From the New York Times, I'm a Stead Hurned in, in for Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

Today, as COVID cases continue to drop in much of the country, I spoke with my colleague,

a poor Ramanda Veeley, about what to expect this fall, and what we know about booster shots,

and the possible new treatment for the virus. It's Thursday, October 7.

Okay, so before we get too far into the COVID questions, can you tell me the landscape?

Where are we at in terms of cases in the United States right now?

This is the one time that I can give you some good news. The cases are actually going down,

and hospitalizations, deaths, we're seeing decreases across the board, and that's really welcome

news because we had been seeing these numbers go up for weeks and weeks, and it seems like we've

finally turned the corner. I don't want to speak too soon and say that we're going to go all the way

down. We may plateau. Other countries have done that, but at the moment, it's looking pretty good.

There are some states still that are seeing some high numbers and increases, main, New Hampshire,

Minnesota, and things are pretty bad still in some places like Alaska. But for the most part,

most states, including the southern ones that had really big waves, are seeing a downturn.

When you say down, what do we mean specifically? What are those numbers?

So across the United States, we are seeing something like 100,000 cases a day, and that's about

a 25% drop from a couple of weeks ago. So that's really good. And hospitalizations are down to,

they're down about 20%. And the best part, I think, is that the deaths have gone down. We were at a

high of something like 2,200, and we're now at 1,800, which is still a lot, but it is on the decrease.

So that's really nice to see. Yeah, yeah. I feel like I'll take all the COVID good news I can get.

Exactly. So I'm so getting this in. Is this just because of vaccinations? Is it just more

Americans are getting vaccinated? Therefore cases are going down. Is this just one-to-one

...