New coronavirus cases continued their sharp decline over the past week, a breakthrough that could help the U.S. emerge from the pandemic more quickly and more safely, if maintained.
The big picture: Controlling the spread of the virus is the key to saving lives and reopening schools and businesses. And the tools to achieve this (masks, social distancing, and vaccines) are also the most effective weapons against the most contagious variants that could threaten U.S. progress.
By numbers: Last week an average of 108,000 Americans were diagnosed with COVID-19 infections every day.
- This is a decrease of 24% over the previous week.
- Hospitalizations also fell last week, by about 8%, and deaths fell by 3%. The virus continues to kill about 3,000 Americans a day.
Between lines: 108,000 new cases and 3,000 deaths a day remain a very bad situation and should not be considered a sustainable level of infection.
- But after the horrific winter outbreak the U.S. experienced, the only way to have a reduced number of cases is to keep going down week after week. And this is happening.
- Across the country, the average daily case has declined in double digits for four weeks in a row. Overall, they have fallen by about 55% in that time.
- It has been three weeks since even a single state reported an increase in average daily infection.
This is real progress.
What follows: Experts have warned that new, more contagious variants of COVID-19 are gaining ground in the U.S. and are likely to soon become the dominant strain here. This means that every infected person is more likely to spread the virus.
- The best way to avoid an increase in cases of these variants is to increase vaccinations, protect yourself from masks, and distance yourself socially (including double masks when necessary) and continue to reduce the number of infected people.
Each week, Axios monitors the change of new infections in each state. We use an average of seven days to minimize the effects of day-to-day discrepancies on state reports.