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– This weekend, the US saw the death toll from COVID-19 drop to its lowest point in more than a year, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The number of 222 deaths reported Sunday is the lowest since March 23, 2020, when 192 confirmed deaths were recorded in the early days of the pandemic. However, during a White House briefing on Monday, CDC director Rochelle Walensky called recent trends worrying. She noted that the number of cases has been on the rise in the past four weeks, and the CDC is tracking some variants that are highly transmissible. Sunday’s count may not be complete either: because it was the Easter holidays, the data may not include the full reports of all states. For example, numbers from California were not available on Sunday, The Hill reports.
Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reported early Tuesday that the number of new cases was significantly higher in Monday’s than Sunday’s numbers, likely due to the lack of reporting in some states over 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 grim, millions of Americans are “ going one step further every day to get vaccinated, ” at an average rate of 3 million a day. She believes’ widespread vaccination will get us to the end of the COVID. -19, “she said. The coronavirus has claimed 555,600 lives in the US and more than 2.86 million worldwide. (Read more COVID-19 stories.)