US reports more than 102,000 new cases

Officials and public health experts are pleading with people to avoid Super Bowl parties on Sunday, to cut down on chances for the virus to spread.

“Now is not the time for a Super Bowl party,” Alabama State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris said Friday. “Now is not the time to fumble the ball, because you got careless by spending time with a bunch of people that are not in your household.”

Dr. Carlos del Rio, executive associate dean of Emory University School of Medicine at Grady Health System, said he worries these parties could send cases surging again.

“If there’s a lot of Super Bowl parties and a lot of superspreader events, we will start (to see) cases start to come up again,” del Rio said Saturday. “I sure hope that doesn’t happen because we really need cases to come down … so eventually mortality will also come down.

“I want to back down to less than 1,000 deaths per day.”

The US has not averaged fewer than 1,000 Covid-19 deaths a day across a week since early November, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

The country’s current average across a week is 3,250 deaths a day — not far from the peak average of 3,357 reached January 13, according to Johns Hopkins data.

Case and hospitalization levels, however, have been dropping recently after holiday surges.

The country has averaged more than 125,800 new Covid-19 cases a day over the last week — down 49.6% since a pandemic-peak average of 249,836 on January 8, Johns Hopkins data shows.