New COVID-19 cases in U.S. fall for fifth week in a row
/ Our Today
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(Reuters)
The United States last week reported a 23 per cent drop in new cases of COVID-19 and a 16 per cent fall in the number of people hospitalised with the virus, with both figures declining for a fifth week in a row.
The progress against the virus, however, is threatened by several new variants, experts said, adding that face masks and social distancing measures were still very much needed.
About four per cent of cases in the country are related to a more contagious variant first detected in the United Kingdom, according to Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We have projections that it may be the dominant strain by the end of March,” she told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday.
NEW CASES IN ONLY THREE STATES
The country logged more than 639,000 new COVID-19 cases in the week ended February 14, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county reports. Compared to the previous week, new cases increased in only three out of 50 states: Alaska, Nebraska and South Dakota.
Deaths fell for a second week in a row, down 1.8 per cent last week to 21,787. Excluding a backlog of deaths reported by Ohio, fatalities were down 15 per cent last week. Cumulatively, nearly 486,000 people have died from the virus in the United States, or one in every 673 residents.
The average number of COVID-19 patients in U.S. hospitals fell to 74,000 last week, the lowest since mid-November, according to a Reuters analysis of data from the volunteer-run COVID Tracking Project.
Nationally, 5.7 per cent of COVID-19 tests came back positive for the virus, the lowest level since the week ended October 25, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project.
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