‘Most have thrown their hands up’: has the US forgotten about Covid?

Despite signs that indicate the latest Covid-19 surge is slowing down, an average of 400 deaths in the US is still reported on a daily basis.

Various mask and social distancing mandates across the country are becoming anything but strictly enforced.

But as Americans and many of their elected officials go about their daily lives, many healthcare professionals still on the frontlines of the pandemic and severely affected Covid-19 patients are left wondering whether the rest of us are moving too quickly from the worst days of the pandemic.

Have we simply forgotten about Covid-19?

Data obtained earlier this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveals that the rate of new infections has been decreasing, with the country reporting an average of 107,000 new cases a day. This marks a 12% decrease compared to infection rates two weeks ago.

Even though hospital admission rates have been increasing across the US this summer as a result of highly infectious variants, the amount of patients currently hospitalized with Covid-19 has plateaued at 43,000 patients, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

By contrast, more than 160,000 virus-positive patients were hospitalized during last winter’s surge. Nevertheless, the daily average of 400 deaths across the country since spring remain a concerning figure for healthcare officials.

Arghavan Salles, a clinical associate professor at Stanford University’s School of Medicine, expressed her frustrations over how officials and the public appears to be moving on from Covid-19, which continues to put healthcare workers under huge strain. “It feels somewhat like a personal affront, like all our sacrifices mean absolutely nothing because in the end, no one cares,” said Salles, who worked at ICUs during the height of the pandemic.

The majority of the recent infections come from BA.4 and BA.5, subvariants of Omicron whose original strain first emerged over eight months ago. According to the CDC, the two variants appear to represent over 80% of the US cases.

With the virus continuing to mutate, breakthrough and rebound infections are becoming increasingly common, especially with the BA.5 variant. New data published in June by Harvard Medical School researchers reveal that the BA.4 and BA.5 appear to evade antibody responses from people who have been fully vaccinated and boosted and those who have previously gotten Covid-19.

“We observed threefold reductions of neutralizing antibody titers induced by vaccination and infection against BA.4 and BA.5 compared with BA1 and BA2, which are already substantially lower than the original Covid-19 variants,” the researchers said in a statement. BA.4 and BA.5 have been the fastest-spreading variants since the pandemic began.

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