U.S. daily COVID cases drop to below 10,000 --vaccinations credited

New daily COVID cases drop to below 10,000 in the U.S. Is the end finally in sight? The weekly average of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. is down dramatically, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said during a Thursday briefing. Alexander Nazaryan YahooNews

WASHINGTON — Last September, with COVID-19 vaccines still some three months from being made publicly available, the nation was recording about 40,000 new cases per day.

In an interview with MSNBC, Dr. Anthony Fauci called that number “unacceptably high,” especially since people were bound to travel over the forthcoming Labor Day weekend. Shortly after that, cold weather would drive people indoors, where the virus would spread much more easily than it did in the open air.

“I’d like to see it [at] 10,000 or less,” said Fauci, who has served as a top science adviser to former President Donald Trump and, currently, to President Biden.

“Hopefully less,” he added.

That milestone would not be realized for months. By late October, a third wave of the pandemic had begun, one seemingly compounded by a collective fatigue and an impatience to return to the pre-pandemic normal. January would see multiple days of more than 4,000 deaths across the country, while an average of about 250,000 new infections was being recorded daily.

Still, by late January, the pace of vaccination began to rise, a trend that would continue throughout much of late winter and early spring. Biden’s coronavirus relief package, which Congress quickly ratified, steered billions of dollars to public health efforts, and he tried to lessen the cultural rancor around masking and social distancing. But more than anything else, the availability of three coronavirus vaccines began to reverse the dispiriting trends of those dark, cold months.

The result of the nationwide inoculation push has been a coast-to-coast return to near normal, one accompanied by a precipitous and encouraging drop in cases. Previous attempts by Trump to declare the pandemic over were not accompanied by similar case drops. If the virus ebbed, as it did last June, it would inevitably return as restrictions loosened.

Now such a return is less likely, simply because there is less virus circulating through the United States today than at any time since March 2020, when the pandemic was just beginning. June 1 saw only 9,358 new COVID cases recorded across the country, as Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said during a Thursday briefing. ...

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