COVID cases in US drop 47 percent in a week, according to data

Daily COVID-19 cases across the United States have dropped 47 percent in the last week — offering a glimmer of hope that the Omicron winter surge is finally starting to ease.

There were about 717,800 new cases reported in the US on Monday, statistics compiled by John Hopkins University shows.

The average infection count has been sitting at about 800,000 per day over the past week.

It is a sharp drop from the record 1.4 million new cases reported just one week earlier on Jan. 10, according to the data.

There were 1,122 new deaths recorded Monday across the country, the John Hopkins data shows. And the number of hospitalizations were at 156,676 as of Monday, according to Health and Human Services figures.