Experts say the US has turned a major corner in its coronavirus outbreak, with cases at their lowest point in 4 months

Experts say the US has turned a major corner in its coronavirus outbreak, with cases at their lowest point in 4 months

As coronavirus vaccinations ramped up in the US at the start of this year, the hopeful progress was overshadowed by fears of variants. Scientists worried that B.1.1.7, the more contagious variant discovered in the UK, would keep coronavirus cases high through the winter even as more people got shots. 

"The restrictions applied across the US right now, on average, are not tight enough to control B.1.1.7," Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, wrote on February 12. He added that the US was "in a race between B.1.1.7 and the pace of vaccinations."

But this week, Shepherdson changed his tune: "If B.1.1.7 cases don't accelerate markedly over the next month, it will become realistic to call the effective end of the US COVID crisis “” at least in terms of the case and hospitalization numbers “” by the end of April," Shepherdson wrote on Monday.

Daily US cases have dropped by roughly 74%, on average, in the last six weeks. The country recorded fewer than 53,000 cases on Monday “” its lowest daily count since October. On Tuesday, however, daily cases rose to nearly 68,000.

Daily deaths have also declined 38% over the last six weeks, while daily hospitalizations have fallen 55%. 

"The balance is more