Pandemic’s deadliest month in US ends with signs of progress. Here’s the latest virus news.
The deadliest month yet of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. drew to a close with certain signs of progress: COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are plummeting, while vaccinations are picking up speed.
The question is whether the nation can stay ahead of the fast-spreading mutations of the virus.
The U.S. death toll has climbed past 440,000, with over 95,000 lives lost in January alone. Deaths are running at about 3,150 per day on average, down slightly by about 200 from their peak in mid-January.
But as the calendar turned to February on Monday, the number of Americans in the hospital with COVID-19 fell below 100,000 for the first time in two months. New cases of infection are averaging about 148,000 day, falling from almost a quarter-million in mid-January. And cases are trending downward in all 50 states.
“While the recent decline in cases and hospital admissions are encouraging, they are counterbalanced by the stark reality that in January we recorded the highest number of COVID-19 deaths in any month since the pandemic began,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In other developments:
- President Joe Biden is to meet late Monday with a group of 10 Republican senators who have proposed $618 billion in coronavirus aid, about a third of the $1.9 trillion he is seeking as congressional Democrats vow to push ahead with or without GOP support.
- The coronavirus pandemic has cut instruction time in the nation’s schools by as much as half, and many middle school and high school teachers have given up on covering all the material normally included in their classes. Instead, they are cutting lessons.
- Americans’ desire to get outdoors during the pandemic despite the winter cold is creating a season unlike any in more than two decades for the snowmobiling industry. From Maine to Montana, it’s becoming difficult to find a new snowmobile for sale.
- The coronavirus immunization campaign is off to a shaky start in Tuskegee, Alabama. Area leaders point to a lingering distrust of medicine linked to a 40-year government study there that used unknowing Black men as guinea pigs to study syphilis.
- Only a little more than a third of nursing home workers have been getting shots against COVID-19 when the vaccinations are first offered.
- Canada on Monday reported its first case of a coronavirus variant that emerged in South Africa that is believed to be more contagious than the original.
- A World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic visited two disease control centers on Monday that had an early hand in managing the outbreak in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
- With 3,000 soccer players due to travel internationally for World Cup qualifying games next month, FIFA President Gianni Infantino said on Monday all will conform to health rules in the coronavirus pandemic.
For more summaries and full reports, select from the articles below. Scroll further for the latest virus numbers.
