Natural immunity provides better protection against COVID than vaccines – even against hospitalization, new study finds



People with natural immunity to COVID-19 have better protection against the respiratory disease than those who received mRNA vaccines, according to a new study.

A group of researchers from Estonia took a pool of 329,496 adults between Feb. 26, 2020, and June 25, 2021.

The analysis was based on data from 246,113 individuals who qualified as one of four categories. The scientists categorized the individuals as those with no immunity against COVID, those with natural immunity from previously being infected, those who had vaccine-induced immunity, and those who had both natural immunity and who were vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2.

"Natural immunity conferred substantial protection against COVID-19 hospitalization," the authors of the study wrote. "Our study showed that natural immunity offers stronger and longer-lasting protection against infection, symptoms, and hospitalization compared to vaccine-induced immunity."

The Epoch Times reported, "People who received a vaccine were nearly five times as likely as the naturally immune to test positive for COVID-19 during the Delta era and 1.1 times as likely to test positive for COVID-19 during the Omicron era, researchers in Estonia found."

Individuals who were vaccinated against COVID were seven times as likely to be hospitalized during the Delta variant era, and two times when the Omicron variant was spreading, according to the outlet.

The study declared that hospitalization due to COVID was "extremely rare" for those with hybrid immunity. The researchers discovered that hybrid immunity had "substantially lower rates of reinfection" than those with natural immunity. However, the protection was diminished during the Omicron period.

The Estonian researchers noted, "Studies on the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines suggest that protection against SARS-CoV-2 decreases over time, waning considerably after six months."

The authors concluded, "Our findings suggest that the risk of infection (and of developing severe disease) is affected not only by age and comorbidities but also by personal history of immunity-conferring events and by the viral variant responsible for the epidemic. Therefore, personalized risk-based vaccination strategies could be both effective and cost-effective."

The study was published on Nov. 21 in Scientific Reports – a peer-reviewed journal that is part of the Nature Portfolio and covers natural sciences, psychology, medicine, and engineering.

In February, a study was published that declared that natural immunity provides "at least as high, if not higher" levels of protection against COVID-19 as two doses of an mRNA vaccine. The research analyzing 65 studies from 19 different countries was published in The Lancet – one of the oldest and most respected medical journals in the world.

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New state data shows nearly half of all 'COVID-19 hospitalizations' in Massachusetts are admitted for reasons other than the virus



Nearly half of all patients labeled as "COVID-19 hospitalizations" in Massachusetts were actually admitted for reasons other than coronavirus, but happened to test positive for the virus upon admission.

The revelation surfaced this week as, for the first time in the COVID-19 pandemic, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health began making a distinction between COVID-19 patients hospitalized with "primary" and "incidental" cases.

The new reporting guidelines revealed that 51% of the state's 3,187 "COVID-19 hospitalizations" reported on Jan. 18 were patients who were ill from coronavirus, while 49% were admitted for other issues but tested positive for COVID-19 at the time of admission.

From The Boston Globe: Nearly half of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Massachusetts are \u2018incidental\u2019 cases, new state data show. https://trib.al/WymimyQ\u00a0pic.twitter.com/H7IsrQBYHV
— Boston.com (@Boston.com) 1642733538

Dr. Shira Doron – an epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston – revealed that the number of patients being treated for severe COVID-19 was considerably lower than 50% of all COVID-19 hospitalizations at her hospital.

"One day was as low as 36%," Doron told NBC10 Boston. "The state actually called and said, 'Are you sure that it's only 36%?' And so we took a look and indeed, none of those patients were receiving any supplemental oxygen."

"We looked at what the other hospitals were reporting that day and we found that we weren't an outlier in that," Doron added. "And so I think that, you know, from Massachusetts, where again, we do mandatory testing of everybody on admission, we may find relatively lower than expected, I think, proportions of patients receiving that drug, which is the standard of care."

"To identify patients admitted for COVID-19, the Baker administration is using the drug dexamethasone as a proxy," the Boston Globe reported. "The powerful steroid, used to quell the inflammatory storm in severely ill COVID patients, is also commonly used to treat other conditions, such as septic shock or swelling in the brain."

Patients who test positive for COVID-19 but do not receive dexamethasone will be counted as "incidental."

Dr. Maren Batalden of the Cambridge Health Alliance told WBZ-TV that individuals who are prescribed dexamethasone are "a good measure of those patients who are admitted to the hospital with COVID who have serious respiratory infection or serious respiratory complication."

Earlier this month, similar findings to the reporting in Massachusetts emerged out of New York state.

The New York data showed that 57% of all reported "COVID-19 hospitalizations" are patients admitted "for COVID-19/COVID-19 complications." Meanwhile, the remaining 43% were admitted to the hospital for other reasons, but tested positive for COVID-19 after being admitted.

Last month, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of playing pandemic politics.

Cruz retweeted an MSNBC interview, where Fauci said, "If a child goes into the hospital, they automatically get tested for COVID and they get counted as a COVID-hospitalized individual, when, in fact, they may go in for a broken leg or appendicitis or something like that. So it's over counting the number of children who are, quote, hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID."

Cruz responded to Fauci's statement by writing, "Now Fauci says this? Is this because pandemic politics have changed for the Biden admin?"

Now Fauci says this?\n\nIs this because pandemic politics have changed for the Biden admin?https://twitter.com/TPostMillennial/status/1476710278096166917\u00a0\u2026
— Ted Cruz (@Ted Cruz) 1640915847

The CDC Has Destroyed Public Trust By Pushing Obvious Falsehoods

Tens of millions of Americans who have relied on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advice on dealing with Covid-19 are now adrift. Maggie Koerth, a senior science writer for FiveThirtyEight, charges that the agency “mired in political influence” has “failed to address many of the most relevant questions for day-to-day decision-making.” This lack of leadership […]

Horowitz: Chasing our own tails has become the new pandemic



As for those of you who are left, I will make their hearts so fearful in the lands of their enemies that the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to flight. They will run as though fleeing from the sword, and they will fall, even though no one is pursuing them. ~ Leviticus 26:36

The hospitals throughout America are stressed and stretched thin. No, unlike during other times of the pandemic, there is not a flood of people coming in with blood clotting and respiratory distress. According to doctors throughout the country, they are stressed from endless testing of a mild virus, which creates logistically consuming quarantines and strains due to all of the staff who must quarantine, not to mention all those fired for not getting the shot that doesn’t work. Thus, the entirety of the strain on the hospitals now is coming from the response to the virus, not the virus itself. When will we finally flatten the curve of fear?

Within several weeks, it became apparent from South Africa and some European countries that barely anyone got clinically ill from Omicron. Yet, of course, in America, everything must always be different, or so we are told. Mask mandates are being brought back, the panic levels are through the roof, and the establishment is doubling and tripling down on the vaccines that quite literally don’t stop the virus. But now, two years into this virus, some media sources are finally reporting the truth about the COVID hospitalization numbers.

“I have not intubated a single COVID patient during this Omicron surge,” said Dr. Jeanne Noble, an associate professor of emergency medicine at UCSF, in an email to SFGate. “We have a total of 5 patients with COVID on ventilators across our 4 hospitals. An average of 1.25 intubated COVID patients per hospital is a good news story."

So what is the problem in the hospitals? Fearful patients who aren’t sick, quarantining doctors for a cold, and likely all of the staff members fired for not getting the shots that clearly failed to stop this spread. We are chasing our tails! SFGate reports that Dr. Noble determined 70% of all patients in the hospital for COVID were really there for other reasons but got ensnared in the universal testing regime. "The real COVID crisis that our hospitals are facing is a severe staffing shortage that is compromising the quality of our care," Noble said. Even the vast majority of those who do come in for COVID “need no medical care and are quickly discharged home with reassurance."

Noble credits the high vaccination rates for the lack of critical illness, but South Africa will forever serve as a control group against this theory, given that the country did not see a surge in seriously ill patients despite a low vaccination rate. Clearly, the variant is milder.

Further south in Los Angeles, two-thirds of the COVID patients were detected through mass testing but were presenting to the hospital for other reasons.

As other countries experience mild illness even among seniors, so many of the public health officials are attempting to suggest that somehow in America even children are getting seriously ill from Omicron, which makes no sense. It turns out that they are in the hospitals for routine seasonal viruses but test positive for COVID, revealing an irony known to any hospital worker — that we have long lived with winter pathogens for years that have hospitalized children in greater numbers than COVID. Yet to this day, many children are forced to wear masks for hours a day.

Fox5 reports that in San Diego, “Pediatric hospitalizations are on the rise, but not from COVID.”

“The kids are doing OK with the Omicron variant,” said Dr. John Bradley, director of infectious diseases at Rady Children’s Hospital.

“COVID isn’t the problem,” Dr. Bradley said. “It’s all the other viruses we’re seeing every year like RSV, and we’re beginning to see influenza, but there’s no kids admitted in the hospital COVID-pneumonia, period.”

Over on the East Coast in New Jersey, just 49% of the COVID hospital numbers can be considered as there “primarily because of their COVID diagnosis.” What about the children? Just 27 of the 82 children with COVID in the hospital are there for COVID as the primary diagnosis, with no word as to how many are in respiratory distress.

This insanity is beautifully depicted by Phil Kerpen’s tally of overall hospital numbers. While the number of COVID “patients” has grown by 74,000 since a month ago, the number of total admissions is down by nearly 8,000. In other words, there is absolutely no surge on the hospitals.

Nope. https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1480692722189148160\u00a0\u2026pic.twitter.com/Qyugd0n2b0
— Phil Kerpen (@Phil Kerpen) 1641860164

It would be like counting cold cases in the hospital every winter.

Just how much has Omicron attenuated vs. Delta? A new preprint study of 52,000 COVID patients treated in the Kaiser Permanente Southern California health care system in December found that Omicron had a 52% lower hospitalization rate, a 74% reduction in the odds of being treated in the ICU, and a 70% shorter average hospital stay. “Zero cases with Omicron variant infection received mechanical ventilation, as compared to 11 cases with Delta variant infections throughout the period of follow-up,” observed the research team, which included staff of the CDC.

Any sane country would react to Omicron by living life normally and just treating outpatient the people who need treatment. Instead, officials are doubling down on firing staff, panicking over a cold, and denying treatment for the few who still need it. Now, the Biden administration has ordered insurance companies to cover even more testing while denying coverage of ivermectin!

What the circuitous cycle of testing, fear, mandates, and hospital staff shortages demonstrates is that to the extent there is an emergency, it’s the urgency to end the emergency declarations.

UC San Francisco director of ER COVID response: The real crisis facing California hospitals isn't Omicron cases, it's strict quarantine rules



A doctor with the University of California San Francisco hospital system is sounding the alarm on the real crisis facing hospitals: staffing shortages made worse by the state's strict quarantine rules.

Dr. Jeanne Noble, an associate professor of emergency medicine at UCSF, explained to SFGATE that public officials panicking over the surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations are neglecting to account for incidental positives — people who test positive for COVID at the hospital after being admitted for unrelated reasons. Failing to recognize this important distinction has led reported COVID hospitalization rates to "greatly exaggerate COVID burden," Noble, the director of COVID response for UCSF's emergency department, said on Twitter this week.

"The real COVID crisis that our hospitals are facing is a severe staffing shortage that is compromising the quality of our care," Noble told SFGATE.

As currently reported, COVID hospitalization rates greatly exaggerate COVID burden. Incidental positives account for large majority of hospitalized cases in both LA and Bay Area.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_6aQSCB0FE\u00a0\u2026
— Dr. Jeanne Noble (@Dr. Jeanne Noble) 1641796654

Her diagnosis comes as California is considering canceling elective surgeries because hospitals are inadequately staffed to care for patients, SFGATE reports. To deal with the problem, the California Department of Public Health has controversially loosened isolation and quarantine requirements for health care workers, which will allow COVID-positive and exposed staff to return to work more quickly. Staff who are asymptomatic will not have to quarantine but must wear N95 masks and as much as possible work with patients who are already COVID-positive.

These measures are being adopted in anticipation of a flood of COVID cases that public officials warn could overwhelm hospitals. But Noble thinks those concerns don't reflect the reality of the Omicron variant.

She made her case after examining the charts of every COVID-positive patient at UCSF hospitals on Jan. 4 , discovering that 70% of them were in the hospital for other reasons. Noble said she looked at four UCSF campuses (UCSF Parnassus, Mission Bay, Mount Zion, and Children’s Hospital of Oakland) and identified 44 hospitalized patients, including adults and children, who had COVID. Of those patients, just 13 had been admitted to the hospital because of COVID.

The other 31 patients tested positive after being admitted for unrelated reasons, including a hip fracture and a bowel obstruction. Noble said they are all "completely asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic," highlighting how the Omicron variant causes less severe disease than previous variants.

SFGATE added that while case counts are breaking records in California, fewer people are hospitalized with COVID today compared to this time last year. And in highly vaccinated areas such as Los Angeles, where 71% of eligible people are vaccinated, two-thirds of hospital cases were identified on screening for the virus, according to the L.A. Times, meaning they weren't sent to the hospital because of COVID, only found to have it after the fact.

"The crisis from the Omicron peak is not generated by serious COVID illness in regions with highly vaxxed populations," Noble said. "The crisis we are suffering in the Bay Area is largely driven by disruptive COVID policies that encourage asymptomatic testing and subsequent quarantines. ... The vast majority of COVID-plus patients I take care of need no medical care and are quickly discharged home with reassurance."

Such disruptive isolation policies have contributed to hospital staffing shortages, closed businesses, shut down public transportation, contributed to long lines at testing sites, and prevented some children from attending school in person, SFGATE reported.

Meanwhile, Noble said her patients with COVID are not suffering from severe disease during the omicron surge.

“[Emergency departments] are flooded with the worried well that are simply seeking testing and reassurance,” she said. “I have not intubated a single COVID patient during this Omicron surge. We have a total of 5 patients with COVID on ventilators across our 4 hospitals. An average of 1.25 intubated COVID patients per hospital is a good news story."

During the pandemic, COVID hospitalizations have been the metric by which public health officials have implemented various restrictions on individuals and businesses. The Trump administration's infamous "15 days to slow the spread" social distancing guidelines were enacted to protect hospitals from reaching over-capacity with COVID patients.

But some experts question the need for strict coronavirus policies if most people aren't being sent to the hospital because of COVID, especially with so many Americans being vaccinated and protected from severe disease and death. They also point out that as hospitals nationwide report incidental coronavirus cases, total COVID hospitalizations become a less relevant measure for policymakers.

As public officials grapple with this knowledge, the U.S. is firmly in the grip of a coronavirus surge. According to NBC News, a record-breaking 1.34 million new COVID cases were reported Monday. The seven-day average for cases in the U.S. also reached a record high of 740,594 cases per day, with 24 states reporting their highest seven-day average of all time. Hospitalizations with or for COVID are soaring as well, reaching 135,574 as of Monday, an 83.1% increase in the last two weeks. The fact that some people could have asymptomatic or mild Omicron cases without getting tested means these numbers are likely an underestimate of the true number of COVID cases in the country.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Friday that "the entire country is now experiencing high levels of community transmission."

"While early data suggest omicron infections might be less severe than those of other variants, the increases in cases and hospitalizations are expected to stress the healthcare system in the coming weeks," the CDC said in its weekly COVID review.

But who is going to the hospital for COVID? How many people are in the hospital for other illnesses and test positive incidentally? Those questions matter, and the government doesn't have answers.

CNN anchor calls out CDC for 'misleading' COVID hospitalization data, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta agrees



CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the network's top medical correspondent, agreed Monday the method being used by the government to report COVID-19 hospitalizations is explicitly "misleading."

What is the background?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which manages COVID data reporting, does not distinguish between people hospitalized for COVID (meaning complications from the virus caused them to be hospitalized) or people hospitalized with COVID (meaning people who test positive for COVID after being admitted for reasons unrelated to the virus).

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky was confronted Sunday on whether she could break down "for COVID" numbers versus "with COVID" numbers regarding reported COVID deaths in the United States. Unfortunately, she could not, but promised such data would be forthcoming.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) released data last week showing that 43% of COVID hospitalizations in the Empire State at the time were people hospitalized "with COVID." In New York City specifically, that number jumped to 51%, meaning more people were hospitalized for reasons not related to COVID but then tested positive for COVID after being admitted.

What did Tapper say?

Discussing the data from New York, Tapper pointed out the obvious: COVID hospitalizations are likely inflated, and are therefore "misleading," if the CDC includes those hospitalized "for COVID" and "with COVID" in the same data set.

"So, the hospitals are still stretched thin because of this, so I’m not trying to take away from that, but if 40% in some hospitals, 40% of the people with COVID don’t necessarily have problematic COVID — they’re there because they got into a car accident, they’re there because, you know, they bumped their head — and they’re being included as in the hospital with COVID, that number seems kind of misleading," Tapper observed.

Surprisingly, Gupta agreed and called for increased transparency from the government.

"Yeah, I agree, Jake. It surprises me that they have not been able to parse out that data more carefully," Gupta said. "There needs to be transparency about that, in terms of 'for or with COVID.'"

Gupta added that all states should follow New York's lead, especially considering public health officials there have learned how to properly delineate data.

"Yeah, we’re two years into this and we need the clearest picture possible," Tapper agreed. "If somebody’s in the hospital with a broken leg and they also have asymptomatic COVID, that should not count as being hospitalized with COVID, clearly."

CNN's Jake Tapper rips into "misleading" COVID hospitalization numbers.\n"We're 2 years into this ... if somebody's in the hospital with a broken leg and they also have asymptomatic COVID, that should not be counted as hospitalized with covid, clearly."pic.twitter.com/rZhcANyYaW
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@Nicholas Fondacaro) 1641849327

New data reveal significant number of New York's COVID hospitalizations are people admitted 'for non-COVID-19 conditions'



More than 40% of all COVID-19 hospitalizations in New York State are patients who were admitted to the hospital for reasons other than COVID-19 or complications from the virus, new data reveal.

What are the details?

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) released new data Friday showing that a significant percentage of COVID-19 hospitalizations in the Empire State come from people who were actually admitted "for non-COVID-19 conditions."

A chart released by Hochul's office showed that only 57% of all reported COVID hospitalizations in New York are people admitted "for COVID-19/COVID-19 complications." This means that a whopping 43% of all reported COVID hospitalizations are of people who were not admitted to the hospital for COVID-19 or complications from the virus.

In New York City, the percentage of reported COVID hospitalizations that were actually of people admitted due to COVID drops to 49%. This means that more people in New York City have tested positive for COVID only after being admitted to the hospital.

New York has its first official breakdown of what share of people are hospitalized for COVID vs. how many are hospitalized with incidental COVID. In NYC it's 49% for COVID, everyone else just happened to test positive.pic.twitter.com/fNUmMK2DM9
— Alyssa Katz (@Alyssa Katz) 1641587777

Hochul released the data after ordering hospitals in New York to begin differentiating between patients admitted due to COVID-19 and those who test positive for the virus after being admitted for reasons not related to COVID, the New York Post reported.

"Think of all the other reasons people end up in a hospital," Hochul said Friday. "You know, it’s an overdose, it’s a car accident, it’s a heart attack. So, I wanted to drill down into those numbers."

However, as the Gothamist cautioned, "The numbers do not mean that a patient contracted the virus in the hospital; simply that a patient went for treatment for another reason and was found to have COVID-19."

Anything else?

WNBC-TV reported that despite New York's COVID hospitalization rate reaching a 20-month high, that number doesn't "tell the whole story."

The news outlet noted that — in addition to the high percentage of COVID hospitalizations being of people who were admitted for reasons other than COVID — 37% of "current state COVID hospitalizations are asymptomatic" patients.

Video: NY health commissioner admits using overblown claims about child COVID hospitalizations to scare parents into vaccinating their kids



New York's acting health commissioner, Dr. Mary Bassett, openly admitted this week to misleading people about an "upward trend" in child COVID-19 hospitalizations in order to "motivate" parents to get their children vaccinated.

What are the details?

Last Friday, the state health department issued a health alert notifying pediatricians of a concerning trend — hospitalizations among children with COVID-19 were up across the state and had quadrupled in the New York City area. No official numbers were given.

The news quickly garnered attention in the state, worrying parents about their children's safety amid the surge of the new Omicron variant. Only it turns out the number of children hospitalized with the virus at the time was relatively low and the numbers were deceptively framed in order to encourage vaccinations.

In a press conference Monday alongside Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, Bassett — who came down with the virus last week despite being fully vaccinated against it — effectively acknowledged that the state health department's misleadingly framed the numbers to scare parents.

“The numbers that we gave on pediatric admissions weren’t intended to make it seem that children were having an epidemic of infection, these were small numbers," Bassett admitted regarding the alert. "That was based on 50 hospitalizations, and I've now given you some larger numbers, but they're still small numbers."

“It really was to motivate pediatricians and families to seek the protection of vaccination," she then stated.

Sorry to bust up the manipulation ploy.pic.twitter.com/y9msS5K3sq
— Bethany S. Mandel (@Bethany S. Mandel) 1640751324

"Many people continue to think that children do not become infected with COVID. This is not true," Bassett continued. "Children become infected with COVID and some will become hospitalized. The vaccination coverage remains too low."

"We need to get child vaccinations up, particularly in the 5-to-11-year-old age group," she argued.

What else?

Using blatant scare tactics to encourage people towards a specific action is bad enough, but it's made worse by the possibility that the supposedly concerning numbers were artificially inflated.

In a report about the uptick published Tuesday, NBC News noted that the larger numbers of hospitalizations likely include asymptomatic children brought to the hospital for reasons other than infection with the virus.

Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told NBC his hospital had seen many kids test positive for the virus recently who hadn't shown symptoms or come in with a sickness.

"We test anybody who’s admitted to the hospital for whatever reason to see whether or not they have COVID, and we’re definitely seeing an increase in cases. However, we’re really not seeing an increase in children who are hospitalized for COVID or in the intensive care unit for COVID," Offit said.

Offit's explanation is backed up by Department of Health and Human Services policy. NBC News noted that hospital patients are counted as COVID-19 hospitalizations even if they were not originally admitted to the hospital for that reason so long as they are suspected of having the disease or display a laboratory-confirmed positive for the disease.

COVID-19 hospitalizations rising in northern states, dropping fast in the South



There has been a significant shift in areas of the United States regarding COVID-19 hospitalizations in the past two weeks. COVID-19 hospitalizations have markedly declined in the South while at the same time have noticeably increased in northern states.

In the continental U.S., the states that have seen the largest drop in COVID-19 hospitalizations are southern states. In the last two weeks, hospitalizations have plummeted by 41% in Louisiana, 39% in South Carolina, 39% in Florida, 36% in Alabama, 35% in Georgia, and 32% in Tennessee, and there was a 30% reduction in both Mississippi and Kentucky, according to Becker's Hospital Review.

COVID-19 hospitalizations have unfortunately surged in northern states. New Hampshire has suffered a 42% upswing of coronavirus hospitalizations in the past 14 days; Michigan is experiencing a 22% increase; Colorado is up 14%; Vermont has a rise of 13%; and Minnesota COVID-19 hospitalizations have climbed by 10%.

Cases of COVID-19 have also spiked in the north. Vermont has seen a 26% increase of COVID-19 cases in the past two weeks, followed by New Hampshire at 16% and Colorado with a rise of 14%, according to the New York Times.

Vermont is the most vaccinated state in the country, with over 70% of the population fully vaccinated – including 99.99% of Vermonters over the age of 65 – and more than 78% partially vaccinated.

Meanwhile, cases have tumbled in the South. Cases are down 50% in Georgia, 48% in South Carolina, 43% in Tennessee, and 43% in Florida, and there was a 40% drop in Texas and Louisiana.

Based on regions, the South has 17 cases per 100,000 as of Oct. 21, the Northeast has 24, the West 25, and the Midwest has 30 cases per 100,000, according to data from the New York Times.

Overall, the 7-day average of cases in the United States is at 75,498, as of Oct. 21 – which is a steep decrease from the recent high of 175,822 on Sept. 13.

Hospitalizations for COVID-19 are also trending downward in the United States, with a 7-day average of 56,759 on Oct. 21 – which is down from a recent high of 103,009 on Sept. 4.

As of Oct. 21, the 7-day average of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. was at 1,509.

The Washington Post said of the shift, "The data mirrors trends of last fall and winter when new-case numbers diminished in Southern states that were hit hard by the virus before it devastated colder-weather states."

New Study: Nearly Half Of 2021 COVID Hospitalizations Weren’t For Severe Cases

A newly released study has found that nearly half of those hospitalized for COVID-19 in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or were mild or asymptomatic for the respiratory virus.