Nationwide Decrease In US COVID Metrics

After a long gap, nationwide decreases in all four COVID metrics have been reported in the United States Sunday.

With 1723 additional fatalities reporting in the last 24 hours, the total U.S. death toll from the deadly disease rose to 397600, as per the latest data from the Johns Hopkins University. In the preceding days of last week, daily death toll twice crossed 4000, including the worst death toll the country witnessed in single day.

During the last 24 hours, 174,513 new cases were reported across the country, taking the total number of patients infected with the disease to 23936772. On many days in the last week daily cases exceeded 200,000.

Likewise, COVID-related hospitalizations have leveled off in all regions for the past few days, and continue the downward trend.

Many states are reporting a decrease in the number of new cases per million people, though California, Virginia and South Carolina reported more than 1,000 new cases per million Sunday.

The number of people hospitalized in the United States on Sunday – 124,387 – was the lowest in several weeks. Out of this, 23,432 patients are being treated in ICU.

Seven-day-average of ICU admissions have now decreased week-over-week for the first time since late September, according to COVID Tracking Project.

The national average Covid test positivity rate also is falling down these days.

The U.S. collaborative volunteer-run effort to track the pandemic reported a test positivity rate of 10.93 percent on Monday.

“We have seen nationwide decreases in all the 7-day averages of all four metrics,” it said on Twitter.

More than 31 million anti-COVID vaccine doses have been distributed across the country so far, but only 12.3 million people have been inoculated, according to CDC’s latest data.

Meanwhile, the incoming Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky said that U.S. COVID fatalities are expected to reach 500,000 by the middle of next month.

“By the middle of February, we expect half a million deaths in this country. That doesn’t speak to the tens of thousands of people who are living with a yet uncharacterized syndrome after they’ve recovered,” she said in CBS’ “Face the Nation” interview on Sunday.

“And we still yet haven’t seen the ramifications of what happened from the holiday travel, from holiday gathering in terms of high rates of hospitalizations and the deaths thereafter. So, yes, I think we still have some dark weeks ahead,” Dr.Walensky added.

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