Doctors warn US to see ‘darkest days’ after Thanksgiving

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Doctors warn the United States will experience the “ darkest days in modern medical history ” in the weeks after Thanksgiving as the daily number of COVID-19 deaths hits the highest since May and the hospitalizations continue to climb to record levels.

Millions of Americans took to the skies and the freeways in the days leading up to Thanksgiving despite the risk of spilling gasoline on the coronavirus blaze as they ignored increasingly serious warnings to avoid travel and events .

While cases, hospitalizations and deaths are already skyrocketing in the United States, health officials warn the worst is yet to come given the real impact of Thanksgiving trips and gatherings that won’t see themselves for a few weeks. weeks.

The daily death toll across the country climbed to 2,297 yesterday, the highest daily death toll since May and the second day in a row that deaths have surpassed 2,000.

Health officials have been warning for weeks that deaths, which is a lagging indicator, would rise after the number of cases and hospitalizations began to rise in late September.

There were 181,490 new cases recorded yesterday alone and the number of infections has consistently been well above 100,000 every day for the past three weeks.

Hospitalizations reached record levels in the past month, with nearly 90,000 patients being treated yesterday.

© Provided by Daily Mail
The daily death toll across the country climbed to 2,297 yesterday, the highest daily death toll since May and the second day in a row that deaths have surpassed 2,000.

© Provided by Daily Mail
There were 181,490 new cases recorded yesterday alone and the number of infections has consistently been well over 100,000 every day for the past three weeks.

Doctors in some parts of the country have warned that hospitals are already overwhelmed and are nearing saturation in some states.

Dr Joseph Varon, chief of staff at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, Texas, said his hospital was already full and he expects cases and hospitalizations to increase further after Thanksgiving.

“ My worries for the next six to 12 weeks are that if we don’t get it right America is going to have the darkest days in modern American medical history, ” Varon told CNN .

“My hospital is full. I just opened two new wings to be able to accommodate myself for the next few days because I know a lot of people are going to get sick after Thanksgiving, ”he said.

The CDC and state and local authorities have spent the past week urging people not to travel and urging them to keep their Thanksgiving celebrations modest.

Yet millions of people have defied official warnings with nearly six million people traveling by air in the past six days. More than a million people passed through U.S. airport checkpoints yesterday alone, which is the largest crowd since the COVID-19 crisis in March.

AAA, which plans Thanksgiving trips every year, says 48 million Americans will travel by car and 350,000 by train between now and Sunday – just an overall drop of 10% from last year.

Traffic was bumper-proof on the freeways in California’s San Fernando Valley last night. More drivers are expected to take to the roads today.

It comes as 95% of counties nationwide are now seeing an uncontrollable spread of COVID-19 infections, a data map compiled by space analysis firm Esri shows.

The map shows that of the 3,141 counties in the United States, 3,005 are currently experiencing an epidemic, or uncontrollable spread, of the virus.

As COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations increase nationwide, the Midwest – encompassing a dozen states between Ohio and the Dakotas – has been particularly brutalized.

The Midwestern states continue to be among the hardest hit in the country based on cases and deaths per 100,000 population.

North Dakota is still the hardest hit with 158 cases per 100,000 residents last week. Wyoming follows with 154 cases, New Mexico with 127 cases, South Dakota with 122, and Minnesota with 115 cases per capita.

The most affected states in terms of per capita deaths are South Dakota with 2.8 deaths per 100,000 population in the past seven days. North Dakota follows with 2.1 deaths and Wyoming with 1.4 deaths.

Cases are increasing in all other states as well, with California having seen its number of cases soar 17% in 24 hours.

Dr Anthony Fauci warned that the United States is already in the middle of a peak, and the real impact of Thanksgiving trips and gatherings won’t be seen for three weeks, when infections and hospitalizations could rise even more.

“ The final message is to do what we’ve been saying for a while … keep the indoor gatherings as small as possible, ” he told Good Morning America on ABC. “By making this sacrifice, you will prevent people from getting infected.

“ Sacrifice now could save lives and disease and make the future a lot brighter as we go through this … we are going to go through this. Vaccines are on the horizon. If we can stay a little longer and continue to do the simple mitigation – masks, alienation, crowd avoidance. This is my last call before the holidays.

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