New York and other states in the Northeast had the highest rates of COVID-19 test positivity in the week in the week through January 6, according to the latest data.
Some 15.8 percent of COVID-19 tests in the U.S. were positive that week, up slightly from the week before, according to the data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC’s map shows New Jersey, along with Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, also had higher test positivity than anywhere else in the country, with 15.8 percent of tests coming back positive in the first week of 2024.
They were followed by Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine and Connecticut, with test positivity rates of15.5 percent.
CDC
Meanwhile, California, the most populous state in the country, was among those with the lowest test positivity rate. California, Nevada, Hawaii and Arizona all had 8.3 percent test positivity rates.
Four percent of deaths were due to COVID-19 in the week through January 6, a 14.3 percent increase from the previous seven days, the CDC said.
There were 35,801 hospitalizations due to COVID-19 in the week through January 6, up 3.2 percent on the previous week. Hospitalizations due to the virus are considered low in about half the country, according to the CDC.
The CDC on Friday said that new hospital admissions for COVID-19 were up by more than 50 percent in December, while new hospital admissions for flu more than doubled from the end of November to the end of December. “These increases are typical for this time of year, and short-term forecasts suggest elevated numbers of hospital admissions will continue,” the agency said.
More hospitals in the U.S. are requiring people to wear masks as heath officials face a second winter season where COVID-19, flu and other respiratory syncytial viruses (RSV) have been circulating simultaneously.
New York City instituted a mask mandate for the city’s 11 public hospitals in December, and similar measures were ordered at some hospitals in other states, including California and Massachusetts.
COVID-19 is continuing to cause more hospitalizations and deaths than flu and RSV combined, the CDC said.
The JN.1 variant is now the most prominent in the world, but the CDC has said that while this variant may spread easier or be better at evading our immune systems, there is no evidence that its effects are more severe than other recent variants.
“There is no data that would indicate JN.1 infection produces different symptoms from other variants,” a spokesperson for the CDC told Newsweek earlier in January. “In general, symptoms of COVID-19 tend to be wide-ranging with all variants.”
An updated COVID vaccine formula would protect against the JN.1 variant, the spokesperson said, and “existing vaccines, tests, and treatments still work well against JN.1.”
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Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.