COVID Drops in February to Levels Seen Before Holiday Spike

February is on track to show just a fraction of the monthly COVID-19 cases seen during the worst parts of the holiday surge that drove infections to records.

The U.S. this month has already seen more than 2.17 million cases, which is more than any month prior to the surge, according to the Covid Tracking Project. But February looks likely to post about a third of the cases seen in December, the pandemic’s worst month.

The figures are a reminder of how much the daily case situation has improved, but also how far the country still has to go. Improvements are fragile, and rapidly accelerating variant cases pose serious threats to the efficacy of vaccines being rushed to patients.

As of Thursday, case averages were rising in six states, most notably Rhode Island, Connecticut and Louisiana; overall daily cases showed signs of a slight uptick, the first since early January. Those may be weather related, as storms last week hampered reporting.

The U.S. posted 75,565 new cases Thursday, bringing the seven-day average to 68,027. Cumulatively, there have been at least 508,806 Covid deaths in the U.S, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

According to Covid Tracking Project data:

• New York has the most people hospitalized per capita with the virus, at 293 per million.
• When compared with the prior week, the number of patients hospitalized was falling or flat everywhere but Alaska.