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The COVID pandemic is not over, but New Jersey has reached another milestone in its recovery: a day without a COVID-related death.
New Jersey officials said Tuesday that there were no newly-reported COVID deaths in the state for the first time since St. Patrick's Day 2020, nearly 16 months ago.
The state reported another 145 confirmed COVID cases and fewer than 300 coronavirus patients in state hospitals for the fourth straight day.
The last day in which the Garden State didn't report at least one new confirmed COVID fatality was March 17, 2020, about two weeks after the state announced its first confirmed case.
New Jersey was an early COVID hotspot, once home to the most COVID deaths per capita in the United States with a total of 26,477.
Now, New Jersey has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country, with nearly 70 percent of adults fully inoculated.
The state's seven-day average for newly confirmed positive COVID-19 tests is now 211, down slightly from last week and down about 9 percent from a month ago.
As of Sunday night, there were 263 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in New Jersey. By comparison, during the worst of the pandemic in April of 2020, hospitalizations peaked at more than 8,300 patients.