December was the deadliest and most contagious month since the start of the pandemic

The United States closed 2020 with the deadliest and most contagious month since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, while surpassing 20 million confirmed cases of Covid-19.

More than 77,000 people lost their lives in December from Covid-19, while 6.4 million contracted the virus amid the emergence of a new variant of the virus and delayed efforts to get people vaccinated. The second deadliest month was April 2020, with more than 58,000 dead.

At least 227,651 new cases were reported Thursday and 3,451 people have died, the second highest daily death toll, according to the NBC News tally.

The virus has killed more than 346,000 people in the United States

At least four cases of a new variant of Covid-19 first detected in the UK have been reported in Colorado, California and Florida. However, Dr Mercedes Carnethon, vice president of preventive medicine at Northwestern University, said experts are “pretty confident that this variant is now everywhere.”

This variant “also appears to affect more adults under the age of 20,” Carnethon told MSNBC. “And I think the reason it’s particularly critical is that this younger adult population is circulating more. They perform some of the essential roles like delivery work, factory work and they are generally present in the population, and this population is not in line to be vaccinated soon. “

Only about 2.8 million people have been vaccinated since mid-December, although the Trump administration has aimed to vaccinate at least 20 million people by the start of the new year. Officials in states struggling with an increase in cases said a lack of trained staff ready to administer the vaccines contributed to the delays.

Even with the availability of vaccines, it is almost certain that cases will continue to grow, and another surge is expected in the weeks after Christmas and New Years.

Thursday became the second day in a row that New York City surpassed its record for new daily cases of 15,700. As the state prepares to potentially report its millionth case on Saturday, officials said they hope to vaccinate at least 1 million of people this month.

The state of Virginia also hit a single-day record Thursday with 5,239 new cases.

In California, hospitalizations have increased eightfold in two months and nearly ten in Los Angeles County. As hospitals are inundated with patients and intensive care units run out of beds for Covid-19 patients, makeshift services are set up in tents, arenas and classrooms to make up for the lack of space in overwhelmed hospitals.

As of Thursday, California’s total death toll topped 25,000, making it the third state to take that milestone along with New York and Texas.

“The heartbreaking thing is that if we had done a better job of reducing the transmission of the virus, a lot of these deaths would not have happened,” said Barbara Ferrer, Los Angeles County director of public health, who has begged people not to get together and make the spread worse.

The states of Nevada, North Carolina and Wyoming also set new one-day records for coronavirus deaths on Thursday – reporting 59, 123 and 33 respectively.