New Jersey health officials on Monday reported another 3,114 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 34 additional deaths as hospitalizations dropped to below 3,000 over the weekend to the lowest number before Thanksgiving.
Officials have so far administered more than 785,500 vaccines across the state, though the winter storm on Monday will delay the mass vaccination effort as many sites announced Sunday that they would be closed.
Hospitalizations declined Sunday night to 2,865, the lowest since Nov. 23, with 531 people in intensive care and 355 in ventilators.
“All these figures are lower,” said Governor Phil Murphy during an information session in Woodbridge to discuss the winter storm hit by the state.
New Jersey has now lost 21,513 residents in the nearly 11-month-long outbreak, with 19,384 confirmed deaths and 2,129 considered probable. The death toll for January was 2,377 confirmed deaths, most in any month since May.
The total number of confirmed cases is now 626,645 from more than 9.3 million positive tests. There were also 73,701 positive antigen tests, which the state recently began reporting publicly. These cases are considered probable and health officials have warned that the positive antigen tests may overlap with the confirmed PCR tests, as they are sometimes given at the same time.
Health officials meanwhile are continuing to discover more cases of the highly contagious variant of the virus first discovered in the UK. There have been at least 11 confirmed cases of the variant, officials said Friday, including one related to a death.
The cases were reported in six provinces:
- Ocean County – 4
- Essex County – 2
- Morris County – 2
- Hudson County – 1
- Middlesex County – 1
- Warren County – 1
CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live card tracker | Newsletter | Home
VACCINATIONS
According to the state’s dashboard, 785,588 doses of vaccines have been administered in New Jersey so far. Of these, 656,174 were the first of two doses that people would receive.
That is out of more than 1.23 million doses the state has received from the federal government, according to a running version of the federal Centers for Disease Control.
All six of the state’s mechanical sites have now opened, along with about 200 other locations across the country, though some mega-sites have had to halt operations for a day after the doses run out.
Murphy said last week that the state can now expect about 130,000 doses from the federal government over the next three weeks, up from 100,000, but demand is still rising far more than supply in the state.
“We still have a large imbalance between supply and demand. We’re going to hack it for weeks to come, “Murphy said in a CNN interview.
VACCINATIONS BY COUNTRY
- ATLANTIC COUNTRY – 22,813 doses administered
- BERGEN COUNTY – 86 616 doses administered
- BURLINGTON COUNTY – 38 742 doses administered
- CAMDEN COUNTY – 46 359 doses administered
- CAPE MAY COUNTY – 11 358 doses administered
- CUMBERLAND COUNTY – 11 498 doses administered
- ESSEX LAND – 62 777 doses administered
- GLOUCESTER COUNTY – 26 024 doses administered
- HUDSON COUNTY – 36 437 doses administered
- HUNTERDON COUNTY – 10 785 doses administered
- TRADE COUNTRY – 21 023 doses administered
- MIDDLESEX COUNTRY – 58,828 doses administered
- MONMOUTH COUNTY – 59 564 doses administered
- MORRIS LAND – 58 242 doses administered
- OCEAN COUNTY – 47,462 doses administered
- PASSAIC COUNTY – 36 853 doses administered
- SALEM COUNTY – 4,691 doses administered
- SOMERSET COUNTRY – 30 871 doses administered
- SUSSEX COUNTY – 13 151 doses administered
- UNION COUNTRY – 38 734 doses administered
- WARREN-LAND – 8,018 doses administered
- UNKNOWN LAND – 25 732 doses administered
- OUTSIDE – 29 010 doses administered
HOSPITALIZATIONS
As of Sunday night, there were 2,865 patients hospitalized with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases in the 71 hospitals in New Jersey. That’s 58 less than the previous day.
This included 531 in critical or intensive care (five more than the previous night), with 255 fans (four less).
Also, 286 COVID-19 patients were discharged Sunday, according to the state’s COVID-19 dashboard.
Murphy said hospitalizations of more than 5,000 patients are likely to cause new constraints. But the number of people admitted to hospital has been declining mostly slowly in recent days after hitting a peak of more than seven months on December 22 of 3,873 people.
Hospitalizations have been slowly declining over the past few weeks.
The state reached a peak of more than 8,000 hospitalizations in April.
SCHOOL SUBJECTS
At least 629 students and staff in 131 school districts in New Jersey have caught COVID-19 through school outbreaks, according to the latest update from state health officials.
This is an increase of ten districts from the previous weekly report. There are now confirmed outbreaks in the school in all 21 provinces, although the state does not identify the individual school districts.
These numbers do not include students or staff who are suspected of being infected outside the school, or cases that cannot be confirmed as outbreaks in the school. Although the numbers continue to rise every week, Murphy said the statistics for school outbreaks are lower than government officials expected when schools reopened for personal classes.
New Jersey defines school outbreaks as cases where contact detectives determined that two or more students or school staff caught or transmitted COVID-19 in the classroom or during academic activities at school.
AGE BREAKS OUT
Degraded by age, those aged 30 to 49 make up the largest percentage of New Jersey residents who contracted the virus (31.1%), followed by those aged 50-64 (23.5%), 18-29 (19.3% ), 65-79 (11.1%), 5-17 (7.9%), 80 and older (5.3%) and 0-4 (1.6%).
On average, the virus was more deadly to older residents, especially those with a pre-existing condition. Nearly half of COVID-19 deaths were among residents 80 and older (47.49%), followed by 65-79 (32.56%), 50-64 (15.52%), 30-49 ( 4.05%), 18-29 (0.36%), 5-17 (0%) and 0-4 (0.02%).
At least 7,713 of the COVID-19 deaths in the state were among residents and staff members at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. The number has risen sharply again in recent months, with deaths at the state’s old age homes almost tripling in December.
There are currently active outbreaks at 435 facilities, resulting in 7,338 active cases among residents and 7,929 among staff members.
GENERAL NUMBERS
As of Monday morning, there are more than 103 million positive COVID-19 tests worldwide, according to a running count from Johns Hopkins University. More than 2.22 million people have died from coronavirus-related complications.
The US reported the most cases, more than 26.1 million and the most deaths, more than 441,300.
Our journalism needs your support. Please sign in today at NJ.com
Matt Arco can be reached at [email protected].