A virus that didn’t even exist a year ago has now killed more Americans than Alzheimer’s disease, accidents and diabetes, CNN reported Monday.
The novel coronavirus has infected more than 5.4 million Americans and killed more than 170,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Over the past three weeks, the United States has averaged more than 1,000 COVID-19 deaths per day.
“COVID is now the No. 3 cause of death in the US — ahead of accidents, injuries, lung disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and many, many other causes,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to CNN.
Heart disease and cancer are the leading causes of death in the US, according to the CDC. The rate of deaths from COVID-19 is also much greater in the US than in many other countries, Frieden said.
“Last week, Americans were eight times more likely to get killed by COVID than were Europeans,” he said.
Just as more students head back to school, health experts are worried about a disturbing trend: decreasing testing combined with high test positivity rates.
In other words, COVID-19 is still spreading rampantly, but there’s less testing to find and isolate cases.
CNN reported that the number of tests performed each day in the US dropped by an average of 68,000 compared to the daily rate in late July, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project.
Fifteen states conducted fewer tests this past week compared to the previous week: Mississippi, Louisiana, North Carolina, Washington state, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Montana and Alaska.
Yet test positivity rates — the percentage of tests that are positive — are still higher than the recommended 5% in more than 30 states, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, CNN reported.
“The testing situation is not good in the United States. What we’re not picking up is people who are contagious,” said William Haseltine, chairman and president of ACCESS Health International.