The number of new daily COVID-19 infections has dropped 57% since September 1st, providing a glimmer of hope in America’s battle against the pandemic.

The New York Times’ David Leonhardt notes that every region in the country has seen a drop in COVID-19 cases:

Past Covid increases have generally started in one part of the country — like the South this past summer or the New York region in early 2020 — and then gone national. Today, there is no regional surge that seems to have the makings of a nationwide surge.

There are hotspots, however. In places where vaccine hesitancy is endemic – like Alaska, Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota – the virus is still thriving in pockets. In the past week, nearly 1,500 Americans died of the virus every day.

But many experts think new waves of COVID-19 are unlikely. “Maybe it gets 10 or 20% better, maybe it gets 10 or 20% worse. But I can’t see it getting 90% better or 90% worse,” Bob Wachter, chairman of the University of California, San Francisco Department of Medicine, told Axios.

Axios adds:

A critical mass of Americans have been vaccinated — some even boosted — or have some natural immunity after having the illness. And vaccines for kids are expected soon.

That should protect against the sort of wide resurgences of severe illness the U.S. experienced last winter, said Justin Lessler, who helps run the University of North Carolina’s COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub. Its models predict a steady drop in COVID cases through March.

There’s also growing evidence that the Delta variant wasn’t as deadly as many experts feared. While it is much more contagious than previous strains, the Times reports:

… a typical Covid case during the Delta wave was about as severe as a typical case during the earlier stages of the pandemic. During the wave in late 2020 and early this year, about 1.2 percent of positive cases led to death; during the Delta wave, the share was 1.1 percent.

Of course, new strains of COVID-19 can still emerge, threatening America’s precarious gains against the virus. And the U.S. is still under-vaccinated compared to its peers. Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and Spain all have higher a percentage of their populations inoculated against COVID-19.