New Jersey health officials reported 1,417 more cases of COVID-19 and 14 confirmed deaths Friday ahead of the busy travel week leading up to Thanksgiving.
The statewide transmission rate remained at 0.88 for the second day in a row. A transmission rate of less than 1 is an indication that the outbreak is declining, because each new case results in less than one additional case.
A transmission rate of 1 means that the number of cases has leveled off, while anything above 1 indicates that the outbreak is expanding.
The update given on Friday will be the last daily report through Monday. Health Department officials announced this week that the state’s COVID-19 dashboard will not be updated on weekends and public holidays.
The seven-day average in New Jersey for confirmed positive tests is 1,400, down 1% from last week and up 7% from last month.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) now considers all but one New Jersey county to have “intermediate” community transmission. Mercer County is rated “low” risk.
There were 1,032 patients with confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases reported in the state’s 71 hospitals as of Thursday night. Of those hospitalized, 119 are in intensive care and 47 are on ventilators.
The statewide positivity rate for tests conducted Saturday, the latest day for which data was available, was 9.9%.
The CDC considers positivity rates over 10% “high.” The New Jersey statewide positivity rate is much lower than its peak of 40.83% on Jan. 1 during the peak of the Omicron variant.
The sum of the numbers
New Jersey has reported more than 2.38 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 since it announced its first known case on March 4, 2020.
Garden State has also recorded 438,120 positive antigen or rapid test tests, which are considered probable cases. There are also many cases that never get counted, including positive tests at home that are not included in the state’s numbers.
The state of 9.2 million people has reported 35,044 deaths from COVID-19 — 31,928 confirmed deaths and 3,116 probable deaths.
New Jersey has the 10th highest number of coronavirus deaths in the United States — after Mississippi, Arizona, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, New Mexico, Tennessee and Michigan — as of Thursday.
vaccination numbers
More than 7.1 million people working, living or studying in New Jersey have reached fully immunized status. It has received nearly 8 million first doses since vaccinations began in the state on December 15, 2020.
More than 4.3 million people in the state who are eligible for the booster have received one.
Long term care numbers
At least 9,813 of the state’s COVID-19 deaths have been among residents and employees of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, according to the state’s most recent data.
Of the active outbreaks at 349 facilities, 8,211 are current among residents and 5,756 are among staff, according to the most recent data.
International numbers
More than 636.8 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported worldwide, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus database.
The data shows that more than 6.6 million people have died from the virus. The United States has reported the most cumulative cases (more than 98 million) and deaths (at least 1.07 million) of any country.
More than 12.8 billion vaccine doses have been administered globally.
Thank you for relying on us to provide journalism you can trust. Please consider support NJ.com with a subscription.
Katie Kausch can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @Katie Kush.