COVID In New Jersey: More Restrictions Could Soon Eased As State Reaches 1 Million Vaccinations, Murphy Says
TRENTON, N.J. (CBS/AP) — New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy says the state could soon relax more COVID-19 restrictions. He says new cases and the number of hospitalizations continue to decline.
"Overall, the metrics we are seeing continue to point in the right direction. The number of new cases, both in terms of raw numbers and the rate of transmission, while still high, are far off the peaks we saw just several weeks ago," Murphy said.
New Jersey surpassed more than 1 million COVID-19 vaccinations on Monday, Murphy said. Murphy, a Democrat, said the 1,037,657 doses include both the first and second of two shots.
While it marks a milestone, he said, the state is short of the number of vaccines it would need to meet demand.
New Jersey has administered just over 224,000 second of two shots, or about 2.5% of the population. That lags the rate of the country overall, which stands at 2.8%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Murphy has said he wants to complete administration of 70% of the state's adult population within six months. It's unclear whether the state will reach that goal, though.
The pace of vaccinations has picked up since it began in mid-December in New Jersey. The state took nearly 40 days to reach 500,000 vaccinations, but just 16 days to go from 500,000 doses to 1 million.
The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in New Jersey fell over the past two weeks from nearly 5,084 new cases a day on Jan. 24 to about 3,620 on Sunday.
Murphy reported 25 new deaths from the virus overnight, putting the overall toll at 19,824.
(© Copyright 2021 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
