US virus numbers drop, but race against new strains heats up

Coronavirus deaths and cases per day in the U.S. dropped markedly over the past couple of weeks but are still running at alarmingly high levels, and the effort to snuff out COVID-19 is becoming an ever more urgent race between the vaccine and the mutating virus.

The government's top infectious-disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said the improvement in numbers around the country appears to be the result of “natural peaking and then plateauing” after a holiday surge, rather than an effect of the rollout of vaccines that began in mid-December.

Deaths are running at an average of just under 3,100 a day, down from more than 3,350 less than two weeks ago. New cases are averaging about 170,000 a day after peaking at almost 250,000 on Jan. 11. The number of COVID-19 patients in the hospital in the U.S. has fallen to about 110,000 from a high of 132,000 on Jan. 7.

States that have been hot spots in recent weeks such as California and Arizona have shown similar improvements during the same period. On Monday, California lifted regional stay-at-home orders in favor of county-by-county restrictions and ended a 10 p.m. curfew.

Elsewhere, Minnesota school districts have begun bringing elementary students back for in-person learning. Chicago’s school system, the nation’s third-largest district, had hoped to bring teachers back Monday to prepare for students to return next month, but the teachers union has refused.

“I don’t think the dynamics of what we’re seeing now with the plateauing is significantly influenced yet -- it will be soon -- but yet by the vaccine. I just think it’s the natural course of plateauing,” Fauci told NBC’s “Today.”

Nationwide, about 18 million people, or less than 6% of the U.S. population, have received at least one dose of vaccine, including about 3 million who have gotten the...