Downward Trend in Daily Coronavirus Case Growth Continues

The average daily coronavirus infection growth in the United States continued to fall on Thursday, a data analysis revealed.

New U.S. cases stood at 54,184, marking the lowest single-day growth of any other Thursday since July 2 (53,826), the COVID Tracking Project reported.

Overall, new daily infections have remained relatively steady this week, with cases below 55,000, about 30 percent lower than the peak of over 77,000 on July 17:

Our daily update is published. States reported 749k tests, 55k cases, and 1,253 deaths. The numbers remain heavily caveated by different kinds of reporting problems across the country. pic.twitter.com/fztU1A8fuK

— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) August 6, 2020

Meanwhile, the seven-day rolling average of new cases stood at 54,899 on Thursday, down about 15 percent from 64,302 during the same time last week, data maintained by Conor Kelly from the marketing firm Hanover Research showed.

The average number of new U.S. deaths reported during the last seven days also began to drop recently, but it is too soon to tell if the trend will hold, the COVID Tracking Project acknowledged:

The seven-day average of reported COVID-19 deaths has dropped slightly. It is difficult to know how long the trend will last. pic.twitter.com/4TXuqoIPc9

— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) August 6, 2020

According to Hanover Research, the average number of new fatalities reported in the last seven days dropped to 1,050 on Thursday, from 1,057 two days earlier.

Health analysts rely on the seven-day average number of new cases, deaths, and other metrics to account for daily fluctuations in the figures and reporting lags.

Until recently, the average new daily fatality growth for the entire country increased steadily for several weeks. Nevertheless, the figures remained well below peak levels.

Single-day U.S. fatalities stood slightly over 1,250 on Thursday, less than half of the peak level of 2,740 on May 7. New daily deaths have begun to show signs that they may have plateaued, remaining below 1,500 so far this week:

Here's where deaths were reported today pic.twitter.com/luT1R7u13F

— Conor Kelly (@CohoKelly) August 6, 2020

As of Friday afternoon, the coronavirus disease had infected about 4.9 million U.S. residents and killed more than 160,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.

In July, the daily coronavirus case growth reached record levels in the United States. However, the seven-day average number of new U.S. infections has been dropping since early last week.

Echoing the Democrat-allied mainstream media (MSM), some prominent members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force appear to be pushing back against the good news.

During a Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health forum Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the U.S. government, said the daily case count has plateaued at an “unacceptable level.”

Albeit seemingly reluctantly, some mainstream media outlets, such as the Washington Post, have recently begun to acknowledge the drop in new daily infections at the national level.

On Thursday, Axios conceded:

Coronavirus infections are falling or holding steady in most of the country, including the hard-hit hotspots of Arizona, California, and Florida. … A decline in new infections is always good news, but don’t be fooled: the U.S. still has a very long way to go to recover from this summer’s surge.

The mainstream media reports came in the wake of Breitbart News reporting early last week that the daily increase in cases across the country had plateaued. Several days later, on July 30, Breitbart News noted that the average daily infection growth had begun to fall.

Several mainstream media outlets, including the Associated Press (AP), have indicated that the ongoing drop in cases is, at least in part, the product of a decline in testing.

The COVID Tracking Project, a component of the Atlantic magazine, made similar suggestions in its weekly assessments.

“New cases of COVID-19 were also down this week by 10.4 percent,” it reported. “That percentage decline looks uncomfortably close to the drop in testing numbers, but probably [emphasis added] can’t be entirely explained by the reduction in testing.”

Many MSM organizations are still ignoring the reasonably good news about the drop in new daily infections, moving away from heavily focusing on the case figures this week.

Just a few weeks ago, doomsday scenarios about the number of infections filled mainstream media pages.