Adults who were prescribed Paxlovid for mild to moderate COVID-19 were 50 percent less likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19, according to the CDC's COVID-19 Weekly Tracker published Dec. 9.
Ten findings:
Variants
1. Based on projections for the week ending Dec. 10, the CDC estimates that BQ.1.1 accounts for 36.8 percent of cases and BQ.1 accounts for 31.1 percent of cases nationally. All other lineages are decreasing in proportion this week compared to last week.
Cases
2. As of Dec. 9, the current seven-day average is 65,569, which is up from the 43,825 seven-day average from the previous week.
Hospitalizations
3. The current seven-day daily average for new hospital admissions was 4,844, which is a 13.8 percent increase from the previous week.
Community levels
4. As of Dec. 8, there are 298 counties, districts or territories with a high COVID-19 community level, 1,131 counties with a medium community level and 1,787 counties with a low community level. The number of high-level counties has increased by 3.6 percent and the number of medium-level counties has increased by 10.3 percent. The number of low-level counties has decreased by 13.8 percent.
5. Of the 52 jurisdictions, including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, 48 had high or medium level counties this week. The District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine and New Hampshire are the only jurisdictions to have all counties at low community levels.
Deaths
6. The current seven-day average of new deaths increased by 61.7 percent compared to the previous week.
7. As of Dec. 7, a total of 1,080,472 COVID-19 deaths have been reported in the United States.
Vaccinations
8. As of Dec. 7, 657.9 million vaccine doses have been administered in the U.S. Overall, about 68.9 percent of the population has completed a primary vaccine series. In addition, 13.5 percent of the population, ages 5 years and older, have been vaccinated.
Wastewater surveillance
9. About 64 percent of sites across the country are reporting moderate to high virus levels in wastewater. Of these sites, 38 percent are reporting some of the highest levels for those sites since Dec. 1, 2021.
10. About 27 percent of sites are seeing a decrease in virus levels and about 65 percent are reporting an increase.