June 1, 2022

Is This Surge Different?

June 1, 2022

Today is the first day of June, which seems like a good day to step back and examine where Alabama stands in this 2 year-old pandemic.

Like the rest of the United States, Alabama is clearly in the midst of another surge in cases. Going into the Memorial Day weekend, the U.S. was averaging about 110,000 new reported cases per day, roughly equivalent to the level reached in mid-February of this year. Of course, we know that cases are underreported - indeed, one study estimated that the true case counts in New York City over a two-week period in April- May 2022 were 31 times higher than the official reported numbers. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.25.22275603v1

In Alabama, there were 5,220 cases reported during the week ending May 31 (746 cases per day). That represents a 44% increase over the prior week ending May 24, when we experienced 518 cases per day. Considering the prevalence of at-home testing, it’s difficult to judge the true case count in Alabama. If the true case count is 4-5 times higher than the reported case count, then the current level of transmission could be as bad as in January 2021 or the Delta surge last summer. The Omicron surge last January was far worse, when average daily cases in Alabama reached a peak of 16,900 per day.

It is curious, however, that despite the new surge of cases, Alabama hospitals reported just 240 Covid patients on June 1, exactly as many as one week ago. Although this is higher than the patient counts for April and most of May, which generally numbered fewer than 200, the new surge does appear to be less severe than previous waves. By way of comparison, the high point in hospitalizations exceeded 3,300 back in January 2021 and January, 2022.

So, what gives? Why are cases rising fast while hospitalizations remain relatively low? According to Dr. David Dowdy of Johns Hopkins, "This is probably more because we as a population are building up the immunity, not because the variants are necessarily getting milder on their own. What this means is that for people who are still unvaccinated, don't have that immunity built up, or who have weakened immune systems, this virus is still a very dangerous and deadly one."

Dr. Dowdy’s words were echoed this week by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, who wrote in her blog that “vaccines continue to protect swimmingly well against severe disease and death. For example, unvaccinated people had 17 times higher risk of dying in March and April 2022 compared to vaccinated people.” Both Dr. Dowdy and Dr. Jetelina obviously have a great deal of confidence in the ability of vaccines to prevent or reduce the severity of Covid cases, even as we see more and more breakthrough infections.

If the current surge builds as the summer progresses, we shall see if hospitalizations follow suit. While I’m optimistic, I’m also realistic. As we have seen, this virus has a way of making fools of optimists. The totals:

5/18 - 546

5/19 - 629

5/20 - 592

5/21 - not reporting

5/22 - not reporting

5/23 - 1,302

5/24 - 558

5/25 - 770

5/26 - 868

5/27 - 1,056

5/28 - not reporting

5/29 - not reporting

5/30 - not reporting

5/31 - 2,526

6/1 - 971