Covid cases dip below 100,000 a day in U.S. as nation faces colder

Average daily Covid cases in the U.S. fell below 100,000 Thursday as the pandemic shows further signs of easing with more than 56% of the population fully immunized against the virus — a starkly different trend than the record-setting surge the country was heading toward last fall.

Armed with vaccines this fall, cases have been steadily declining since the country’s most recent peak of about 172,500 average daily infections on Sept. 13, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. It’s the first time daily cases have dropped below 100,000 since early August, the data shows, but health experts are urging caution despite the positive signs they see in the numbers.

“I think right now, it looks like we’re in for a relatively tough fall with sustained transmission of Covid in our communities,” said Dr. Barbara Taylor, an assistant dean and professor of infectious diseases at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. She said the still-high infection rates means the country is not yet out of the woods, though she said it was encouraging that cases weren’t surging again. “But I’m hesitant to say that we know everything about what it’s going to look like.”

While infections this time last year were less than half today’s levels, they were quickly rising and eventually reached a pandemic peak after the holiday season of more than 250,000 per day on Jan. 11. The death toll followed suit, eventually topping out at about 3,400 per day in early 2021. 

Along with the fall in cases, there are encouraging signs in U.S. hospitalizations and fatalities. About 69,000 Americans are currently in the hospital with Covid, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, down from nearly 104,000 on Sept. 1. The average daily death toll currently sits at about 1,680 over the last week, down 18% from its recent high point of roughly 2,050 per day on Sept. 22.

While the decline in deaths is reassuring, the daily number of U.S. fatalities is still “substantial and tragic,” said Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

“We’ve become so numb to the numbers that even something like 500 deaths per day this coming winter might be packaged by some as some kind of victory just because it’s not 3,000 or more. How sad is that?” said Faust, who’s also an instructor at Harvard Medical School.

Cases, deaths, and hospitalizations are all currently higher than they were both one year ago and earlier in the summer before the delta variant took hold across the country. Average case counts were as low as 11,400 per day as recently as June.

The major difference in 2021, of course, is the emergence of Covid vaccines. Almost two-thirds of the U.S. population has received at least…