With the brutal omicron variant wave easing its grip, numbers show that new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. are dropping in 49 of the 50 states.
The news comes as the death toll related to COVID-19 in the United States closes in on 900,000. The number of lives lost to the pandemic in the U.S. stood at over 897,000 as of midday Friday, with deaths running at an average of more than 2,400 a day, back up to where they were last winter. That was when the vaccine drive was still getting started.
New cases per day have tanked by almost a half-million nationwide since mid-January, with the curve trending downward in every state but Maine.
In a CDC release Friday, experts note that omicron has shown characteristics that it is more transmissible and also resistant to vaccines than other variants, yet cases have been shown to have less severe symptoms compared with other variants.
As the New York Times reported, while the number of deaths in the U.S. crept near 900,000 by Friday, fewer than half as many cases have been identified each day recently, compared to the rate in mid-January at the peak of the surge. About 2,600 COVID-19 cases continue to be reported each day, which is the most since last winter.