling winter. At the current rate of growth, new daily confirmed cases could soon surpass 75,687, the record set on July 16.

The rising case count has so far not translated to increased deaths: About 700 people are dying on average each day, a high but steady rate. So far, more than 220,000 Americans have died from Covid-19.

The latest developments represent a serious new level of spread. Deaths are considered a lagging indicator of new infection, and experts believe the daily toll is likely to rise in the coming months.

Nationwide, hospitalisations, the most accurate gauge of how many people are sick from the virus, are already trending upwards, at a pace slightly lower than that of new infections.

In North Dakota, which leads the nation in new coronavirus cases per capita, hospitalisations and deaths are at a high, and just 20 intensive care beds were available statewide.

With no statewide mask mandate, some mayors are resorting to options they had long resisted.

On Monday, the Mayor of Fargo used his emergency powers to issue a mandatory mask order, the first of its kind in the state.

"We were hoping we had escaped Covid-19," said Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney, a practising surgeon. "Now we're just like everybody else in the country. It has hit us with a vengeance."

In a sign of how quickly the virus is spreading in many parts of the Midwest and the Great Plains, infections recently overwhelmed a private nursing home in northern Kansas.

The nursing home, Andbe Home, noticed the first sign of a problem on Oct 7, when a single resident tested positive. But within days, the virus had run rampant, sneaking from room to room.

Two weeks later, all 62 residents who live there have been infected, and 10 have died. At least 12 employees have also tested positive. NYTIMES