‘Turning the Corner’: U.S. Covid Outlook Reaches Most Hopeful Point Yet - The New York Times

Cases and deaths have dipped, and vaccinations make scientists hopeful, even as variants mean the coronavirus is here to stay.

After weeks of coronavirus patients flooding emergency rooms in Michigan, the worst Covid-19 hot spot in the nation, hospitalizations are finally falling.

On some recent days, entire states, including Wisconsin and West Virginia, have reported zero new coronavirus deaths — a brief but promising respite from the onslaught of the past year.

Buoyed by a sense that the coronavirus is waning, in part because of vaccinations, more people are shrugging off masks, venturing into restaurants and returning to their prepandemic routines.

Public health experts remain cautious, but said that while they still expect significant local and regional surges in the coming weeks, they do not think they will be as widespread or reach past peaks.

Cases, hospitalizations and deaths have also fallen at a time when the weather is getting warmer, which, in many places, will allow people to spend more time outdoors, where the virus spreads less easily.

In the United States, even as a sense of hope spreads, there remain strong reasons for caution.

A modeling study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday, citing relaxed restrictions and a new, contagious variant, suggested that cases could tick upward again in the coming weeks, before a sharp drop-off by July.

In Kenosha, Wis., this week, the Common Council rejected a push to remove a mask mandate even as the county health department said mass vaccination clinics would soon close because of dwindling demand.

John Swartzberg, an infectious-disease specialist and clinical professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Public Health, said he was optimistic in the short term, with vaccinations continuing and warm weather luring Americans outdoors.

But he said that he was worried about the virus’s current path of devastation through India and Latin America, and that he wondered if the United States was opening up too quickly, with 50,000 new cases still reported each day.

Jeffrey Duchin, the health officer in Seattle and King County, said there was no playbook for an endgame to this pandemic.

Los Angeles County made headlines with the news that it had reported zero new deaths on Sunday and Monday

The milestone was brief — the county reported 18 deaths on Tuesday — yet it was notable for a metropolis the size of Los Angeles, the nation’s largest county, home to 10 million people

Only a few months ago, hospitals, ambulance services and funeral homes were overwhelmed, and more than 200 people were dying every day in Los Angeles County

“It’s like day and night,” said Paul Huon, chief executive of Community Hospital of Huntington Park, a hospital there that was so overrun with coronavirus cases this winter that it set up two tents in a parking lot as overflow