After declining for months, U.S. coronavirus cases are rising again. Has the 'fall wave' begun?

Summer just ended. The weather is cooling. School is back in session — or trying to be. People are spending more time indoors. 

And now, after nearly two months of slow but steady decline, new daily U.S. coronavirus cases are rising again, with the seven-day average increasing by 21 percent — from 34,588 to 41,868 — since Sept. 12.  

Is this the start of the pandemic’s dreaded “fall wave”?

The short answer is… it’s complicated. Much of the current uptick in coronavirus cases is tied to geography. In some previously hard-hit places — California, for instance — it’s almost certainly a by-product of increased testing. In others, such as Texas, college outbreaks are a driving force. Meanwhile, a state like Wisconsin — where the average positive testing rate has soared from about 6 percent in early August to more than 17 percent today — seems to have a more widespread problem.

And so even though it’s too soon to say whether a fall wave has begun, it’s not too soon to see the recent rise in U.S. cases for what it is: a warning.

Regardless of whether President Trump thinks we’re “rounding the final turn” of the pandemic, the truth is, we’re barreling into the riskiest months of the year averaging more than 40,000 new cases per day (and possibly rising). That level of spread in turn sets the stage for precisely the sort of fall wave that experts are worried about — and that they’re already starting to see in foreign countries where the virus appeared, until recently, to be under far better control than it has ever been in the U.S. ...

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