New Jersey COVID-19 Cases Up 171% From March; 2 New Deaths Recorded

The number of COVID-19 cases in New Jersey has nearly doubled in the past months.

New Jersey's seven-day average for confirmed cases was 1,707 Sunday, up by around 24% from the past week and 171% from a month ago, NJ.com reported.

The state reported two COVID-19 fatalities and 1,508 confirmed positive tests on the same day.

There were 369 patients with confirmed or suspected coronavirus infections scattered across 69 of the state's 71 hospitals as of Saturday night, the latest data showed. Two hospitals did not report data.

Around 51 of the hospitalized were in intensive care, while 20 were on ventilators.

New Jersey has documented a total of 1,923,474 confirmed coronavirus cases out of more than 17.5 million PCR tests conducted since the state reported its first known case on March 4, 2020.

Meanwhile, the state has reported 33,336 COVID-19 deaths, split into 30,322 and 3,014 confirmed and probable fatalities, respectively.

New Jersey has the seventh-most coronavirus deaths per capita in the United States as of April 11, following Mississippi, Arizona, Oklahoma, Alabama, Tennessee and West Virginia, data showed.

The state's transmission rate was at 1.28 Sunday, which meant that each new case was leading to at least 1 additional case and that the outbreak was expanding.

Omicron's "stealth" strain, BA.2, has reportedly been spreading in New Jersey for weeks but at lower rates compared to the original variant's surge in December and January.

The BA.2 variant accounted for 81.2% of the positive tests samples for the week ending March 26, while the original omicron strain accounted for 18.8%.

All of New Jersey's 21 counties were listed as having "low" rates of transmission except for Bergen County, which has since been elevated to "medium" transmission, according to recently updated guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

More than 6.84 million of the 8.46 million eligible people who live, work, or study in New Jersey have entered the initial course of their vaccinations. On the other hand, around 7.77 million have received their first jabs since vaccinations began in the state on Dec. 15, 2020.

The United States has reported a total of 80,440,151 COVID-19 cases and 986,042 virus-related deaths, data provided by the CDC showed.