US passes 370,000 COVID deaths with 24,000 deaths and two million new cases in just nine days

The United States has passed 370,000 coronavirus deaths and more than 24,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 in the first nine days of 2021.

A total of 370,119 people have died since the start of the pandemic in the United States after 1,346 new deaths were reported on Saturday afternoon, according to Johns Hopkins University.

115,409 new infections have also been recorded nationwide so far, bringing the national total to 21,978,182.

The latest figures are a worrying sign of a post-holiday surge as 24,260 deaths and 2,003,618 new cases have been reported since January 1.

This week alone, 16 states reported their highest number of COVID-19 hospitalizations and California had its deadliest day.

The state reported a record 695 new deaths on Saturday, a day after Los Angeles reported its highest daily death toll of 318.

There were more than 52,000 new infections in California as of Saturday afternoon, according to the health department.

State hospitals continue to face an increase in the number of patients infected with the virus, and doctors fear the worst of the post-holiday spike is yet to come.

“ It takes two to three weeks for patients to get sick enough to need hospital after contracting the virus, and Christmas was only two weeks ago, and we are already full, ” Dr Anish Mahajan, Chief medical officer of the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, told CNN.

There were again records set Friday for the seven-day average for cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the United States with deaths climbing to an average of 2,934.

Of the 310,080 new cases reported on Friday, 50,000 were in California and 20,000 in New Jersey, according to the COVID monitoring project.

The increase in the number of cases on Friday means 44 states have reported at least 500 cases of COVID-19 per million people.

New Jersey saw another peak on Friday and recorded 2,694 infections per million people.

Next come Kansas with 1,889 cases per million population and Arizona with 1,602 infections per million population.

Arizona has also passed its summer surge in hospitalizations, with patients increasing at an alarming rate.

Health experts on Wednesday named Arizona as the new global coronavirus hotspot as the state’s outbreak took another turn for the worse in Arizona.

The state now leads the country with the highest COVID-19 diagnosis rate.

Since December 31, one in 111 Arizonans has been diagnosed with the virus.

The surge in new cases on Friday came as Dr Deborah Birx warned that the United States may have its own mutant strain of COVID-19, much like Britain does because the virus is spreading so quickly.

Birx, who announced before Christmas that she would retire when Joe Biden takes office, after being left behind for ignoring COVID guidelines during the holidays, did the analysis at a recent meeting of the group of White House coronavirus work.

She presented a series of charts and tables, officials said, which showed a sharp increase in cases.

Birx speculated that this could be due to the fact that a new, more infectious variant of the virus is circulating – in the same way Britain has been rocked by the new strain B.1.1.7.

His concerns made their way into the weekly report sent to state governors, which leaked Friday.

“This fall / winter surge has been almost twice as fast as the rate of increase in cases in spring and summer,” the report says.

“This acceleration suggests that there may be an American variant that has evolved here, in addition to the UK variant that is already spreading in our communities and which may be 50% more heritable.

“Aggressive mitigation must be used to deal with a more aggressive virus.

Nationwide, more than 21.8 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic and 368,679 deaths.