A COVID-19 "third wave" might be affecting the U.S. right now, a top health expert says.
Predicted in April, a third wave was expected to result in more infections and deaths than in the initial outbreak and second wave, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, says. He attributed this to its occurrence simultaneously with the annual flu season.
The U.S. has 7.4 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and 211,000 deaths - the most of any country.
Public health experts are growing concerned about mounting indications a third wave might have begun, based on new data.
Data shows the second wave began Sept. 9 when the number of new cases per day fell to 34,300. Since then, new cases rose to about 45,300 a day - a 32% increase. The U.S. posted 41,000 cases Tuesday and 44,000 cases Monday. These numbers reveal a dangerously high level of daily cases and seem to confirm the onset of a third wave, Gottlieb says.
The rise is alarming, he says, and similar to a sudden decline and then rise seen between the first and second waves of the pandemic. The initial outbreak is generally accepted to have occurred between mid-March to early April when infection rates peaked at 32,000 new cases a day - or nearly 10 cases per 100,000 citizens.
The second wave was in mid-July and peaked at a case-per-day number that was double that experienced in the initial outbreak. The high point in the second wave was 67,000 cases per day - or more than 20 cases per capita, the experts say.
The initial outbreak in the U.S. was in the Northeast. The second struck the South and the West. The third is expected to do its worst in the West and Midwest.
Gottlieb warned about the dangers posed by a third-infection cycle. He said there was an increase in cases in the West and Midwest - indicating a third wave was building, according to CNBC.
Gottlieb said if states in the West and Midwest saw a significant rise in cases and deaths "it could be more diffused" and "spread across a broader section" of the country.
"I do think that we're going to have a third act of this virus in the fall and the winter and it's likely to be more pervasive spread in a broader part of the country," Gottlieb said.
He said the disease would likely spread to rural parts of the U.S. - some of which have been "largely unaffected to date." Cases are already beginning to increase in the West and Midwest, he said and added that "every community is vulnerable."
COVID-19 doesn't spread like the flu in which one person passes on the virus to two or three others, Gottlieb said. COVID-19 spreads largely at "super-spreading events" such as large gatherings - especially indoor events.
