Average daily Covid deaths in the United States exceed 2,000

On average, more than 2,000 Americans die again from Covid every day, a grim threshold the country has not seen in more than six months.

The seven-day average of deaths reported by Covid in the United States stood at 2,031 on Tuesday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. As new infections have leveled off, deaths continue to rise, increasing 13% from a week ago and 43% since the start of the month. The last time the average daily death toll in the United States was over 2,000 was on March 1. The country was emerging from a record winter wave of record cases and deaths with an average of 3,426 per day in mid-January.

The Covid-19 officially became the deadliest epidemic in recent US history on Monday, surpassing the estimated number of deaths in the United States during the 1918 influenza pandemic.

Average daily deaths were also above 2,000 at the start of the epidemic in April 2020, and testing limits at that time mean that the country’s first peak of 2,245 average daily deaths on April 24 this year could be a undercoverage.

Reported deaths are currently highest in large US states like Florida, which has recorded an average of 376 daily deaths over the past week, and Texas, which reports a daily average of 283. Combined, this is about one third of the national total. mean.

On a population-adjusted basis, Alabama, Florida and West Virginia report the highest number of average daily deaths per 100,000 population.

The rise in the daily death toll follows the latest wave of infections in the country, which shows signs of abating but remains relatively high. The United States has reported about 135,000 daily cases over the past week, and although the trend was obscured for much of the month due to inconsistencies in state reporting around Labor Day, the seven-day average is down 18% from September 31. 1.

Hospitalizations are also increasing but decreasing. About 91,500 Americans are currently hospitalized with Covid, according to a seven-day average of Department of Health and Human Services data. At the start of the month, that number was almost 103,000.

Any change in the trend of reported cases and hospitalizations usually does not show up in the death toll for weeks, as it takes time for people to get infected with the virus and then get sick enough to need urgent care.

“I think if the curve, if the cases go down, the deaths should follow,” said Dr. Arturo Casadevall, president of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He added that treatments for Covid have also improved, with better therapies today than a year ago.

Despite all the encouraging signs of the nationwide trend, the spread of the highly infectious delta variant is still on the rise in some states.

The Ohio Department of Health warned Wednesday that many hospitals in the state are “at or reaching capacity,” with the increase largely due to unvaccinated patients. The number of cases there has increased by 33% since the beginning of the month to an average of 6,771 per day.

The number of cases in Alaska and West Virginia is also at or near an all time high. Alaska’s average of 857 daily cases is a pandemic record for the state, although daily deaths are about the same as September 1 at two a day. West Virginia, where the 26 deaths per day as of Tuesday is a 157% increase from the start of the month, has not been spared an increase in the death toll.

Yet, according to infectious disease experts, the results could be even worse without the development of Covid vaccines.

“If we didn’t have vaccines and we were suffering from this delta, the death rate would be significantly higher,” said Dr. Bruce Farber, chief infectious disease officer at Northwell Health in New York City. “Hundreds of thousands of people would have died, probably millions. And I think that’s what we’ve seen in every country where the delta has spread rapidly without adequate vaccination.”

Nearly 55% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.