(Newser)
– This weekend, the US saw COVID-19 deaths drop to their lowest point in more than a year, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The number reported for Sunday, 222 deaths, is the lowest since March 23, 2020, when 192 confirmed deaths were recorded in the early days of the pandemic. At a meeting at the White House on Monday, CDC director Rochelle Walensky cited recent trends in this regard, however. She noted that cases have increased in the past four weeks and that the CDC is monitoring some variants that are more communicable. The Sunday count may also not be complete: as it was the Easter holiday, the data may not include complete reports for all states. California numbers were not available on Sunday, for example, reports Hill.
In fact, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the new cases were markedly higher in Monday’s numbers than on Sunday, probably due to the lack of reports from some states during the holiday weekend. The US reported 603 COVID deaths on Monday. But during Monday’s briefing, Walensky confirmed that the average number of deaths last week was lower than the week before. She noted that while some of the news remains bleak, millions of Americans are “stepping up every day to get vaccinated”, at an average rate of 3 million a day. She believes that “widespread vaccination will bring us to the end of COVID -19,” she said. The coronavirus claimed 555,600 lives in the United States and more than 2.86 million worldwide. (Read more stories from COVID-19.)