(Reuters) – The United States reported a 23% drop in new COVID-19 cases last week and a 16 percent drop in the number of people hospitalized with the virus, both figures for the fifth week in a row.
However, progress against the virus is threatened by several new variants, experts said, adding that face masks and social distance measures are still very much needed.
About 4% of cases in the country are related to a more contagious variant detected for the first time in the United Kingdom, according to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We have forecasts that it could be the dominant strain by the end of March,” she told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday.
The country registered more than 639,000 new COVID-19 cases in the week ending February 14, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county reports. Compared to the previous week, new cases increased in only three of the 50 states: Alaska, Nebraska and South Dakota.
(Open tmsnrt.rs/2WTOZDR in an external browser to see state-by-state graphics.)
Deaths fell for the second week in a row, down 1.8% from 21,787 last week. With the exception of a small number of deaths reported by Ohio, deaths fell 15 percent last week. Cumulatively, nearly 486,000 people have died from the virus in the United States, or one in 673 residents.
The average number of COVID-19 patients in US hospitals dropped to 74,000 last week, the lowest since mid-November, according to a Reuters analysis of data from the volunteer-led COVID follow-up project.
Nationally, 5.7% of COVID-19 tests tested positive for the virus, the lowest level since the week of October 25, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project.
(Graphic: global tracker COVID-19 – here)
Graphic by Chris Canipe, written by Lisa Shumaker, edited by Tiffany Wu