(RxWiki News) Weekly averages for COVID-19 cases continue to fall in the United States, but the pandemic hasn't yet come to an end.
In fact, a rising number of cases of a subvariant of the highly infectious Omicron variant in Europe has some health experts concerned about a possible rise in cases in the US. However, health experts told The New York Times that they doubted that the so-called "stealth" variant would cause a large spike similar to the one Omicron originally caused.
Still, a new and highly infectious variant could reverse some of the recent progress made in dropping case numbers. It's still too early to tell what the impact of any merging COVID variant will be.
Meanwhile, the total number cases of COVID-19 recorded in the US continues to climb, although much more slowly than at past points in the pandemic. As of publication time, US health officials had recorded 79,571,321 cases of COVID-19.
The total number of US deaths from COVID-19 was coming closer to the 1 million mark at 969,114.
On a brighter note, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 81.6 percent of people in the US who were at least 5 years old had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Meanwhile, the CDC reported that data surrounding vaccination continued to show that getting the vaccine was highly effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalization and death from COVID-19. In fact, during the Omicron surge, unvaccinated adults were 12 times more likely than vaccinated adults to be hospitalized with COVID-19.
Mask and vaccination recommendations are changing rapidly throughout the country as the virus continues to wane, but health officials maintain that masking and vaccination are two of the most effective ways to stop or slow the spread of COVID-19.
If you have questions about COVID-19, vaccination or a related matter, reach out to your health care provider.
