New cases of coronavirus continued to deteriorate sharply over the past week – progress that could help the US emerge from the pandemic faster and safer, if it persists.
The big picture: Controlling the spread of the virus is key to saving lives and reopening schools and businesses. And the tools to do that – masks, social distancing and vaccines – are also the most effective weapons against the more contagious variants that could threaten US progress.
In numbers: An average of 108,000 Americans were diagnosed with COVID-19 infections every day for the past week.
- That is a decrease of 24% compared to the week before.
- Hospital admissions were also down last week, by about 8%, and deaths were down 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 is still a very bad situation and should not be considered a sustainable level of infection.
- But after the horrific winter outbreak in the US, the only way to get a small number of cases is to keep climbing down week after week. And that happens.
- Nationally, average daily cases have declined by double digits for four weeks. Cumulatively, they have fallen by about 55% in that time.
- It’s been three weeks since even a single state reported an increase in average daily infections.
This is real progress.
What’s next: Experts have warned that new, more contagious variants of COVID-19 are gaining ground in the US and are likely to become the dominant species soon. That means that any infected person is more likely to spread the virus.
- The best ways to prevent an increase in the incidence of those variants is to ramp up vaccinations, keep masks and social distance – including double masks if necessary – and continue to reduce the number of people infected.
Axios monitors the change in new infections in each state on a weekly basis. We use a seven-day average to minimize the effects of daily discrepancies in the reporting of states.