(Reuters) – The United States last week reported a 23% drop in new cases of COVID-19 and a 16% drop in the number of people hospitalized with the virus, with both numbers decreasing for the fifth consecutive week.
© Reuters / SHANNON STAPLETON
A woman wearing a face mask walks as the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic continues along Bayfront Park in Sarasota, Florida
Progress against the virus, however, is threatened by several new variants, experts say, adding that face masks and measures of social distance are still very 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 it may be the dominant lineage by the end of March,” she told CBS’s “Face the Nation” program on Sunday.
The country registered more than 639,000 new cases of COVID-19 in the week ended February 14, according to a Reuters analysis of state and municipal reports. Compared to the previous week, new cases increased in just three of the 50 states: Alaska, Nebraska and South Dakota.
(Open https://tmsnrt.rs/2WTOZDR in an external browser to see a state-to-state graph.)
Deaths fell for the second consecutive week, down 1.8% last week to 21,787. Excluding an accumulation of deaths reported by Ohio, fatalities fell 15% last week. Cumulatively, nearly 486,000 people died of the virus in the United States, or one in 673 residents.
The average number of COVID-19 patients in U.S. hospitals dropped to 74,000 last week, the lowest since mid-November, according to a Reuters analysis of data from the COVID Tracking Project, run by volunteers.
Nationally, 5.7% of COVID-19 tests were positive for the virus, the lowest level since the week ended October 25, according to data from the COVID Screening Project.
(Graphic: COVID-19 global tracker – https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/)
(Chris Canipe graphic, written by Lisa Shumaker, edited by Tiffany Wu)
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