By Ryan Chou
Credit: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / Getty Images
Unfortunately, the world is still in the middle of a global pandemic. As of right now, Erie County might still be mostly stable with regards to its COVID situation, but the same can’t be said for other parts of the world. Leaders and health officials have voiced concerns and worries over a second wave of COVID-19 in the fall, and it looks like their worries are coming to fruition: COVID-19 is surging again.
So where is this second wave? Well, let’s start by going a couple thousand miles across the ocean to Western Europe. Right now, almost every country in the region is seeing a rise in cases, but three countries in particular are getting hammered the hardest: the United Kingdom, France, and Spain.
On July 6th, the United Kingdom had reached just 352 new daily cases. From there, with the exception of a few small spikes in cases, both the daily deaths and daily cases curve stabilized. But since the middle of August, the United Kingdom has seen its numbers begin trending in the wrong direction. On May 1st, the United Kingdom saw a record 6,201 daily cases, but that record has been broken: on September 23rd, 6,208 daily cases were reported, and those numbers are only continuing to climb up. Hopefully, the mortality rate from these new cases will be lower thanks to new treatments and a better understanding of the virus. However, time will only tell due to the fact that death curves tend to lag behind a new case-count curve by a few weeks.
By the middle of May, France had stabilized its new daily cases curve to be anywhere in the range of 100-800 daily cases. This trend maintained itself until the middle of July, when cases began to rise. By the first week of September, France had broken its previous record of 7,578 daily cases with a reported 8,975 cases. And within just three weeks, France passed 15,000 new cases with a grim 16,096 reported case-count on September 24th. Accordingly, more deaths from the virus are being reported now, with the 154 deaths reported on September 18th being the highest the country has reported since the middle of May.
Now, on to Spain. There was a point where on March 26th, Spain reported an astounding 9,159 daily cases. Afterwards, things started to make a change for the better. By the middle of May, Spain had leveled its curve to about 200-750 new cases per day. Spain was able to keep this stability going until the middle of July, when things made a turn for the worse. Just two months later, on September 18th, Spain reported 14,389 new daily cases. As for deaths, they’re hovering at as many as 250 per day, which is the highest they have been since late May.
What about right here in New York? From a big picture view, things remain mostly stable, but there has been a slight trend upward in cases. While we maintained a positivity rate of under 1% for over a month, that has since been broken many times, with over 1,000 cases being reported for September 25th: this has not been seen since June. So while we’re not in a position like Western Europe, it is clear that such a situation is entirely plausible.
While on a global level, the COVID-19 situation has been improving for months now, it appears that things are beginning to take a turn, and as of now, it looks like it may be into a head-on collision with a second wave.
