Daily US Covid cases below 40,000 for the first time in months
A healthcare worker administers a Covid-19 test at United Memorial Medical Center testing site in Houston, Texas, June 25, 2020.
The United States recorded fewer than 40,000 new cases of Covid-19 in one day for the first time in five months on Thursday, according to the Johns Hopkins University pandemic tracker.
This number peaked at nearly 300,000 new cases on January 8 in the country hardest hit by the pandemic, with more than half a million fatalities.
But now it is back down to the levels of before Thanksgiving and Christmas, when holiday travel and gatherings in defiance of safety warnings were blamed for spreading the virus further in the US.
Another encouraging sign as the United States presses on with its vaccination drive is that daily deaths and hospitalisations from Covid are also way down.
Three vaccines are currently being administered in the country and the Biden administration says the campaign to jab 100 million people in his first 100 days in office is ahead of schedule.
The number people vaccinated is now close to surpassing the number of cases detected here since the global pandemic began a year ago.
But amid the stream of good news, some states are lifting Covid restrictions such as mask wearing mandates.
Biden has called such steps premature and dangerous.
