Signs of the pandemic winding down – Evening statistics
Republicans in Congress have asked President Biden to end the designation of COVID-19 as a public health emergency (PHE). For that matter even Democratic-governed states are lifting restrictions in rapid succession. Connecticut ended its statewide mask mandate on Feb. 28th, after which date it will be up to local leaders to make decisions on mask requirements. New Jersey will lift its mask mandate in schools (for students and employees) starting March 7th, although districts can still require masking to control spikes in infections. Delaware’s universal indoor mask mandate will expire on March 31st, as well as its indoor mask mandate for public and private K-12 schools and child care facilities. Oregon will lift its indoor mask requirements for schools and public places on March 31st. California will end indoor masking requirements for vaccinated people on February 15th, although unvaccinated people will still be required to wear masks indoors throughout the state, and individual businesses can still require masks if they wish. In addition, counties and municipalities in California are allowed to have stricter rules than the state does, a source of considerable confusion for those who live in one county and work in another.
It still seems a bit premature to declare the pandemic at an end, since the death toll until recently was over 2000 per day. But numbers are declining rapidly. Today’s count of new COVID cases, for instance, was under 65,000 (less than the amount for the single state of New York a month ago) and the death toll was less than 700. The CDC is in the process of rewriting everything from masking guidance to testing requirements as part of a plan to be rolled out in the next month or two.
Restrictions are dropping internationally as well. Visitors to France, provided that they are vaccinated, are no longer required to take a test to enter the country under new rules that came into effect on February 12th. Ireland and the U.K., similarly, removed testing requirements for vaccinated foreign visitors on January 24th and February 11th respectively. Greece announced that fully vaccinated visitors from the European Union do not need to present arrival tests as of February 7th, which is expected to apply to vaccinated Americans as well.
We’re not out of the woods yet, but the outlook is a good deal more hopeful than it was two months ago.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 412,076,898; # of deaths worldwide: 5,833,903; # of cases U.S.: 79,325,576; # of deaths; U.S.: 943,411.