Balanced News: : Coronavirus tally: New daily cases drop below 60,000, but hospitalizations and severe cases keep rising

The seven-day average of daily new COVID cases and deaths keep falling, but there’s reason to believe those counts are artificially low given that hospitalizations, severe cases and test positivity rates keep rising. The daily average for deaths fell 5% in two weeks to a three-week low of 355. And the daily average of COVID-related hospitalizations rose 3% in two weeks to 41,620, the most since mid-August, while severe cases, as measured by those in intensive-care units (ICUs), climbed 10% in two weeks to a five-month high of 5,080.