New cases of coronavirus continued their sharp decline last week – progress that could help the United States find a way out of the pandemic more quickly and safely, if it continues.
The big picture: Keeping the spread of the virus under control is the key to saving lives and reopening schools and businesses. And the tools for that – masks, social distance and vaccines – are also the most effective weapons against the most contagious variants that can threaten America’s progress.
By the numbers: An average of 108,000 Americans were diagnosed with COVID-19 infections every day for the past week.
- This represents a 24% decline from the previous week.
- Hospitalizations also fell last week, about 8%, and deaths fell 3%. The virus still kills an average of about 3,000 Americans a day.
Between the lines: 108,000 new cases and 3,000 deaths per day is still a very bad situation and should not be considered a sustainable level of infection.
- But after the terrible winter outbreak the United States has experienced, the only way to have a small number of cases is to keep decreasing week after week. And this is happening.
- Across the country, the daily average of cases is decreasing in double digits for four consecutive weeks. Cumulatively, they fell about 55% over that time.
- It has been three weeks since even a single state reported an increase in the average daily infections.
This is real progress.
What is the next: Experts have warned that new and more contagious variants of the COVID-19 are gaining ground in the United States and are likely to soon become the dominant strain here. This means that each infected person is more likely to spread the virus.
- The best way to avoid the increase in cases of these variants is to intensify vaccinations, reduce masks and social distance – including double masks when necessary – and continue to reduce the number of people infected.
Each week, Axios tracks the change in new infections in each state. We use an average of seven days to minimize the effects of day-to-day discrepancies in state reports.