US reports lowest number of daily COVID cases since October with 77,737 as 38 states see hospitalizations drop by 10% or more in a week - but CDC warns variants could reverse downward trends
The US has recorded its lowest number of new daily coronavirus cases since October as hospitalizations continue to fall, with a majority of states seeing rates drop by 10 percent or more in the last week.
On Monday a total of 77,737 new infections and 1,309 deaths were reported nationwide, according to a tally by the COVID Tracking Project.
The case count was the lowest seen in the US since October 27, when 72,221 were recorded.
The seven-day rolling average for new cases now stands at 111,131, down from 142,958 a week ago, with rates falling in 44 states. The seven-day rolling average for daily deaths is 2,885, down from 3,133 a week ago.
Hospitalizations have seen a similar downward trend in recent days, with a total of 80,055 patients receiving care on Monday. That's a decrease of nearly 30,000 from two weeks ago, when 109,936 patients were hospitalized.
Over the past week 38 states have seen hospitalizations decrease by 10 percent or more, while numbers are staying steady in 11 and rising in just one, Hawaii.
Despite the promising recent figures, top health officials have cautioned that the country is far from out of the woods due to the accelerating spread of virus variants - including three first discovered in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil.
'Although hospital admissions and cases are consistently dropping, I'm asking everyone to please keep your guard up,' Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), said Monday. 'The proliferation of variants remains of great concern and is a threat that could reverse the recent positive trends we are seeing.'
The US recorded its lowest number of new daily coronavirus cases since October 27 on Monday with 77,737, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project
Hospitalizations have seen a similar downward trend in recent days, with a total of 80,055 patients receiving care on Monday. That's a decrease of nearly 30,000 from two weeks ago, when 109,936 patients were hospitalized
The seven-day rolling average for new cases (grey line) now stands at 111,131, down from 142,958 a week ago, with rates falling in 44 states. The seven-day rolling average for daily deaths (red line) is 2,885, down from 3,133 a week ago
Over the past week 38 states have seen hospitalizations decrease by 10 percent or more, while numbers are staying steady in 11 and rising in just one, Hawaii
Despite the promising recent figures, top health officials have cautioned that the country is far from out of the woods due to the accelerating spread of virus variants - including three first discovered in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil. A DailyMail.com analysis of federal and state data indicates that there are at least 709 variant cases nationwide as of Monday
Health care workers tend to a patient in the Covid-19 Intensive Care Unit overflow area at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, California, on Friday
Nearly 700 cases associated with coronavirus variants have been identified in the United States, officials said on a press call.
Of them, 690 cases are from a more transmissible variant first discovered in the UK called B.1.1.7, which could become the dominant variant in the US by March, the officials said.
The US has not been testing widely for variants, so the actual number is likely higher than official figures. All viruses mutate, but scientists are worried about changes in the virus that make it more transmissible or more deadly.
A DailyMail.com analysis of federal and state data indicates that there are actually more than 700 cases of the UK variant across 33 states. At least six cases of the South African variant and one case of the Brazilian variant have also been confirmed.
Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on Monday said that the best defense against the variants is widespread vaccinations.
It came as the CDC reported that 42,417,617 coronavirus vaccine doses have been administered as of Monday morning, out of 59,307,800 delivered to states.
At least one dose of a vaccine has been administered to 32,340,146 people, which equals to 9.85 percent of the population.
Just over 9,518,000 Americans have now received both doses of a vaccine, amounting to 2.9 percent of the population.
The CDC reported that 42,417,617 coronavirus vaccine doses have been administered as of Monday morning
Fauci said that while it is reasonable to study Pfizer's and Moderna's vaccines for a one-dose regime, given supply constraints, such a study would take months to complete and thus likely make its conclusions moot. He continued to encourage people get two doses of the vaccines.
The optimal 'approach would be to continue with getting as many people on their first dose as possible but also making sure that people on time get their second dose,' Fauci said.
Vaccinations have been credited with driving a 50 percent decrease in infections within nursing homes in the span of four weeks, according to data from the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The data included cases from December 20 through January 24 - after a federal program opened vaccination clinics in nursing homes on December 19.
It showed that the 797 nursing homes with the clinics saw infection rates drop by half within three weeks, compared with 21 percent in 1,709 homes that did not have clinics in the first week.
As the vaccine rollout picks up speed and infection rates fall across the board, some states have begun curtailing back coronavirus-related restrictions.
But on Monday Walensky, the CDC director, indicated that she does not approve of states relaxing their rules as she emphasized that rates for new cases and hospitalizations are still higher than they were over the summer.
'Given that we're still over a hundred thousand cases a day, I would discourage any such activity,' she said.
'And I would say that we are still in the first hundred days [of the Biden administration], where we wanted certainly everybody masked for the first hundred days.
'I think we have yet to control this pandemic. We still have this emerging threat of variants.'
Walensky also noted that efforts to safely reopen schools will be hampered by failure to control community spread.
'The data from schools suggests there's very little transmission that is happening within the schools, especially when there's masking and social distancing occurring,' she said.
'And where there is transmission in the schools, it's because they've been brought in from the community and because there are breaches in masking and distancing. So if we want to get our schools opened ... safely and well, the best way to do that is to decrease the community spread.'
On the same press call, Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House COVID-19 response team, said the Biden administration understands 'the pressure the governors are under' to relax restrictions.
He said the administration is trying to help governors understand why they should continue to follow 'sensible public health measures' by collaborating closely and sharing data with them.
States that have rolled back restrictions in recent days include Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island.
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