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Parts of the United States are starting to feel the brunt of last month’s holidays – at a time when many hospital systems are already at their breaking point.
Experts said travel and vacation gatherings could help fuel a new wave of Covid-19 infections. Still, millions of Americans have traveled anyway – with more than 1.3 million people, a one-day pandemic record – reviewed by the Transportation Security Administration on Sunday alone.
That’s when the number of hospital patients on any given day hit another U.S. record on Monday, at more than 128,200, according to the COVID monitoring project. And some states warn that the worst could be yet to come.
In California, officials say intensive care units in at least two regions are full to capacity. And due to limited resources, Los Angeles County ambulance teams have been instructed not to transport any patient with traumatic or blunt traumatic non-traumatic arrest if they cannot be resuscitated first in the field.
Some paramedics have had to wait for hours with patients outside of hospitals because facilities do not immediately have space to accommodate patients.
“It’s a humanitarian disaster that’s unfolding in Los Angeles right now, and I’m afraid it won’t end in Los Angeles. We’ll be looking at that in other metropolitan areas as well, ”Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN Tuesday.
“We are heading towards what we see as a push in addition to a push,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Monday. “It’s going to put a lot of pressure on the hospitals, and I see him coming off vacation.”
Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves said the state had “more Covid patients in intensive care beds at the end of last week than we have had at any other time in this pandemic.”
And he expects “very large numbers with the spread of holiday gatherings combined with the backlog, testing and reporting that may have taken place in the past 10 days.”
A few weeks ago, Los Angeles officials said part of the sharp spike in infections and hospital patients they were seeing was due to Thanksgiving rallies. Now they have asked residents to do their part to avoid an even higher number.
“If we do not use the tools currently available, our frontline health workers, who are now caring for a distressing number of Covid-19 patients, will have to deal with many weeks of increasing numbers of patients and at the heartbreaking loss of many lives, ”Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Monday.
Nationwide daily coronavirus cases and deaths are at near record highs:
The United States has recorded an average of 215,408 new cases every day over the past week – just below the maximum pandemic average of over 219,300 established on December 18, according to data from Johns Hopkins University .
And the United States has recorded an average of 2,663 coronavirus deaths per day over the past week – about one death every 32 seconds – according to JHU data.
That’s just below the high daily average of 2,715 reached on December 22.
4.8 million doses of vaccine administered
Vaccinations, meanwhile, are underway, but experts said it would likely take a few months before they are widespread enough to have a significant impact.
About 17 million doses had been distributed and 4.8 million had been administered, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated Tuesday morning.
Only four states have so far administered at least half of the vaccine doses distributed to them, according to CDC data: Connecticut, North Dakota, South Dakota and Tennessee.
While some states have acknowledged the issues on the ground that have contributed to the delay in vaccinations, many have said for months that they need significantly more federal funding to be able to execute vaccine deployment plans.
The CDC advised giving the first rounds of immunizations to healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities, followed by adults aged 75 and older and “essential frontline workers.” But states are free to make their own priority decisions.
In Florida, where vaccines are open to anyone 65 years of age and older, each county health department decides how to administer the vaccines. In some places, county helplines were overloaded and vaccination sites had extended wait times.
At Daytona Beach, seniors lined up in their vehicles early Tuesday for a chance to get one of 1,000 shots at Daytona Stadium. The doors opened at 7 p.m. on Monday, so people could wait overnight for Tuesday to start at 9 a.m.
Capacity was reached more than two hours before the start of the event, and others were turned down, city officials said.
“We’re going to have to start opening (more) arenas and outdoor stadiums and staffing them with qualified people,” to make the vaccinations run smoothly, Hotez said. “It will take money and logistics for federal support.”
Dr Anthony Fauci said on Tuesday he believed the vaccine rollout would accelerate in the coming weeks.
“The government and locals, including governors, mayors and others, have just started in the last weeks of December, right in the middle of the holiday season,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute. allergies and infectious diseases. Newsday’s Randi Marshall said at a virtual event.
“I think we should wait until the first and second week of January to see if we can catch up,” he said.
Fauci says Covid-19 vaccines are highly unlikely to be mandated by the federal government
Fauci also said that “it is very unlikely” that the US federal government will legally try to force people to receive Covid-19 vaccines.
But “there will be individual institutions – they can be hospitals, they can be workplaces, they can be schools – where the authorities responsible for this institution say that in order to participate in the activities of this institution, one must be vaccinate, ”Fauci told Newsday’s Marshall.
Hospitals and other healthcare facilities, for example, have long demanded that workers be vaccinated against various pathogens, he said.
U.S. public school districts, as well as many camps and daycares, require students to be immunized to attend.
Covid-19 probably 3rd leading cause of death in the United States in 2020
Covid-19 was probably the third leading cause of death in the United States in 2020, according to CDC statisticians.
The agency only has initial data on the leading causes of death from last year, and researchers are still examining those numbers. But provisional data suggests that Covid-19 may have caused enough deaths in 2020 to rank third, CDC statisticians told CNN in an email.
“We still only have provisional data until December 26. We should be receiving more data very soon, ”the statisticians said via email. “At this point, we estimate that there have been between 316,252 and 431,792 additional deaths in 2020. Our preliminary death certificate data at this point shows more than 301,000 deaths involving Covid-19, which would likely place it third among the leading causes of death. ”
They added that “there is enough distance” between the number of deaths caused by cancer, the second leading cause in 2019, and those caused by accidents or unintentional injuries, the fourth leading cause in 2019, “to be feel comfortable saying “Covid-19 was the third leading cause for 2020.
In 2019, before the onset of the coronavirus, the top five causes of death in the United States were:
• Heart disease (659,041)
• Cancer (599,601)
• Unintentional injuries (173,040)
• Chronic diseases of the lower respiratory tract (156,979)
• AVC (150,005)
As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 354,000 people had died from Covid-19 in the United States since the start of the pandemic, according to the Johns Hopkins University tally.
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