US sets record for hospital cases of COVID-19

The number of Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 hits new highs as coronavirus infections continue to climb across the country.

The COVID Tracking Project reports that 61,964 Americans have been hospitalized with COVID-19 as of November 10. That’s most of the hospitalizations recorded since the start of the pandemic in March. And as hospitalizations are a few weeks behind new cases, that number will continue to rise.

As the COVID Exit Strategy website shows, 47 states are now seeing uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus, and two are showing a bad trend. The growing number of cases across the country led governors in several states yesterday to impose new restrictions in an attempt to curb the spread of the virus. Among them is Minnesota, which has ordered bars and restaurants to end in-person service between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. and assemble indoors and outdoors limited to 10 people.

In an address online, Gov. Tim Walz also urged the public to wear masks, practice physical distancing, wash their hands and stay home if they are not feeling well.

“It is not inevitable that we will find ourselves in a crisis,” said Walz. “But if we don’t do these things, we will definitely be here.”

The United States added 136,325 new COVID-19 cases yesterday, as well as 1,415 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Dashboard. The total since the start of the pandemic stands at 10,353,604 confirmed cases and 240,688 deaths.

Impact on Western and Midwestern hospitals

At a press conference today by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, Andrew Pavia, MD, FIDSA, chief of the division of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Utah School of Medicine, explained how the spike in infections and hospitalizations is affecting hospitals in the Upper Midwestern and Western states, which were not so badly affected during the first waves of spring and summer.

“The impact is just huge,” Pavie said. “These are states where medical resources tend to be concentrated in a few large cities.”

Pavia said that in states like Utah, where care is so dispersed, public health resources are currently overwhelmed and hospitals are “extremely stressed.” And it’s not just a matter of bed capacity.

“One of the things that many Western states have in common is a relative shortage of people we need to care for the very sick,” he said. “People across the region are facing a personnel crisis… the situation really has to be described as dire.

Pavia explained that under normal circumstances, hospitals may have one dedicated nurse per patient in an intensive care unit (ICU). But in many area hospitals right now, the ratio is one nurse to four or five intensive care patients. And many of the overflow intensive care units created by hospitals are staffed with clinicians who haven’t worked in an intensive care unit for a while.

“To help someone survive an illness like this takes a lot of care from very skilled people,” he said. “And since we have to divide these resources lightly, the care is not as good.”

Utah, which instituted a statewide mask warrant and temporarily halted all extracurricular activities at the school earlier this week, yesterday reported 2,517 new coronavirus infections, continuing a streak of days over 2,500 new cases, according to Salt Lake Tribune. There are currently 435 hospital patients for COVID-19 in the state, and that number has been rising steadily since October.

The surge in hospitalizations in Iowa, meanwhile, prompted Gov. Kim Reynolds to order a mask warrant for large public gatherings and to limit certain types of public gatherings yesterday. Reynolds has implemented very few coronavirus restrictions to date, but with the state reporting more than 4,000 new cases per day for several days and hospitalizations increasing 84% in the past month, the governor has relented.

But University of Iowa infectious disease specialist Eli Perencevich, MD, MS, told the Des Moines Register that Reynolds’ order is not enough. “Anything less than a statewide mask warrant if you’re out of your home with fines, shutting down indoor bars and restaurants, canceling all after-school activities, shutting down schools and banning gatherings outside your family will not be effective in tilting the curve and saving our hospitals, “he said.” It’s lipstick on a pig. “

New CDC position on masks

In other American developments:

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday released a new document indicating that sheet masks provide protection against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, for both the person wearing them and for those around them. The CDC’s previous position was that masks primarily serve as “source control” by reducing the amount of virus particles exhaled by the wearer. “Experimental and epidemiological data supports community masking to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2,” the CDC said. “The prevention benefit of masking is derived from the combination of control at the source and personal protection for the wearer of the mask.”
• Biotech company Moderna announced today that it has accumulated enough COVID-19 cases for a planned interim analysis of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. The company said with the significant increase in case identification at its Phase 3 trial sites over the past week, it expects the first interim analysis to include more than 53 cases. The phase 3 mRNA vaccine trial includes 30,000 participants.
• New York Governor Andrew Cuomo today announced that starting November 13, private indoor and outdoor gatherings will be limited to 10 people, and gyms, bars and restaurants will have to close at 10 p.m. on New York Times reports. The move was made to help prevent a second wave in the state, which was the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic in the spring, but which has since had one of the lowest infection rates in the country. New York’s 7-day average positivity rate reached 2.43 today, the highest since June.