It is a staggering toll, almost 200,000 people dead from the coronavirus in the United States, and close to one million people around the world.
And the pandemic, which sent cases spiking skyward in many countries and then trending downward after lockdowns, has reached a precarious point. Will countries like the United States see the virus continue to slow? Or is a new surge on the way?
“What will happen, nobody knows,” said Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. “This virus has surprised us on many fronts, and we may be surprised again.”
In the United States, fewer new coronavirus cases have been detected week by week since late July, after outbreaks first in the Northeast and then in the South and the West.
But in recent days, the nation’s daily count of new cases is climbing again, fueling worries of a resurgence of the virus as universities and schools reopen and as colder weather pushes people indoors.
Around the world, at least 73 countries are seeing surges in newly detected cases.
In India, more than 90,000 new cases are now being detected daily, sending the country’s total cases soaring past five million.
In Europe, after lockdowns helped smother the crisis in the spring, the virus once again is burning its way across the continent. ...
We have a very serious situation unfolding before us,” Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Europe, said last week. “Weekly cases have now exceeded those reported when the pandemic first peaked in Europe in March.”
Deaths in the United States from the coronavirus neared 200,000 as of Monday morning. It was only four months ago, in late May, that the nation’s death roll reached 100,000. Even the current tally may be a significant undercount of the toll, analyses suggest. ...
