New Jersey health officials reported a further 3,114 confirmed coronavirus cases and 34 additional deaths on Monday, as weekend hospital admissions fell below 3,000 to the lowest number since before Thanksgiving.
Officials have administered more than 785,500 vaccines in the state to date, although Monday’s winter storm will slow mass vaccination efforts as many sites announced on Sunday that they would be closed.
Hospital admissions fell to 2,865 on Sunday evening, the lowest since Nov. 23, with 531 people in intensive care and 355 on ventilator.
“All those numbers are down,” Gov. Phil Murphy said at a briefing in Woodbridge to discuss the winter storm ravaging the state.
New Jersey has now lost 21,513 residents in the nearly 11-month outbreak, with 19,384 confirmed fatalities and 2,129 as likely. The death toll in January was 2,377 confirmed fatalities, the most in every month since May.
The total number of confirmed cases is now 626,645 out of 9.3 million positive tests. There have also been 73,701 positive antigen tests, which the state recently began to report publicly. Those cases are considered likely, and health officials have warned that the positive antigen tests could overlap with the confirmed PCR tests because they are sometimes given together.
Health officials, meanwhile, continue to discover more cases of the highly contagious variant of the virus first discovered in the UK. There are at least 11 confirmed cases of the variant, officials said Friday, including one in connection with a death.
Cases have been reported in six counties:
- Ocean County – 4
- Essex County – 2
- Morris County – 2
- Hudson County – 1
- Middlesex County – 1
- Warren County – 1
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VACCINATIONS
According to the state dashboard, 785,588 vaccine doses have been administered in New Jersey so far. Of those, 656,174 were the first of two doses that people will receive.
That’s of the more than 1.23 million doses the state has received from the federal government, according to a running count from the federal Centers for Disease Control.
All six of the state’s vaccine mega sites are now open, along with about 200 other locations statewide, although some mega sites have had to suspend operations for a day after doses ran out.
Murphy said last week that the state can now expect about 130,000 doses from the federal government in the next three weeks, up from 100,000, but demand still outstrips supply in the state.
“We still have a major imbalance between supply and demand. We will still be hacking through that in the coming weeks, ”Murphy said during a CNN interview.
VACCINATIONS BY COUNTY
- ATLANTIC COUNTY – 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 COUNTY – 62,777 doses administered
- GLOUCESTER COUNTY – 26,024 doses administered
- HUDSON COUNTY – 36,437 doses administered
- HUNTERDON COUNTY – 10,785 doses administered
- MERCER COUNTY – 21,023 doses administered
- MIDDLESEX COUNTY – 58,828 doses administered
- MONMOUTH COUNTY – 59,564 doses administered
- MORRIS COUNTY – 58,242 doses administered
- OCEAN COUNTY – 47,462 doses administered
- PASSAIC COUNTY – 36,853 doses administered
- SALEM COUNTY – 4,691 doses administered
- SOMERSET COUNTY – 30,871 doses administered
- SUSSEX COUNTY – 13,151 doses administered
- UNION COUNTY – 38,734 doses administered
- WARREN COUNTY – 8,018 doses administered
- UNKNOWN COUNTY – 25,732 doses administered
- OUT OF STATE – 29,010 doses administered
HOSPITALIZATIONS
There were 2,865 patients hospitalized with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 in 71 New Jersey hospitals as of Sunday evening. That is 58 fewer than the previous day.
That included 531 in critical or intensive care units (five more than the previous night), with 255 on fans (four fewer).
According to the state’s COVID-19 dashboard, 286 COVID-19 patients were also discharged on Sunday.
Murphy has said that any hospital admissions of more than 5,000 patients would likely cause new restrictions. But the number of people hospitalized has largely declined slowly in recent days after reaching a more than seven-month peak of 3,873 people on Dec. 22.
Hospital admissions have been slowly declining in recent weeks.
The state peaked at more than 8,000 hospital admissions in April.
SCHOOL CASES
According to the latest update from state health officials, at least 629 students and staff in 131 New Jersey school districts have caught COVID-19 due to school outbreaks.
That’s an increase of 10 districts from the previous weekly report. There are now confirmed school outbreaks in all 21 counties, although the state does not identify individual school districts.
Those numbers do not include students or staff who are believed to have been infected outside of school or cases that cannot be confirmed as outbreaks in school. While the number continues to rise every week, Murphy has said school outbreak statistics remain below what government officials expected when schools reopened for in-person classes.
New Jersey defines school outbreaks as instances where contact tracers have determined that two or more students or school staff have captured or transferred COVID-19 in class or during academic activities at the school.
AGE DISTRIBUTION
By age, the 30 to 49 years old make up the largest percentage of New Jersey residents who have contracted the virus (31.1%), followed by the 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 has been more deadly to older residents, especially those with pre-existing conditions. Nearly half of the COVID-19 deaths in the state were among residents 80 and older (47.49%), followed by those 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 of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. That number has risen again at a faster pace in recent months, with the number of deaths in the state’s nursing homes nearly tripling in December.
There are currently active outbreaks at 435 facilities, resulting in 7,338 active cases among residents and 7,929 among staff.
GLOBAL FIGURES
According to a running count from Johns Hopkins University, there have been more than 103 million positive COVID-19 tests around the world as of Monday morning. More than 2.22 million people have died of complications from the coronavirus.
The US reported the most cases, with more than 26.1 million, and the most deaths, with more than 441,300.
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Matt Arco can be reached at [email protected].