The US may be moving to loosen social distancing restrictions around the same time as several European countries but it remains in a far different, and worse, stage of the coronavirus pandemic.
While infections and deaths from Covid-19 quickly raced to terrifying peaks in Italy and Spain, both countries have managed to arrest the increase and are now forcing the key trends downwards.
Certain shops have reopened in Italy, which has suffered more than 29,000 Covid-19 deaths, while Spain, where nearly 24,000 people have died from the virus, will return to a “new normality” by the end of June, according to the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez.
In the US, more than half of the states are also pushing ahead with plans to restart economic activity, urged on by Donald Trump, who has said that “we have to get our country open, and we have to get it open soon”.
But the Covid-19 trends in the US are starkly different from the European countries hardest hit in the early stages of the pandemic. Not only has the US suffered the most deaths worldwide, at more than 75,000 people so far, it has also failed so far to bend the curve of infections downwards.
The US peaked at around 30,000 new confirmed Covid-19 cases a day in April but rather than this rate sharply dropping, it has simply plateaued. Outside New York, a global hotspot for the pandemic that has managed to bend its curve downwards after weeks of societal restrictions, the rate of new cases is actually climbing in America.
Comparing the journey of the pandemic in the US with other nations is instructive – while new cases and deaths in Italy, Spain and France rocketed, they then plunged back down to more manageable levels ahead of plans to restart the patterns of normal life. The trend lines in the US show sharp climbs before a flattening to a stagnation, rather than quick decrease.
Public health experts have warned that the US is at risk of prematurely removing social distancing restrictions and encouraging a second, stronger wave of infections. One disaster management specialist has said the reopening of several states, devoid of the mass public testing required to safely do so, will hand a “death sentence” to many more Americans.