COVID hospitalizations reach new record low nationwide, CDC says
The number of Americans hospitalized with COVID 19 A new record low has fallen nationwide, according to reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For the first time, the CDC’s preliminary data showed just 8,256 COVID-19 hospitalizations last week, a record low for this key remaining indicator for tracking the threat posed by the virus.
of the CDC DataUpdated late Thursday, the number of weekly admissions for COVID-19 patients has never fallen below 9,000 since it first hit that metric in the summer of 2020 during the pandemic. Started tracking.
COVID-19 hospitalizations are one of them. A few remaining metrics The CDC is relying on tracking the spread of the virus and making recommendations in light of it. Ending a public health emergency earlier this month.
Hospitals are still required to report. Thinner below List of minimum weekly COVID-19 metrics to CDC through April 2024, though recent changes In Hospital Testing Methods The recommendations mean fewer infections can be counted by some health care systems.
When COVID-19 Hospital Admissions Reach “High” Levels In a countythe agency still plans to urge residents to wear masks and take other precautions to stem the rise.
Previous record low
It’s at least the third consecutive year with a record low around this season.
In 2021, weekly COVID-19 hospitalizations fell to their lowest level in history during May and June, before President Biden Celebrated Independence Day from the virus.
But it came just weeks before a new fatal surge in August from the Delta variant, which pushed hospitalizations to a weekly peak of 85,785 new admissions.
In 2022, the U.S. recorded new record lows in late April after an increase in Omicron species last winter. This winter’s Omicron wave topped 150,000 weekly new hospitalizations, the worst since the pandemic began.
Hospitalizations and deaths later picked up in July and again in December, although they are below the record highs seen in earlier waves.
New forms are on the rise.
The slowdown in hospital admissions comes as new strains of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, continue to rise across the country.
According to the CDC, the XBB.1.5 strain has dropped to about half of the circulating SARS-CoV-2 Estimation Published on Friday. XBB.1.5 quickly dominated infections. Late this past winter.
It is replaced by many other closely related strains, such as the XBB.1.16 variant, which together make up 19% of infections. A handful of variants within the XBB.1.9 subtype are the next largest, accounting for about 17.9% of the countrywide population.
But officials say they have noticed some significant differences between the descendants of XBB, which are now globally dominant.
It was for this reason that a panel of World Health Organization advisors Recently recommended That the next round of COVID-19 boosters be updated to target only the XBB strain of the virus.
This is a change from the current boosters, which are considered. “Bilateral” vaccine Because they combine a component targeted at the original strain of the virus from early in the pandemic with another component targeted at a previous strain of the Omicron variant.
The Food and Drug Administration is expected to call a meeting. meeting His own advisers will soon consider his own recommendations, before vaccine makers prepare a new, revised round of boosters in time for this fall and winter.