New Jersey health officials reported an additional 3,114 confirmed cases of coronavirus on Monday and 34 additional deaths, as hospitalizations dropped to less than 3,000 over the weekend to the lowest number since before Thanksgiving.
Authorities have administered more than 785,500 vaccines across the state so far, although Monday’s winter storm slows down the mass vaccination effort, as many sites announced Sunday that they would be closed.
Hospitalizations fell on Sunday night to 2,865, the lowest since November 23, with 531 people in intensive care and 355 on ventilators.
“All of those numbers are low,” Governor Phil Murphy said during a meeting in Woodbridge to discuss the state’s winter storm.
New Jersey has already lost 21,513 residents in the nearly 11-month outbreak, with 19,384 confirmed deaths and 2,129 likely. The death toll in January was 2,377 confirmed fatalities, the highest in any month since May.
The total number of confirmed cases is now 626,645 out of more than 9.3 million positive tests. There were also 73,701 positive antigen tests, that the state recently started reporting publicly. These cases are considered likely and health officials have warned that positive antigen tests can override confirmed PCR tests because they are sometimes administered together.
In the meantime, health officials continue to discover more cases of the highly contagious variant of the virus that was first discovered in the UK. There were at least 11 confirmed cases of the variant, officials said on Friday, including one associated with a death.
Cases have been reported in six counties:
- Ocean County – 4
- Essex County – 2
- Morris County – 2
- Hudson County – 1
- Middlesex County – 1
- Warren County – 1
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VACCINATIONS
785,588 doses of vaccines have been administered in New Jersey so far, according to the state panel. Of these, 656,174 were the first of the two doses that people will receive.
That’s more than 1.23 million doses the state has received from the federal government, according to a count by the Federal Centers for Disease Control.
All six of the state’s vaccine mega-sites have already opened along with about 200 other sites across the state, although some mega-sites have suspended operations for a day after running out of doses.
Murphy said last week that the state can now expect about 130,000 doses from the federal government in the next three weeks, against 100,000, but demand is still outstripping supply in the state.
“We still have a big imbalance between supply and demand. We’re still going to deal with that in the coming weeks, ”said Murphy during an interview with CNN.
VACCINATIONS BY COUNTY
- ATLANTIC COUNTY – 22,813 doses administered
- BERGEN COUNTY – 86,616 doses administered
- BURLINGTON COUNTY – 38,742 doses administered
- CAMDEN COUNTY – 46,359 doses administered
- CAPE MAY COUNTY- 11,358 doses administered
- CUMBERLAND COUNTY – 11,498 doses administered
- ESSEX COUNTY – 62,777 doses administered
- GLOUCESTER COUNTY – 26,024 doses administered
- HUDSON COUNTY – 36,437 doses administered
- HUNTERDON COUNTY – 10,785 doses administered
- MERCER COUNTY – 21,023 doses administered
- MIDDLESEX COUNTY – 58,828 doses administered
- MONMOUTH COUNTY – 59,564 doses administered
- MORRIS COUNTY – 58,242 doses administered
- OCEAN COUNTY – 47,462 doses administered
- PASSAICO COUNTY – 36,853 doses administered
- SALEM COUNTY – 4,691 doses administered
- SOMERSET COUNTY – 30,871 doses administered
- SUSSEX COUNTY – 13,151 doses administered
- UNION COUNTY – 38,734 doses administered
- WARREN COUNTY – 8,018 doses administered
- UNKNOWN COUNTY – 25,732 doses administered
- OUT OF STATE – 29,010 doses administered
HOSPITALIZATIONS
There were 2,865 hospitalized patients with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 in New Jersey’s 71 hospitals on Sunday night. That’s 58 less than the day before.
This included 531 in critical or intensive care (five more than the previous night), with 255 in ventilators (four less).
There were also 286 patients with COVID-19 who were discharged on Sunday, according to the state’s COVID-19 panel.
Murphy said any hospitalization of more than 5,000 patients would likely trigger new rounds of restrictions. But the number of people hospitalized has been slowly decreasing in recent days, after reaching a record 3,873 people in more than seven months on December 22.
Hospitalizations have been declining slowly in recent weeks.
The state reached a high of more than 8,000 hospitalizations in April.
SCHOOL CASES
At least 629 students and staff in 131 school districts in New Jersey caught COVID-19 in school outbreaks, according to the latest update from state health officials.
This is an increase of 10 districts from the previous weekly report. Now, there are confirmed outbreaks in schools in all 21 counties, although the state does not identify school districts individually.
These figures do not include students or staff believed to have been infected outside the school or cases that cannot be confirmed as outbreaks within the school. Although the numbers continue to rise each week, Murphy said the school outbreak statistics remain below what state officials expected when schools reopened for face-to-face classes.
New Jersey defines school outbreaks as the cases in which contact trackers determined that two or more students or school staff caught or transmitted COVID-19 in the classroom or during academic activities at school.
AGE DISSOLUTION
Separated by age, those aged 30 to 49 constitute the highest percentage of New Jersey residents who caught the virus (31.1%), followed by those aged 50-64 (23.5%), 18-29 (19, 3%), 65-79 (11.1%), 5-17 (7.9%), 80 and older (5.3%) and 0-4 (1.6%).
On average, the virus was more deadly for older residents, especially those with pre-existing illnesses. Almost half of deaths by COVID-19 in the state occurred among residents aged 80 and over (47.49%), followed by those aged 65-79 (32.56%), 50-64 (15.52%), 30 -49 (4.05%), 18-29 (0.36%), 5-17 (0%) and 0-4 (0.02%).
At least 7,713 of the state’s COVID-19 deaths occurred among residents and staff members in nursing homes and other long-term care institutions. That number has increased again at a more pronounced rate in recent months, with deaths in state nursing homes nearly tripling in December.
There are currently active outbreaks in 435 facilities, resulting in 7,338 active cases among residents and 7,929 among employees.
GLOBAL NUMBERS
As of Monday morning, there were more than 103 million positive COVID-19 tests worldwide, according to a count running by Johns Hopkins University. More than 2.22 million people died from coronavirus-related complications.
The United States reported the majority of cases, with more than 26.1 million, and the majority of deaths, with more than 441,300.
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Matt Arco can be contacted at [email protected].