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Recently reported Covid-19 cases in the United States were down from the previous day, dropping below 40,000 for the first time since early October, as the government’s leading infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, said cautioned against lifting restrictions too soon.
There were 38,222 new cases reported in the United States for Sunday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. It was down 53,215 for Saturday and 40,966 a week earlier. Sunday was the first day that newly reported cases were below 40,000 since October 5, when they were at 39,471.
The number of cases reported each day tends to be lower at the start of the week, as fewer people are tested on the weekends. Cases have generally declined from peaks of around 300,000 recorded in January, but have declined less rapidly in the past three weeks.
The country’s seven-day moving average of newly reported cases, which smooths out irregularities in the data, was 53,670 on Sunday, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Johns Hopkins data. The 14-day average was 56,600. When the seven-day average is lower than the 14-day average, as has been the case since March 2, it indicates that new cases are declining.
According to data from Johns Hopkins, 572 deaths were reported on Sunday, a significant drop from the 1,725 reported a day earlier. The number is also down from 678 reported a week earlier.
As Covid-19-related deaths are on the decline, states across the country are regularly discovering previously unreported deaths that confuse the data. Much of the problem is with the systems states are using to try to report near real-time Covid-19 data, not the deaths reported more slowly through death certificates. These front-line numbers are the ones that power state dashboards and data trackers, like that of Johns Hopkins.
Ohio announced more than 4,000 additional deaths in February while reconciling its data, and Indiana added about 1,500. Smaller revisions have also come recently from Virginia, Minnesota and Rhode Island. Authorities in West Virginia said on Thursday that medical providers had incorrectly reported 168 deaths to the state’s public health department.
As cases and deaths plummeted across the country, Dr Fauci warned on Sunday that the United States could experience another outbreak of Covid-19 like Europe if it lifts restrictions too early and called on the former President Donald Trump to urge his supporters to get vaccinated.
The United States had administered more than 109 million doses of the vaccine as of Monday morning, with 14.8% of the adult population now fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that if new Covid-19 infections plateau around 60,000 a day, there has a risk of a new outbreak.
“This is what we really want to avoid because we are going in the right direction,” he said. “That’s why I’m so anxious when I hear myself withdrawing completely from public health measures, like saying, ‘No more masks, none of that.’ “
Overall, more than 29.43 million cases of Covid-19 have been reported in the United States and more than 534,000 people have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins. Globally, around 120 million cases have been reported and more than 2.65 million people have died.
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