New cases of coronavirus have continued their sharp decline over the past week – progress that could help the US find the pandemic faster and safer if it continues.
The whole picture: The spread of the virus under control is the key to saving lives and reopening schools and businesses. And the tools to achieve this – masks, social distance and vaccines – are also the most effective weapons against the more contagious variants that could threaten US progress.
By the numbers: In the past week, an average of 108,000 Americans have been diagnosed with COVID-19 infections every day.
- This is a decrease of 24% compared to the previous week.
- Hospital admissions decreased by about 8% last week and deaths dropped by 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 are still a very bad situation and should not be considered as a sustainable level of infection.
- But after the terrible winter outbreak the US experienced, the only way to have a small number of cases is to keep climbing week after week. And it happens.
- Nationwide, the average daily incidence has been falling for four weeks in a row with double digits. Cumulatively, they dropped by about 55% during that time.
- It has been three weeks since even a single condition reported an increase in the average daily infections.
This is real progress.
What’s next: Experts have warned that new, more contagious variants of COVID-19 in the US are gaining ground and are likely to become the dominant strain here soon. This means that each infected person is more likely to spread the virus.
- The best ways to avoid an increase in cases of these variants are to eliminate vaccinations, fasten masks and do away with social distractions – including double masks, if necessary – and further reduce the number of infected people.
Every week, Axios monitors the change in new infections in each condition. We use an average of seven days to minimize the effects of daily discrepancies in state reporting.