Maskless Super Bowl celebrations fuel worries of outbreaks.
The drive to vaccinate Americans against the coronavirus is gaining speed, and newly recorded cases have fallen to their lowest level in three months. But authorities worry that raucous Super Bowl celebrations could fuel new outbreaks.
More than 4 million more vaccinations were reported over the weekend, a significantly faster clip than in previous days, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nearly 1 in 10 Americans have now received at least one shot. But just 2.9 percent of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated, a long way from the 70 percent or more that experts say must be inoculated to conquer the outbreak.
Newly confirmed infections have declined to an average of 117,000 a day, the lowest since early November. That is a steep drop from the peak of nearly 250,000 a day in early January.
The number of Americans in the hospital with COVID-19 has also fallen sharply, to about 81,000, down from more than 130,000 last month.
Health officials say the decline in hospitalizations and new cases most likely reflects an easing of the surge that was fueled by holiday gatherings — and perhaps better adherence to safety precautions.
The drop in new cases comes as fewer tests for the virus are being reported. But experts say the decline in cases is real. It is more pronounced than the apparent slowdown in testing, and it is accompanied by other encouraging signs.
“We are seeing a real decline
because it’s been sustained over time and it’s correlated with decreasing hospitalizations,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University. “That tells you that there does seem to be something afoot.”
The question, he said, is whether the lower numbers can be sustained as new variants of the virus take hold in the United States. President Joe Biden has announced plans to spend billions of dollars to increase rapid testing by the summer.
COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. are still running at close to all-time highs, at an average of about 3,160 per day, down about 200 since mid-January. The death toll overall has eclipsed 460,000.
Federal officials are warning states not to relax restrictions on dining out and other social activities.
“We have yet to control this
pandemic,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the CDC, said Monday.
The sight of fans, many without masks, celebrating the Super Bowl in the streets, in sports bars and at game-watching parties has sparked worries of new outbreaks.
“This isn’t how we should be celebrating the Super Bowl,” Mayor Rick Kriseman of St. Petersburg, Fla., tweeted after a maskless party was hosted by rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson in a hangar at the city’s airport, not far from where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the title.
“It’s not safe or smart. It’s stupid. We’re going to take a very close look at this, and it may end up costing someone a lot more than 50 cent.”
Police in Charleston, S.C., issued citations to nearly 50 people for not wearing masks in public during Sunday’s game.
A death row inmate who was convicted in a 1994 capital murder case in Harris County died over the weekend, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Jorge Villanueva, 66, had tested positive for COVID and was battling other “significant health challenges” when he died 4:30 p.m. Saturday at Hospital Galveston,
said TDCJ spokesman Jeremy Desel.
Desel said he could not confirm his exact cause of death because the agency had yet to receive a preliminary autopsy report. He also could not share more details on Villanueva’s health issues.
Villanueva was being held at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston before he was taken to the hospital.
He had been convicted for the rape and strangulation in August 1994 of his 77-year-old neighbor, Jova Montiel. In a written confession to police, Villanueva said he entered the woman's home near downtown Houston, supposedly to fix her kitchen door, and decided to rape her after seeing her in a towel.
Authorities said Villanueva hit her on the head with a bottle, knocking her unconscious. He then carried her to the bed, raped her, and strangled her.
Villanueva insisted that police fabricated the confession during the 1996 trial. Investigators, however, traced DNA evidence from the woman’s body back to him, according to reports.
Villanueva also was serving a sentence for a separate conviction of injury to a child.
In total, 33,497 Texas prison inmates have tested positive for the virus with 1,663 active cases, according to TDCJ. Among inmate deaths, 101 are presumed to be caused by COVID, while 86 are confirmed COVID deaths. The cause of death for 56 other inmates has not been determined.
There are 90 active COVID cases at the Polunsky Unit.
Villanueva’s death was first reported by Keri Blakinger of the Marshall Project.