Question: Will you please remind me (us) of the expected time lag between cases, hospitalizations, and deaths?

Answer: Sure! We talked about illness progression in our Q&A of 3/29 and CDC offers a nice synthesis of the data here and here. For easy visualization, I made this timeline (Figure 1). In sum, we’d expect to see an increase in cases generally about 5 days after exposure, an increase in hospitalizations about 14 days after exposure, an increase in deaths about 20 days after exposure. So, let’s see how that compares with recent trends in the United States (Figure 2). As you can see, cases started increasing in early/mid-June. June 9th was the lowest 7-day rolling average (20,065 cases). Hospitalizations started rising in mid/late June. June 20th was the lowest 7-day rolling average of hospitalizations (28,201). And deaths started rising in early July. July 6 was the lowest 7-day rolling average of deaths (478). Put another way, cases started increasing on June 10th (est. Day 5); hospitalizations started rising on June 21st (Day 15); deaths started to rise on July 7th (Day 34). This timeline fits within expectations (sadly). Things are going to get worse before they get better.

Figure 1. Timeline of COVID Progression

Figure 2. Timeline of COVID Progression in the United States (data from covidtracking.com)