Confirmed cases of COVID-19 among personnel at Office of Environmental Management sites rose to about 80 this week, up about 30 from last week and about 40 higher than a month ago, according to data provided Friday by a Department of Energy spokesperson.
Like the rest of the Department of Energy, the Office of Environmental Management’s count has since March included only confirmed COVID-19 cases among personnel actually reporting to work at DOE-owned sites. The agency no longer includes teleworking personnel in the count.
In March, a DOE Environmental Management official put the cleanup office’s COVID-19 fatalities at roughly 100 since the disease reached U.S. shores from China in early 2020.
As of the Wednesday before the Memorial Day holiday weekend, the latest day for which data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were available, the national seven-day moving average for new daily COVID-19 cases was about 100,000: much lower than the 400,000 to 700,000 during January’s omicron-variant surge but higher than either the post-omicron trough of about 30,000 in late March or the year-ago level of about 25,000.
These figures present an average of case counts from the most recent seven days to show the general trend in new infections while ignoring extreme day-to-day swings in reported cases.
On a daily basis, using the seven-day moving average, there were 305 fatal COVID-19 cases reported nationwide as of Monday, according to the CDC. That is down from about 480 a year ago.
In roughly the last two-and-a-half years, more than 1 million people had died from COVID-19 in the U.S. as of Wednesday, according to the data gathered by the CDC. In 2020 and 2021, COVID-19 was the third-leading cause of death in the country, behind cancer by about 200,000 deaths and ahead of unintentional injuries by slightly more than 200,000 deaths.
According to data gathered by Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. had, at 300, the second-highest number of fatal COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people of all countries reporting data. Brazil was first with more than 310 per 100,000 and Greece was third with about 285 per 100,000.
There have been about 83.6 million confirmed COVID-19 cases reported in the U.S. since the disease was first detected domestically in early 2020 and about 1.1% of those cases were fatal, according to data gathered by the CDC.
