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 | | Daily reported coronavirus cases in the United States, seven-day average.The New York Times |
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Ever since the Omicron surge began, researchers have been trying to predict when cases might peak. Estimates generally place that event sometime during this month, but some calculations seem to have been too optimistic. |
"I'm seeing some hopeful signs in the Northeast that suggest that the worst of the case growth is slowing down," said my colleague Mitch Smith, who tracks the virus for The Times. But he added: "It's not a well-defined trend yet. It's a glimmer that it's slowing down." |
Today, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said that there were signs that the rate of new cases was beginning to plateau in New York City. But with cases still on the rise in the rest of the state, and more hospitals having to limit procedures, the state is still far from turning the corner. |
 | | Daily coronavirus cases in New York City.The New York Times |
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"We're not at the end," Hochul said, but she called the numbers "a glimmer of hope in a time when we desperately need that." |
Mitch said there was one place that might even be further along than New York City: Washington, D.C. It was one of the first places to have a huge Omicron surge, and it had "off-the-charts, straight vertical line growth" through last week. |
"D.C., though, looks like it may have peaked," Mitch said. "So that, to me, feels like a new moment of the surge." |
 | | Daily coronavirus cases in Washington, D.C.; seven-day average.The New York Times |
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We'll have to watch to see if the trend continues, and if it's replicated in other places. Currently, most places in the U.S. are in an entirely different place. |
"Most of the country is in the explosive growth phase," Mitch said. "Cases are rising pretty much everywhere. We're seeing case levels that are way above anything we've ever seen before — every day." |
The wave also seems to be acting on a delay as it surges across the country. The Western half of the country seems to be a week or two behind the Eastern half in terms of case rates. |
"We're continuing to see crazy, several-hundred-percent two-week rates of growth in some of those states," Mitch said. "And I don't think we're nearly as close to a peak in some of those places, just because the heat of their outbreak arrived later than New England and even the urban Midwest." |
While the shape of the case curve may help tell us when virus activity is subsiding, the more important measure of the pandemic's strength is the hospitalization rate, which has jumped in recent days. Today the number of people in the U.S. hospitalized with Covid-19 exceeded last winter's peak, underscoring that while Omicron may cause less severe illness, it still poses a serious threat. |
 | | The New York Times |
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Deaths are also spiking sharply in some of the first cities hit by Omicron — not as fast as case rates, but fast enough to warn of more devastation to come. |
 | | The New York Times |
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"We're a ways away from having a good sense of where the death curve ends up," Mitch said. "Unfortunately, it looks like it's likely to continue heading up. But where the top is, we just don't know." |
A third Chinese city — Anyang, with a population of 5.5 million — was locked down because of a coronavirus outbreak. A notice late yesterday said that officials would be conducting mass testing throughout the city. |
Chinese residents are already in lockdown in the cities of Xi'an and Yuzhou, bringing the number of people confined to their homes to about 20 million. More than two years into the pandemic, China has continued to rely on a zero-Covid policy, trying to eradicate the virus, rather than manage it. |
For an update on the lockdowns and how people are reacting to them, I spoke with my colleague Alexandra Stevenson. She has covered the lockdown in Xi'an, which has become the longest in the country since the early days of the outbreak in Wuhan. |
What's been the reaction to the lockdown in Xi'an? |
The zero-Covid approach of quarantines, border closures and lockdowns has mostly enjoyed broad support at home. But when the city of Xi'an went into lockdown on Dec. 22, the strict rules prevented the city's 13 million people from buying groceries and getting food delivered — prompting panic and a flurry of complaints online. |
Simmering anger turned to outrage after a pregnant woman lost her baby outside a hospital that denied her entry because she couldn't prove she was Covid-free. Pretty soon people began to question the broader zero-Covid policy in a way that seemed new. Both on Chinese social media and in some of our interviews, people said they felt as though the government didn't care about death and suffering if it wasn't Covid related. |
What struck you most while you were reporting this story? |
I was struck by how similar the expressions of fear in recent weeks have been to those in the early days of the pandemic. One woman told us that she was afraid to go to work and had stopped taking the bus when Covid cases first emerged in Xi'an. When she returned home after taking public transport, she would immediately remove her clothes to wash them. |
It was also striking to see how rigid and cruel individuals carrying out virus control measures could be. The father of an 8-year-old boy with leukemia told us how he battled with hospital officials at several hospitals to allow his son to continue his chemotherapy treatment. No one wanted to help until more senior officials changed the policy. |
What's next for China's zero-Covid policy? |
The government response to the fallout from Xi'an's lockdown has been swift. Officials have been sacked, hospitals have apologized and the vice premier in charge of China's Covid response expressed "deep remorse" and blamed what she described as "sloppiness in prevention and control efforts." The question now is whether the lessons learned will prompt much change. |
What else we're following |
I am a driver for the longest-running ride service in town. We run 24/7/365 and have done so throughout the pandemic. Early on, during lockdown, when the streets looked like a ghost town, bright yellow cabs easily outnumbered any other vehicles. I wore paper masks for months on end until they began to give my lower face a rash, which is when I switched to cloth. I live in a town that wants to act as if Covid doesn't exist. Almost no one, except the very old and the sick, wears a mask anywhere in town. Conversations with riders reveal most to be deniers or severely misinformed. Some early attempts to get people who rode with me to comply ended in arguments. I ventilate the vehicle the best I can even when it's cold, keep my mask on and hope for the best. — Raymond Hough, Springfield, Mo. |
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