N.J. reports 41 COVID deaths, 873 cases. Hospitalizations drop below 800 patients. – NJ.com

New Jersey on Tuesday reported another 41 confirmed COVID-19 deaths and 873 confirmed positive tests, while statewide coronavirus hospitalizations dropped below 800 patients just seven weeks after hitting a recent high of more than 6,000.

The state’s seven-day average for confirmed cases is 1,056, down 29% from a week ago and 78% from a month ago as the state continues to see numbers similar to early November.

There were 777 patients with confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases across New Jersey’s 71 hospitals as of Monday night — the fewest number of patients since Nov. 18. Hospital levels have plummeted in recent months after peaking at 6,089 on Jan. 10 during the recent omicron wave.

There were 77 people discharged in that same 24-hour period Monday, according to state data.

The update comes four days after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated COVID-19 guidelines. The new system uses “community levels” that take into account not just the total number of cases in an area but also hospital admissions and the number of beds available. The three levels are low, medium, and high.

All of New Jersey’s 21 counties are currently listed as having “medium” or “low” rates of transmission, according to the CDC’s new guidelines. Eight counties — Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, Salem, and Union — are at the medium level. The rest are at low.

Healthy people in the low and medium categories are no longer recommended to wear masks. More than 70% of Americans fall into one of those categories.

Despite the change, Gov. Phil Murphy’s office said it is sticking with plans to lift New Jersey’s statewide mask mandate in schools and child care centers on Monday, the same day children and drivers on school buses can also stop wearing masks under updated guidance. Some districts, though, have already started dropping masks on buses.

New Jersey reported 1,507 confirmed COVID-19 deaths in February, with deaths tending to follow weeks or a month after a spike in cases. By comparison, the state reported 1,598 confirmed deaths in February 2021, when the demand for vaccinations still far outweighed availability.

The statewide transmission rate rose to 0.79 on Tuesday, up from 0.75 the day before, but is still well below the key benchmark of 1. The state saw a recent high transmission rate of 1.92 on Jan. 1.

Any rate below 1 indicates the outbreak is on the decline with each new case leading to fewer than one additional case. When the rate is 1, that means the outbreak has leveled off at its current numbers.

The statewide daily positivity rate as of Thursday was 2.46%.

The state on Tuesday also reported 268 probable cases from rapid antigen testing at medical sites.

A new strain of COVID-19 — known as BA.2 — has started to spread in small numbers in New Jersey. Officials said it’s too soon to know how the variant will affect both the state and nation.

For the week ending Feb. 12, the omicron variant accounted for 93% of positive tests sampled, followed by BA.2.

TOTAL NUMBERS

New Jersey has now reported 32,951 deaths — 29,983 confirmed deaths and 2,968 probable deaths — in the nearly 24 months since the pandemic began here. The probable deaths, which are revised weekly, increased Monday by eight fatalities.

The state of 9.2 million people has the fourth-most coronavirus deaths per capita in the U.S. — behind Mississippi, Arizona and Alabama — as of the latest data reported Tuesday.

New Jersey has reported more than 1,873,522 million total confirmed cases out of more than 17.3 million PCR tests conducted since the state’s first case was announced on March 4, 2020. The state has also reported 295,109 positive antigen or rapid tests, which are considered probable cases.

VACCINATION NUMBERS

More than 6.75 million of the 8.46 million eligible people who live, work, or study in New Jersey have received the initial course of vaccinations and more than 7.7 million have received a first dose since vaccines began here on Dec. 15, 2020.

More than 3.09 million people in the state eligible for boosters have received one.

Murphy has stressed the state needs to get more residents vaccinated and boosted.

Officials continue to emphasize that while vaccinated and boosted residents can still catch the virus, they are less likely to spread it and far less likely to become hospitalized or die — especially those who have gotten booster shots. That also helps alleviate pressure on hospitals, they say.

The state does not issue daily breakdowns of the vaccine status of those who test positive, are hospitalized, or died because of the virus. Instead, officials release figures for periods of time.

For the four-week span from Jan. 16 to Feb. 12, New Jersey reported 109,997 total COVID-19 cases, leading to 2,976 hospitalizations, and 462 deaths.

Among the 2.33 million residents unvaccinated or who haven’t completed the initial course of vaccination, there were 60,370 cases in that span. Those cases led to 1,571 hospitalizations and 223 deaths.

Among 3.53 million residents having received only an initial vaccine course (one dose for the Johnson & Johnson or two doses of Pfizer or Moderna), there were 31,490 breakthrough cases that led to 879 hospitalizations and 144 deaths.

Among the 2.88 million people who received booster shots on top of their initial vaccine course, there were 18,137 breakthrough cases that led to 508 hospitalizations and 95 deaths.

SCHOOL AND NURSING HOME NUMBERS

For the week ending Feb. 20, with around 58% of schools reporting data, another 1,894 COVID-19 cases were reported among staff (389) and students (1,505) across New Jersey’s schools.

But Murphy said the state is seeing “the rates of in-school transmission now down to where they were pre-Omicron.”

Since the start of the academic year, there have been 100,375 students and 27,800 school staff members who have contracted COVID-19 in New Jersey, though the state has never had more than two-thirds of the school districts reporting data in any week.

The state provides total student and staff cases separately from those deemed to be in-school transmission, which is narrowly defined as three or more cases linked through contact tracing.

New Jersey has reported 507 total in-school outbreaks including 3,430 students and staff.

At least 9,278 of the state’s COVID-19 deaths have been among residents and staff members at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, according to state data. There were active outbreaks at 404 facilities, resulting in 10,537 current cases among residents and 11,930 cases among staff as of the latest data.

GLOBAL NUMBERS

As of Tuesday, there have been more than 437.2 million COVID-19 cases reported across the globe, according to Johns Hopkins University, with more than 5.95 million people having died due to the virus. The U.S. has reported the most cases (more than 79 million) and deaths (more than 950,500) of any nation.

There have been more than 10.54 billion vaccine doses administered globally.

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Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.