Covid hospital admissions are at their lowest levels since the United States began keeping records at the start of the pandemic, according to an NBC News analysis of data from the Department of Health and Human Services.
Average hospitalizations have fallen to 16,760, down from the previous low of 16,808, set before a delta wave in June 2021. Hospitalization numbers may change from the past few days as hospitals finish the numbers.
Since March 2020, when HHS began recording hospital admissions, there have been as many as 159,000 people hospitalized in a single day with Covid, a peak set on January 20 during the omicron surge. On average, the country reports 63,000 hospital admissions per day.
In the past two weeks, the number of hospitalizations has fallen 32 percent, from an average of 24,595 to 16,760.
It comes in a month when President Joe Biden declared that “Covid-19 no longer needs to control our lives” in State of the Union who casts.
Cases of COVID-19 are also declining, dropping to an average of 32,000 new cases per day, down 7 percent in the past two weeks. Meanwhile, the BA.2 variant of omicron became the dominant variant in the US this week, and cases are slowly beginning to rise in the Northeast. It is unclear whether BA.2 will cause a wave, although some experts remain optimistic that it will not.
Vaccinations, which have slowed greatly, could soon be opened to children under five, the last group ineligible for immunization in the United States.
Five states set records Thursday for the lowest hospital admissions for Covid: Florida, Indiana, Mississippi, Nevada and Wyoming. Wyoming reports nine people have been hospitalized, a rate close to 1 per 100,000 residents, the lowest among states.
The US Virgin Islands reported the lowest rate among all jurisdictions, with less than one person per 100,000 hospitalized residents.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor, said new antiviral drugs prevent more infected people from seeking treatment during the Omicron era.
“These interventions … are working really well to keep people out of the hospital,” he said during a White House news conference last week.
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