As a hedonistic — or just mildly relaxing — summer beckons, every important indicator of COVID progress in the United States continues to tilt in the right direction.
Cases continue to plummet. Just one month ago, the seven-day “moving average” of cases stood at more than 62,000, per CDC data. That number now stands at 27,857, the lowest since June 2020, and it is dropping every day.
Though cases are falling faster in some places than others, they are dropping in every state. They’re at a low level almost everywhere, including in places like Texas, which dramatically loosened pandemic restrictions before a significant share of the population was vaccinated, and in states like Alabama and Wyoming, which lag well behind in vaccination rates.
Fewer than 30,000 are currently hospitalized with COVID, the lowest number in 11 months. Though hundreds of Americans are still dying of the virus every day, coronavirus deaths are at their lowest levels since the very beginning of the pandemic. The rolling seven-day average stands at 497, the best number since March 31, 2020.
60.5 percent of American adults have now received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, with an additional 1.8 million or so being inoculated every day. Between the increasing immunity and warmer weather that makes it more difficult for the virus to thrive (except, possibly, when people are driven indoors by the heat), the possibility of a nationwide outbreak — the likes of which the U.S. saw multiple times in the last year — now seems remote. As the New York Times’ David Leonhardt put it, “there is now an excellent chance that the retreat is permanent.”
Enjoy that beach day — you’ve earned it.
