As more people get vaccinated, and mask usage continues?
The number of virus cases continues to drop….
Vaccine rollout climbs modestly….
Testing also continues to slow…..
Nursing home deaths have dropped even faster than over deaths …
Washington Post….
In the past week in the U.S….
Among reported tests, the positivity rate was 4.8%.
The number of tests reported fell 7.1% from the previous week.Read more
Since Dec. 14, more than 66,464,000doses of a covid-19 vaccine have been administered in the U.S.
More than 20,607,000people have completed vaccination, or about 6.31% of the population. Read more in our vaccination tracker.
Wash Post …Link
NY Times….
The State of the Virus
Update for Feb. 24
- The United States is averaging fewer than 70,000 new cases a day for the first time since October.
- Deaths are down from their peak, but about 2,000 deaths continue to be announced nationwide on most days. Earlier this week, the country surpassed 500,000 total deaths.
- Millions of people are being vaccinated every week. About 13 percent of the population has received at least one dose, and about 6 percent has been fully vaccinated.
- Case numbers remain stubbornly high in New York and New Jersey, which have been reporting new infections at some of the highest rates in the country.
- Infection numbers continue to plummet in the Great Lakes states. Indiana, which was averaging more than 5,000 cases a day at one point in January, is now averaging fewer than 1,000. Illinois, Wisconsin and Ohio have also reported declines of more than 30 percent over the last two weeks….
Nursing Homes…
Since the arrival of vaccines, which were prioritized to long-term care facilities starting in late December, new cases and deaths in nursing homes, a large subset of long-term care facilities, have fallen steeply, outpacing national declines, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data. The turnaround is an encouraging sign for vaccine effectiveness and offers an early glimpse at what may be in store for the rest of the country, as more and more people get vaccinated.
From late December to early February, new cases among nursing home residents fell by more than 80 percent, nearly double the rate of improvement in the general population. The trendline for deaths was even more striking: Even as fatalities spiked over all this winter, deaths inside the facilities have fallen, decreasing by more than 65 percent….