More than 3 million people in U.S. estimated to be contagious with the coronavirus

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Wed, 2020-11-18 08:59 — mike kraft

More than 3 million people in U.S. estimated to be contagious with the coronavirus The fast-growing pool of infected people — including large numbers who don’t know they’re contagious — pose daunting challenges to officials in hard-hit communities trying to arrest the surge in cases. Joel Achenbach Washington Post

More than 3 million people in the United States have active coronavirus infections and are potentially contagious, according to a new estimate from infectious-disease experts tracking the pandemic. That number is significantly larger than the official case count, which is based solely on those who have tested positive for the virus.

The vast — and rapidly growing — pool of coronavirus-infected people poses a daunting challenge to governors and mayors in hard-hit communities who are trying to arrest the surge in cases. Traditional efforts such as testing, isolation of the sick and contact tracing can be overwhelmed when a virus spreads at an exponential rate, especially when large numbers of asymptomatic people may be walking around without even knowing they are infectious.

To put the 3 million-plus figure in perspective: It is close to 1 percent of the population. It is about equal to the number of public school teachers in the entire country, or the number of truck drivers. If the University of Michigan’s football stadium were packed with a random selection of Americans, about a thousand of them would be contagious right now.

Columbia University epidemiologist Jeffrey Shaman said his team’s model estimated that 3.6 million people are infected and shedding enough virus to infect others. That’s a 34 percent week-to-week increase that followed a 36 percent increase in the previous seven-day average, he said.

The estimate does not include an approximately equal number of latent infections among people who caught the virus in recent days and can’t pass it on yet because it is still incubating.

“It’s bad; it’s really, really bad,” Shaman said. “We’re running into Thanksgiving now and that’s only going to make it worse. We’re going to go through a lot of people being infected between now and the end of the year, unfortunately.”

Separately, modelers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimated Tuesday that approximately 3.2 million people have been infected just since Election Day, Nov. 3, a figure significantly larger than the approximately 1.95 million official cases tracked over the same period by The Washington Post through reports from state health departments. ...

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