For the third straight week the United States has seen a drop in coronavirus infections, marking a significant improvement from prior months.

Nevertheless, the US still has several hundred thousand new cases per day, meaning that this virus is far from being contained and will still affect the lives of many. For a majority of the states, 41 to be exact, the COVID-19 infected number took a dive, while 0 states actually reported worse numbers – thanks to the vaccine.

With restrictions across numerous states easing up, including a recent lift in most of California, these next few weeks will be a race to see if people can get vaccinated and actually have the vaccine take effect before a new wave of COVID hits. Numbers right now are currently very similar to pre-holiday numbers before Thanksgiving and Christmas, when many Americans still decided to travel and see family.

Since the COVID-19 vaccine takes a few weeks to actually take effect, don’t expect things to start looking better until a majority of the population has at least taken the shot. This could be up to several months as certain states have an extremely low number of vaccination sites, and it could take longer than expected to vaccinate the majority of US citizens.