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Daily COVID-19 case numbers still high, but no states have seen rate of spread rise in past week

COVID-19 tests
Posted at 8:07 AM, Feb 03, 2021
and last updated 2021-02-03 08:07:09-05

The White House COVID-19 response team will hold another briefing Wednesday morning as the spread of the virus continues to slow and vaccine rollout holds steady.

According to the COVID Tracking Project, there is not one state or territory in the U.S. where cases of the virus are currently on the rise. Every state and territory across the country is currently seeing case rates fall or hold steady on a seven-day average.

In the last three weeks, the U.S. has seen the seven-day rolling average of new cases plummet from a peak of about 250,000 new cases a day to about 140,000 cases a day.

The COVID Tracking Project also reports that hospitalizations linked to the virus are trending downward. Nationwide hospitalizations have decreased by 40,000 in recent weeks to a total of about 90,000.

Despite recent decreases, the rate of spread of the virus and its toll on hospitals remains extremely high. Those averages remain highly elevated from those seen prior to a surge of cases seen in fall and early winter.

While the Biden administration has stepped up efforts to deliver vaccines to states, Bloomberg reports that the current U.S. vaccination rate is holding steady at about an average of 1.3 million doses administered each day for the past week.

That rate would keep the Biden administration on track to deliver 100 million shots in the president's first 100 days in office but leaves them short of an updated goal of delivering 10 million doses each week.

The White House briefing also comes as the threat of new, more contagious variants of the virus continue to spread throughout the country.

According to the CDC, there have been 541 reports of a variant first discovered in the U.K., which has occurred in 31 states. There's also been three reports of the South African variant in Maryland and South Carolina and a single case of the Brazil variant found in Minnesota.

The White House COVID-19 response team will provide an update to those figures during its briefing at 11 a.m. ET on Wednesday.