Carla K Johnson
The US is getting its first glimpse of what it’s like to experience COVID-19 outbreaks during this new phase of living with the virus, and the list of those newly infected is star-studded.
Cabinet members, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Broadway actors and the governors of New Jersey and Connecticut have all tested positive. Outbreaks at Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University are bringing mask requirements back to those campuses as officials scramble for quarantine spots.
The known infections probably only reveal the tip of the iceberg – actors and politicians are regularly tested at work. Official case numbers are certainly a huge understatement of how widespread the virus is, given that home testing has been done and mildly ill people don’t bother to test at all.
Across the country, mask wearing is at its lowest level since April 2020, said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics at the University of Washington in Seattle. According to the latest estimate by his modeling group, only seven out of 100 infections are recorded in official lists. That means a place like New York City, averaging 1,600 cases per day, has a dramatically higher actual number of infections.
Several Broadway performances of the comedy Plaza Suite were canceled after Matthew Broderick tested positive, followed by his wife and co-star Sarah Jessica Parker. Daniel Craig has also been banned from his Macbeth revival.
In Michigan, the state’s Department of Health and Human Services recently started updating its COVID-19 dashboard only once a week on Wednesdays instead of three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, slowing understanding of its tracked cases.
Michigan hospitalization rates have declined over the past 10 weeks, but cases rose last week. About 5% of Michigan’s COVID-19 tests were positive on March 25 and April 1, up from 3.4% the previous week.
Michigan on Wednesday added 3,215 cases of COVID and 70 deaths from the virus, including Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday totals. That was an average of about 643 cases per day over the five days.
The week’s additions brought Michigan’s total to 2,393,265 confirmed and probable cases since the virus was first detected here in March 2020, with 35,776 deaths.
Mokdad, meanwhile, expects the high level of U.S. immunity built up from past infections and vaccination will protect the nation from another big surge.
“We will have some infections here and there, but it will not shut down the country,” Mokdad said. “Life must go on. We need to be vaccinated and refreshed. We have to protect the weak, but we have to get used to it.”
Large indoor gatherings with optional masks have sparked infections, with a high-profile party in Washington, DC now being considered a possible super-spreader event. Other clusters of infection outside of groups that are regularly tested could go undetected, said Josh Michaud, associate director for global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington.
“It’s harder now than before to know what’s going to happen. The future is a little blurrier because we don’t have that much information,” Michaud said. “Unless you’re an actor in a Broadway play or a politician, you might fail the exam.”
The public health response will vary from community to community based on what is happening locally, Michaud said.
“We’re fighting smaller fires rather than one raging blaze across the country, and these smaller fires can be disruptive,” Michaud said. “It leaves everyone to choose their own adventure when it comes to pandemic response and individual behaviors.”
In Washington DC, the outbreak was particularly well known – it struck several cabinet secretaries and members of Congress, as well as Mayor Muriel Bowser and the President of Georgetown University.
At least a dozen of those infections can be traced back to the Gridiron Club Dinner, an annual part of DC’s social calendar, which took place on Saturday for the first time in three years. Dinner is an example of a return to near-full normality happening across the country, leading to a rise in positive tests but not necessarily a corresponding rise in serious illness or hospitalizations.
Washington, DC, like much of the country, has softened its stance on COVID-19 significantly in recent weeks. Bowser has allowed indoor vaccination and mask mandates to be phased out, and the city’s health department stopped reporting daily virus counts in early March. Attendees at the Gridiron Club dinner, which Bowser did not attend, were required to provide proof of vaccinations, but otherwise no masking or social distancing protocols were observed.
And other staples of the DC social calendar are back to normal, too. The city’s annual cherry blossom festival has been going on for weeks — with dozens of events including a parade scheduled for Saturday.
Amid this general return to pre-pandemic behavior, there are some cautionary steps back. Georgetown University said it would reintroduce its indoor mask mandate amid rising infection numbers that include the university’s President, John DeGioia
Ranit Mishori, Georgetown’s chief public health officer, when announcing the new restrictions, described the rise in infections as “significant” – particularly among college students. “Fortunately, since the vast majority of our community is up to date on vaccinations, we are not seeing cases of serious illness,” Mishori wrote.
DC Health Chief Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt, in comments to reporters this week, pointed to the persistently low number of hospitalizations as evidence that vaccinations have been successful in limiting the severity of the disease.
Virus metrics have been increasing in Washington over the past month, according to the city’s health department. The weekly number of cases per 100,000 inhabitants climbed from 51 in early March to 110 in late March. But that’s still well below the weekly case rate of 865 per 100,000 population reported in the second week of January during the Omicron variant surge.
Nesbitt said there are no immediate plans to reintroduce any of the expired virus protocols, but that always remains an option going forward.
“We must remember that living with the virus does not mean forgetting about the virus. It’s still out there, it’s still causing people to get sick and some people are dying,” Michaud said. “If we are not prepared, we could quickly find ourselves in a bad situation again.”
Karen Bouffard, editor of the Detroit News, contributed.