COVID-19 updates: US cases down nearly 25%

Crisis standards of care have been adopted in much of southern Idaho, as hospitals grapple with a surge in COVID-19 patients.

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, citing severe staffing and blood supply shortages, activated crisis standards of care on Monday for the southwest, central and south central public health districts, which encompass 18 counties including the Boise, Nampa and Twin Falls metropolitan areas. Crisis standards of care provide legal and ethical guidelines for how health care providers should allocate scarce, life-saving resources, such as ventilators and intensive care unit beds, during an overwhelming public health emergency.

"The highly contagious Omicron variant has thrown us a curve ball," Idaho Department of Health and Welfare Director Dave Jeppesen said in a statement Monday. "Once again, the situation in our hospitals and health systems is dire -- we don't have enough resources to adequately treat patients."

It was the second time amid the coronavirus pandemic that the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare has activated crisis standards of care. Health care rationing was authorized in northern Idaho last September before being extended to the entire state 10 days later. The guidelines were fully deactivated by the end of December.

The latest activation came in response to a request from Saint Alphonsus Health System, which has hospitals in southwestern Idaho as well as eastern Oregon. Jeppesen convened Idaho's crisis standards of care activation advisory committee last Friday, and the committee recommended that the guidelines be activated statewide. Jeppesen decided to only make the designation for southern Idaho, but said other parts of the state will likely be added if current COVID-19 trends continue.

Jeppesen urged residents to get vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19 and to wear high-quality face masks in public places.

"Omicron is so much more contagious than previous variants, and even though a lower percentage of cases are ending up in the hospital, the record number of cases is still putting strain on our healthcare system," he said.

More than 1.1 million children tested positive for COVID-19 last week -- nearly five times the rate of the peak of last winters’ surge, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

A total of 10.6 million children have tested positive since the onset of the pandemic. A fifth of those children -- over 2 million kids -- tested positive in just the last two weeks, according to the two organizations.

Pediatric cases in the Northeast are seeing a dramatic drop but new cases in the West, South and the Midwest are still surging.

But there is positive news: COVID-19-related hospitalizations among children fell this week for the first time in one month.

More than 28.4 million eligible children remain unvaccinated.

-ABC News' Arielle Mitropoulos

The omicron surge appears to be letting up in New Jersey, where cases are now down by roughly two-thirds from two weeks ago, Gov. Phil Murphy announced.

While hospitalization numbers have been falling this week, Murphy stressed that they're still "higher than anything we had seen with the two prior surges."

"We also remain very concerned about the ICU and ventilator numbers, which are coming down much more slowly," the governor said.

Following weeks of increasing infections, COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. are rising. The nation is now reporting nearly 2,000 new COVID-19-related deaths per day -- up by 30% in the last two weeks, according to federal data.

But there's continued evidence that the nation's most recent surge may be receding in many regions. Thirty-one states as well as Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico are now reporting decreasing or plateauing new case averages, according to federal data.

The only states with an increase in new cases are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Nationwide, the U.S. is reporting an average of 716,000 new cases per day, down by about 10% in the last week.

However, case levels in the U.S. remain incredibly high. In the last seven days, the U.S. reported more than 5 million new cases. Only 1% of U.S. counties aren't reporting high transmission, according to federal data.

-ABC News' Arielle Mitropoulos