Even As US COVID-19 Hospitalizations Fall, New Deaths Remain Higher

COVID-19 hospitalizations continue to trend downward, but the daily numbers of new cases and deaths remain much higher than the first two peaks of the pandemic in the spring and summer of 2020.

With 2558 new deaths reporting in the last 24 hours, the total U.S. COVID-19 fatalities rose to 493098, as per Johns Hopkins University’s latest data.

7-day average deaths fell below 2,000 for the first time since Dec 4. The deaths average was above 3,000 two weeks ago. A steep fall in daily deaths was recorded in Texas.

69172 new cases of coronavirus infections were reported in the country in the last 24 hours, taking the national total to 27895987.

Compared with a national peak of 314,093 cases reported to CDC on January 8, 2021, the daily number of cases has dropped by around 70 percent.

A total of 62,300 COVID patients are currently admitted in hospitals across the country, according to COVID Tracking Project. This is the lowest figure since November 11. Out of this, 13,045 patients are admitted in Intensive Care Units.

Out of 1.43 million people who were tested for coronavirus on Wednesday, only 5.13 percent were diagnosed with the disease. COVID positivity rate was around 14 percent in the U.S. last month.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday that more than 1,500 cases of coronavirus variants first spotted in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil have been reported in the United States. The vast majority of these cases are the U.K. variant, found in 41 states and Washington, DC.

A report published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology says pregnant women appear to be at a higher risk of Covid-19 infection. “Pregnant women were not protected from COVID-19 in the early months of the pandemic, with the greatest burden of infections occurring in nearly all racial/ethnic minority groups,” the researchers wrote in their report.

French President Emmanuel Macron urged the governments of Europe and the U.S. to urgently send up to 5 percent of their COVID vaccine supplies to poor nations.

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