Here’s Where COVID-19 Hospitalizations, Cases Are Rising and Falling

• New COVID-19 hospitalizations continued their decline this past week in the United States.
• The number of new COVID-19 cases decreased for the seventh straight week while the death rate also dropped.
• The daily U.S. vaccination rate sits at about 320,000. Experts say elected and community leaders still need to continue promoting the benefits of vaccination.

Editor’s note: Healthline stopped updating this story on March 10, 2022, as the COVID-19 pandemic began to ease.

The number of COVID-19 hospitalizations declined again this past week in the United States as new cases continue to fall.

COVID-19 hospitalizations nationwide are now sitting at30,000, about 7,000 fewer than a week ago.

California has the most COVID-19 hospitalizations at 3,200, almost 1,000 fewer than last week. Texas is next with 2,600 hospitalizations, about 1,000 fewer than a week ago. Florida follows with 1,800 hospitalizations.

A chart compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) projects a continued decrease in COVID-19 hospitalizations over the next 4 weeks.

Informationcompiled by Becker’s Hospital Review shows no states with COVID-19 hospitalizations of more than 40 per 100,000 residents. West Virginia is the highest at 31 hospitalizations per capita. No states are showing an increase in hospitalizations.

Massachusetts has the lowest per capita rate with 5 hospitalizations per 100,000 residents. New Hampshire and Iowa are next, each with 6 hospitalizations per 100,000 residents.

Here’s a look at the states with the highest per capita hospitalization rates and theirpercentageof fully vaccinated people:

尽管COVID-19下降情况下,医院izations, experts say we should remain on guard and vigilant as the Omicron wave subsides.

“My cautious optimism hopes that we are past the peak of the Omicron surge, but I am not yet ready to hoist the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner,”Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, told Healthline. “Better to keep wearing masks for a month too long rather than take them off a month too soon.”

“Cases and hospitalizations need to drop more and for a more sustained time before we can start to relax,” he added. “I anticipate that this still will take a while in our large and diverse country. The declines in COVID cases and hospitalizations will occur at different speeds in different parts of the country.”

Dr. Jamila Taylor, director of healthcare reform and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, agrees we still need to be cautious.

“At this time, all indications point to a transition to an endemic stage. I am hopeful that some semblance of normalcy is also on the horizon,” she told Healthline. “This does not mean we should let up our mitigation efforts. We are so close, and I worry that if we let up prematurely, we could end up seeing increases again.”

Schaffner added he remains optimistic even with the emergence of theBA.2 Omicron subvariant.

“Fortunately, the B2 variant still is rather well protected against by our current vaccines,” he said. “Our vaccines offer protection against hospitalization by the B2 variant, thus I doubt that B2 will produce a substantial increase in hospitalizations, but it might prolong the transition from pandemic to endemic.”

Schaffner also said we should keep a close eye on cases in certain areas amid therelaxation of mask mandatesin many parts of the country.

“The recent CDC mask guidelines have been generally well received,” he noted. “I continue to be somewhat concerned about persons in the red zone areas casting their masks aside. Living in a red zone, I have witnessed a substantial increase in unmasked shoppers in the supermarket over the past 2 weeks.”