WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States last week reported a 23% drop in new COVID-19 cases and a 16% drop in the number of people hospitalized with the virus, with both figures down for the fifth week in a row. consecutive.
Advances against the virus, however, are threatened by several new variants, experts said, adding that face masks and social distancing measures were still much needed.
About 4% of cases in the country are related to a more contagious variant first detected in the UK, according to Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We have projections that may be the dominant strain in late March,” he told CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday.
The country registered more than 639,000 new cases of COVID-19 in the week ended Feb. 14, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county reports. Compared to the previous week, new cases increased in only three out of 50 states: Alaska, Nebraska and South Dakota.
(Open https://tmsnrt.rs/2WTOZDR in another window to see a state-by-state graph).
Deaths fell for the second consecutive week, 1.8% less last week, to 21,787. Excluding the delay in deaths reported by Ohio, fatalities fell 15% last week. Altogether, nearly 486,000 people have died from the virus in the United States, or one in 673 residents.
The average number of patients with COVID-19 in U.S. hospitals fell to 74,000 last week, the lowest since mid-November, according to a Reuters analysis of data from the volunteer-led COVID follow-up project.
Nationwide, 5.7% of COVID-19 tests returned positive for the virus, the lowest level since the week ended Oct. 25, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project.
(Graphic by Chris Canipe, written by Lisa Shumaker, edited by Tiffany Wu)
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