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New coronavirus infections in New York have dropped to their lowest level in almost a month on Monday, reinforcing hopes that several US states hit hard in the latest wave of the pandemic are experiencing some respite.

The state reported 22,312 new Covid-19 cases over the previous day, governor Kathy Hochul announced on Tuesday afternoon. That is the lowest daily level since December 20 and marks a 75 per cent drop from the state’s record high of 90,132 infections reported on January 7, according to a Financial Times analysis of New York health department data.

Throughout the pandemic, at all levels of government, figures released on Mondays or after long weekends tend to be lower than other days of the week because of weekend delays in reporting. The US observed the Martin Luther King Jr public holiday on Monday.

However, New York’s trend in daily cases has also been encouraging. The state’s seven-day average of new infections was about 45,200 taking into account Hochul’s latest update. That is a drop of about 40 per cent from the state’s record average of almost 74,600 reached on January 9, according to FT analysis of health department data.

New York City’s seven-day average of new cases was 16,330 as of January 15, the lowest since-mid December and down from a peak of 42,522 on January 4, according to data from the city’s health department.

The decline in Covid cases will be closely watched by employers, after 75 per cent of employers in New York City delayed their return-to-office plans because of the Omicron-led rise in coronavirus cases, according to a survey by the Partnership for New York City, a business advocacy group.

Seven-day averages of new infections are declining, or at least plateauing, in several states and the District of Columbia, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These include Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and Vermont, some of which were among the earliest to report their first cases of the infectious Omicron variant.