Pandemic officially over? US Covid deaths hit record new record low

America’s Covid deaths have fallen to a new record low and their lowest levels since March 2020, official data shows.

Figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed there were 1,160 deaths over the week to April 19, 2023, the latest available.

This was below the tally for every seven-day period since the week to March 18, 2020, when 169 deaths were recorded. In the week after this, deaths rose to 1,185.

Experts have previously said that the worst of the pandemic is over and that it is time to ‘move on’ from Covid. But the World Health Organization (WHO) is yet to declare the pandemic at an end.

The latest fatality figure is also barely six percent of the peak in the highest week last year when US fatalities hit nearly 2,500 a day. 

It is also just five percent of the all-time high set in January 2021, when Covid deaths surged to 23,600 per week.

Six states recorded no Covid deaths in the latest week. These were Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Mississippi and Pennsylvania.

Commenting on the figures Dr Paul Hunter, an infectious diseases expert at the University of East Anglia in the UK, told DailyMail.com: ‘Deaths from Covid are falling globally and the US is no exception.’

He said this was because ‘almost all people have already had at least one infection and the balance of evidence is that second or subsequent infections are less likely to lead to death, especially in people who have also been vaccinated’.

Dr Hunter added: ‘SARS-CoV-2 infections are never going to go away, but we have known this from at least March 2020. Our grandchildren’s grandchildren will be catching this infection.

‘But we can expect severe disease to continue to decline until Covid is little more than another cause of the common cold.’

Dr Maria Raven, chief executive of emergency medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, previously told ABC7: ‘Certainly the worst worrisome part of the pandemic is at an end.

‘Given both the relatively low number of cases that we’re seeing and the severity of the current version of the virus, it feels like it’s time to move on.’

Earlier this month the Biden administration was forced by Republican lawmakers to end the Public Health Emergency over Covid a month early.

The White House had initially sought to hold this off until May 11, saying an early end would create ‘chaos’ with insurance and for hospitals.

Officials say that ending the PHE shows that the US has entered a new and less severe phase of the pandemic. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) is yet to declare an end to the pandemic, but it expects to at some point this year.

Its director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters last month: ‘I am confident that this year we will be able to say that Covid is over as a public health emergency of international concern, he said.

‘We are certainly in a much better position now than we have been at any point in the pandemic.’

Experts are confident that the worst of the pandemic is now at an end. 

Despite the signals, however, the Biden administration announced another $5billion would be plowed into Covid vaccine research this year.

It is expected that an annual Covid booster vaccine will be offered to people, in line with the regular offer for the flu vaccine. 

Covid deaths spiked in the US during the early days of the pandemic and the first winter, where they hit an all-time high of 23,629 for the week to January 13, 2021.

But amid the rollout of Covid vaccines, rise in natural immunity and new treatments they have been steadily ticking downwards.

Experts warn that a new variant that can dodge current immunity poses the biggest risk at present.

The alarm has already been raised over the Arcturus Covid variant, which appears to be sending cases ticking upwards in India. 

But evidence suggests that although it may be more transmissible, it is not more likely to cause severe disease or death compared to other strains.