Lane County coronavirus update, March 21: 46 new cases after weekend
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On Monday, Lane County Public Health reported 46 confirmed or presumptive new cases of COVID-19 tallied over the weekend, raising the countywide case count to 56,955. The total death count remained at 491.
The number of county residents reported hospitalized Monday was 22, with three in intensive care and one on a ventilator. Of the 22 people hospitalized, 50%, or 11, are not fully vaccinated.
For the past seven days, there has been an average of 24 reported cases a day. But because many don't report the results of their at-home COVID-19 tests, it's hard to say how many people in the area are contagious.
LCPH encourages people who find they are sick with an at-home test to report their case online at cognitoforms.com/LaneCountyTechnologyServices/reportingapositivehomecovid19test.
As of Monday, 275,807 people in Lane County, 72.32% of the total population, had received first or second vaccine doses with 661,848 first and second doses administered in Lane County, according to the Oregon Health Authority.
— The Register-Guard
New COVID variant is spreading across the US.
A new coronavirus variant, first detected two months ago, is making its way across the U.S. and spreading more quickly in the Northeast and West, new data released this week shows.
The BA.2 variant appears to be on its way to becoming the dominant coronavirus strain, having roughly doubled each week for the past month, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
BA.2 is considered by the World Health Organization as a "sublineage" of the highly transmissible omicron variant. It's a different version of omicron than BA.1, which was responsible for the surge that hit the Northeast late last year.
It has a different genetic sequence from BA.1 and was first dubbed the "stealth variant" because it wasn't as easy to detect.
Around the world, infections are largely from the BA.2 version of omicron. In the U.S., BA.2 accounted for about a quarter (23.1%) of the cases for the week ending March 12, the CDC says. That's up from 14.2% the week ending March 5.
BA.2 made up 39% of cases in New Jersey and New York, the week ending March 12, up from 25.4% the previous week, the CDC says. (Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are also included by the CDC in that region's COVID-19 case breakdown.)
In the Northeast (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont), BA.2 accounted for 38.6% of cases, up from 24% the previous week, according to the CDC.
In the West, which includes Arizona, California and Nevada, BA.2 accounts for 27.7% of cases, up from 17.1% the previous week. In the upper West, including Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington, BA.2 made up 26.2% of cases, up from 16%, the CDC says.
BA.2 cases have risen in recent weeks in the rest of the U.S., accounting for 12% to 20% of cases in other states for the week ending March 12.
-USA TODAY
US COVID-19 map: Tracking cases and deaths
Track coronavirus outbreaks across the US and in your state with daily updated maps, total cases and deaths.
The number of people diagnosed with COVID-19 grows every day throughout the U.S. and across the world. The numbers on this page are based on the latest statistics available, and are likely far lower than the actual number of cases because of limited testing. We know that at least 76 million people have contracted COVID-19 in the U.S., and more than 900,000 have died.
See more data visualizations here.
-USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Lane County COVID-19 update, March 21: Weekend brings 46 new cases
