(Newser)
– This weekend the United States saw COVID-19 deaths drop to their lowest point in more than a year, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The number recorded for Sunday, 222 deaths, is the lowest since March 23, 2020, when 192 deaths were recorded during the first days of the pandemic. In a White House briefing on Monday, CDC director Rochelle Walensky, however, called for recent trends. He noted that cases have increased over the past four weeks and that the CDC is monitoring some variants that are more highly transmissible. Nor is it possible that Sunday’s count isn’t complete – since it was the Easter holidays, the data may not have included full reports from all states. California numbers were not available Sunday, for example, Hill reports.
In fact, the Wall Street Journal He reported early Tuesday that new cases were much higher in number on Monday than they had been on Sunday, probably due to a lack of information from some states over the holiday weekend. The U.S. reported 603 deaths on Monday from COVID. But during Monday’s briefing, Walensky confirmed that the average number of deaths last week was lower than the previous week. He noted that while some of the news is still distressing, millions of Americans are “stepping up every day to get vaccinated,” at an average rate of 3 million a day. He believes “widespread vaccination will bring us to the end of COVID -19,” he said. The coronavirus has caused 555,600 lives in the United States and more than 2.86 million worldwide. (Read more COVID-19 stories).