Coronavirus-linked deaths across the U.S. continued on a downward trend as of Monday afternoon, even after the country hit historic levels in the number of new confirmed cases late last week, a Breitbart News analysis of the seven-day average of fatalities showed.
Health experts have warned about the lag between infection identification and death that could take weeks or more, which means the fatalities could increase down the road. The current spike in the number of cases intensified almost three weeks ago around mid-June.
A moving average of cases and deaths reported each day provides a clearer picture of the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic because the daily numbers tend to fluctuate.
As of Monday, the seven-day average of deaths in the United States continued to plunge, according to data maintained by the COVID-Tracking Project, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, USAFacts.org, Worldometer, and even the New York Times.
Last Sunday (July 5), the U.S. recorded a historically low single-day number of fatalities (over 200), below any other day since late March, data from the COVID-Tracking Project showed, echoing figures by Worldometer.
Daily death data maintained by the Times, which tends to include higher figures, showed that the fatalities on Sunday (258) are at the very least the second-lowest since late March after the figures on June 21 (257).
There is a patchwork of guidelines across the United States for reporting deaths, with some states and databases reporting “probable” coronavirus fatalities, while others do not.
Daily U.S. death estimates for Sunday ranged from 209 (COVID Tracking Project) to 258 (NYT), depending on the source. The discrepancy is why several health analysts rely on the moving averages.
The low number of new deaths in recent weeks compared to the spike in cases suggests that more people are contracting coronavirus without succumbing to it, a development that is pushing the overall mortality rate — both the infection (true) and confirmed case (crude) figures — down.
As the figures stand now, the steady increase in the number of new COVID-19 cases reported each day does not parallel the deaths recorded daily.
Last week, the United States reported historic-high number of daily cases, setting a single-day world record for the most confirmed infections, several news outlets reported, citing the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker.
The United States exceeded or got close to a record of 50,000 cases on at least three days last week. Several databases show that the seven-day average of infections has spiked in recent weeks.
However, not everyone who contracts COVID-19 dies from the highly contagious and lethal disease. Most fatalities involve seniors and individuals with chronic underlying health conditions.
A recent U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study that tested for antibodies earlier this year — accounting for mild and asymptomatic infections that are not reported— also found that far more people in the United States had caught the virus without dying.
That finding, coupled with the ongoing increase in cases while fatalities drop, will drive down the fatality rates.
As of Monday, afternoon the coronavirus had infected over 2.9 million people and killed more than 130,000 people, Johns Hopkins reported.