COVID: We’re not out of the woods yet, and transit companies continue significant precautions

Written by David C. Lester, Editor-in-Chief

COVID is still a major threat to the United States.

Transit companies in the United States continue to fight the spread of COVID with stringent cleaning policies and passenger protocols. Although we’ve seen an unprecedented pace of successful vaccine development over the last year, and the pace of vaccinations has been pretty swift, especially in 2021, we’re still not out of the woods by any measure.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over 139,000,000 Americans (42.2%) have received at least one dose of a vaccine, while 94,772,329 (28.5%) are fully vaccinated. These numbers are from Sunday, April 25 at 6:00 a.m. Moreover, 40.81% of U.S. counties are at what the CDC considers a high level of transmission rate, while 28.6% of counties are at a moderate transmission rate.

Currently, there are 31,848,068 COVID cases in the United States, and there have been over 4,700 COVID deaths in the U.S. over the past seven days. For more information on the current status of COVID cases in this country, please visit the CDC’s website at covid.cdc.gov.

So, despite the relatively positive trends with COVID in the United States, much work remains to be done. Transit companies are at the forefront of continuing to preach the messages of social distancing, mask wearing, hospital-grade cleaning of stations and trains, and having hand sanitizer available for proper hand washing.

Last week, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) updated it’s guidelines in their “15 step plan to welcome back riders.” You can read about this plan on the BART website. Other transit agencies have similar postings regarding their COVID-fighting efforts.

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