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New Jersey reported 2,015 more confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 28 more confirmed deaths on Thursday, while hospitalizations fell below 1,000 patients for the first time in more than five weeks.
The seven-day average of confirmed positive tests is now 1,726, down 7% from a week ago, but up 3% from a month ago.
New Jersey’s statewide transmission rate fell to 0.94 from 0.97 on Wednesday. Any transmission rate greater than 1 indicates that each new case results in more than one additional case and shows that the state’s epidemic is spreading.
As of Wednesday evening, 980 people were hospitalized with confirmed or suspected cases of coronavirus, state data showed. That’s a drop of 86 patients from the night before and the first time since Aug. 23 that hospitals have reported fewer than 1,000 patients. There were 130 patients discharged in the 24 hours leading up to Wednesday evening.
Among those hospitalized, 198 were in intensive care (29 fewer than the day before), including 113 on ventilators (15 fewer).
The delta variant continues to dominate cases in New Jersey with nearly all cases sampled in the four weeks ending September 11.
School districts across the state have reported at least 39 outbreaks to school for a total of 219 cases, more than double the cases reported a week ago, according to the state’s dashboard.
School outbreaks are defined as three or more cases that are determined by contact tracing to have been transmitted between staff or students at school. They do not include the total number of cases among staff and students. For example, Toms River schools have had more than 236 students and 34 teachers tested positive since the start of the school year, but the state does not list any outbreaks or cases in Ocean County.
The positivity rate for tests performed on Saturday, the last available day, was 6.1%.
More than 5.8 million people who live, work or study in New Jersey were fully vaccinated as of Thursday. More than 6.4 million people have received at least one dose and more than 133,000 people have received third doses or boosters of Pfizer vaccine.
Twenty of New Jersey’s 21 counties continue to be listed as having “high” rates of coronavirus transmission, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hudson County’s level of community transmission was listed as “substantial” on Thursday. It is the first county to see its transmission level changed since August. Regardless, the CDC still recommends that people in 21 counties wear masks for indoor public places, regardless of the state’s vaccination rates.
New Jersey has now reported a total of 27,427 COVID-19-related deaths in 18 months – 24,640 confirmed and 2,787 considered probable, according to the state’s dashboard. Probable deaths, which are reviewed weekly, increased by 14 deaths on Monday.
New Jersey has the second highest number of coronavirus deaths per capita in the United States.
At least 8,546 of the deaths from COVID-19 in the state have occurred among residents and staff of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, according to state data.
There are active outbreaks in 152 facilities, resulting in 640 current cases among residents and 540 among staff.
In total, the state of 9.2 million people has reported a total of 1,001,635 confirmed cases out of the 15.5 million PCR tests performed since its first case was announced on March 4, 2020. The state has also reported 150,958 positive antigen tests, which are considered probable cases. .
As of Wednesday, more than 233 million positive cases of COVID-19 were reported worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University, with more than 4.77 million people dying from the virus. The United States has reported the most cases (over 43.3 million) and deaths (over 695,500) than any other country.
More than 6.2 billion doses of vaccines have been administered worldwide.
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