Coronavirus infections are below 30,000 daily as signs of recovery continue.

The pandemic map is mottled with hotspots that include the Deep South, the Rocky Mountains, and parts of the Pacific Northwest. At the local level, progress on transmission was uneven, as some communities suffered from inequality in vaccine distribution and the health effects of the virus.

However, in the COVID-19 Community Profile Report released this week by the Biden administration, most of the American landscape turned pale green. This is a “low or medium” viral load color code. The report shows that 694 counties still show “high” levels of infection, less than half of mid-April.

David Rubin, director of Policy Lab at the Philadelphia Children’s Hospital, said the current big question is whether vaccination can completely eliminate the virus, or low vaccination rates can cause redness when cold weather returns. Is it smoldering in a sexual area? We have modeled outbreaks for over a year.

Rubin said the answer depends heavily on the individual choices of tens of millions of Americans, especially whether they will be vaccinated.

“If we continue to have sick storage and there are areas with low vaccinations, it will continue until fall and start accelerating again. Find pockets with unvaccinated individuals and these sporadic There is an outbreak, “Rubin said.

The group’s latest blog post states: “The national decline in incidence is long-tailed and slow, likely due to reduced mask use in areas of inadequate vaccination, due to smoldering transmission. It’s likely. “

One of the prominent models of the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicts that by mid-August, there will be less than 7,000 cases and less than 120 deaths per day. This is about one-fifth of the current number. It is a level that cannot be seen after March 2020. , Immediately after the virus first invaded the United States.

The same modeler believes that the virus will somehow recover in the colder months that follow, and those who stop wearing the mask will need to resume wearing the mask to limit the spread of the virus. Scientists are concerned about viral variants. Some have mutations that limit the protective effect of the vaccine but do not completely block it.

“The rise in winter depends on which escape variants are circulating and how fast you pick up masks and good behavior,” IHME epidemiologist Ali Mokdad said in an email.

Over 60% of adults have been vaccinated at least once and are on the road to reaching 70% of the president’s Joe Biden target by July 4. Government officials are increasingly convinced that the pandemic will be curtailed in the coming months. However, infections have not plummeted to zero, and mutant threats remain as the virus continues to circulate worldwide.

“We are confident we can control it,” said Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser on the pandemic. post.. “Somewhere between control and exclusion, we end up at a very low level, not a public health hazard that does not disrupt society.”

In another livestreaming interview postForch said it was too early to know if and when vaccinated people would need booster shots.

“We may not need it for a while,” he said.

Due to the large number of variables in the equation, most modelers are wary of predicting epidemics for more than about four weeks. Among them, human behavior stands out. Mr Mokudad said he was worried that people would become more reckless about communication as Mask’s obligations and restrictions on meetings were lifted. “We shouldn’t relax prematurely.”

Infectious disease experts have downplayed the importance of “herd immunity.” This is the threshold at which new infections are unlikely to prolong the infection chain. No one knows exactly where that threshold is, and it’s unlikely that everywhere in the country will achieve it.

Tens of millions of people are unvaccinated, have no prior infection, and are susceptible to infections. Vaccine hesitation remains of great concern, with more states offering huge cash gifts to get people to jab, often through the lottery.

Even when experts discuss the types of indicators to monitor and the supply of reliable figures begins to become clearer, promising statistical trends emerge. In more than a dozen states, we no longer post daily coronavirus numbers on weekends. Tests have decreased nationwide.

On May 1, the CDC stopped efforts to monitor “breakthrough infections” after vaccination that did not lead to hospitalization or death. The official website explained that the shift “helps to maximize the quality of the data collected for the most clinically and public health cases.”

New policy criticized by some public health experts worried that the CDC may miss important signals embedded in infections among fully vaccinated asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic people Collected.

Breakthrough infections are defined by the CDC as infections that occur more than 14 days after a person completes vaccination. This means either a Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and a Moderna vaccine, or a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. These cases are rare. As of April 26, the CDC recorded only 9,245 of the 95 million vaccinated Americans, but the actual number is probably higher and not recorded in the test.

Kavita Patel, a primary care physician and non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution, said: organ. “What is the burden of collecting information?”

When there was an argument that efforts outweighed profits, Patel said, “I haven’t heard of it yet.”

Patel said this week he saw a groundbreaking case in which a woman with persistent itchy eyes, a sore throat and a slight cough suffered from seasonal allergies. However, tests have confirmed that the patient is infected with covid-19 despite being vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson.

Patel advised the woman to isolate herself and rest, but said she would not recommend hospitalization unless her symptoms worsened.

Patel cites many reasons to monitor all breakthrough cases. At the most basic public health levels, it can be important to monitor all data on illness. She said Covid-19 should be treated the same to provide real-world evidence of how effective the vaccine is. She said that continuing to show the public the rarity of breakthrough cases would increase confidence in the vaccine.

When school began, Patel added that unvaccinated children would be mixed with regularly vaccinated adults. It will also be important to monitor the impact of the breakthrough incident among school staff, she said.

When asked at a media briefing on Tuesday about the reasons for the change in data surveillance, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said: I’m most worried. “

Walensky also cited a technical issue. People with asymptomatic breakthrough infections often do not have enough virus in their bodies to allow gene sequencing.

Many states, including Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, continue to collect this information. Vaccine producers are also collecting it as clinical trials continue.

Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research in San Diego, agreed with Walensky that tracking breakthrough asymptomatic cases is less important. Nonetheless, the CDC monitors these people along with inpatients and fatal cases to determine if and how viral variants evade vaccine protection and discover new variants. He argued that it was necessary to track how well certain vulnerable groups, such as immunodeficiency, were protected by the vaccine.

If there is a spread event caused by an unvaccinated person spending a lot of time indoors with a vaccinated person, even if no one is hospitalized or killed, it can also be investigated. It’s important, Mr Topol said. He said antibody levels can also decline over time.

Throughout the pandemic, one of the simplest indicators for tracking this health emergency was infection rate. How many people were infected today? Is that number going up or down, or is it flat? Where is the infection increasing and where is it decreasing? The number of infections was a leading indicator of what would happen in terms of hospitalization and death. Mortality is usually at least three weeks behind infection, and in some cases even longer.

However, Fauci told The Post that it may be time to focus less on infections and instead focus on those who have become ill enough to be hospitalized or who have succumbed to covid-19.

“The breakthrough number of infections has nothing to do with it unless it spreads to anyone else,” he said. “If you get vaccinated and get a breakthrough infection, it’s very likely that you’ll get rid of it and it’s unlikely that you’ll infect others.”

“You can absolutely follow only the number of hospitalizations … You may find that it is actually the most reliable and compliant parameter.”