COVID-19 hospitalizations fall to lowest point since pandemic first struck

The number of people in U.S. hospitals with COVID-19 is at its lowest point since the early days of the pandemic in the spring of 2020.

Hospitalizations have steadily declined since mid-February after the highly transmissible omicron variant struck in late fall 2021. Roughly 16,700 people, on average, were in the hospital with COVID-19 over the past seven days, the lowest weekly average since March 2020, right before the number of patients seeking care exploded, according to a tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University.