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Officials in Los Angeles County estimate that the coronavirus has infected one in three residents. That works out to more than 3 million people in the county of 10 million, where Covid-19 has claimed more than 13,000 lives.
Disneyland and Dodger Stadium are appointed new vaccination stations in California, while the rollout is stalled in New York and bungled at major hospitals all over. Also: the riot gets infectious, big job losses for women, and SCOTUS weighs climate change.
The CDC projects there could be 405,000 to 438,000 U.S. deaths by the end of the month. If that proves correct, about 40,000 to 73,000 more people will lose their lives to Covid in the next three weeks.
In the U.S., a record 77,572 people died from the coronavirus in December, with a death now occurring about every 33 seconds. The cumulative death toll for the country now exceeds 354,000. About 21 million people—one out of 16 in the U.S.—have tested positive.
California has recorded more new infections than many entire countries--including Britain, Germany and India--in the last couple of days. Capacity in hospital intensive care units in Southern California dropped to zero percent.
The first coronavirus vaccinations were administered in the United States Monday, the same day that the number of people in the U.S. who have died from Covid-19 passed 300,000.
On Wednesday, more people in the U.S. died of the coronavirus than were killed in the 9/11 attacks. But hope is on the way, as some health care workers and nursing home residents could be rolling up their sleeves by early next week.
Margaret Keenan, a 90-year-old woman from Coventry, England, received the first shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine outside a clinical trial on Tuesday morning. Keenan said she was looking forward to seeing friends and family in the new year, after spending most of this year alone.
On Wednesday, the United States set new records for daily Covid deaths, hospitalizations and new cases. But new records were set a day later, as 2,857 people died and more than 216,500 tested positive on Thursday.
White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx warns that if you traveled for Thanksgiving, assume you were infected with coronavirus and get tested soon and avoid seeing grandparents, other elderly relatives or anyone with pre-existing conditions.
Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised against traveling for Thanksgiving because of climbing coronavirus cases around the country, more than 3 million people passed through Transportation Security Administration lines at airports this weekend.
In a joint op-ed, the governors write: “Think about your last Thanksgiving and the people you were surrounded by ... As hard as it will be to not see them this Thanksgiving, imagine how much harder it would be if their chairs are empty next year.”
Despite the antipathy of President Trump and many Republican voters to Covid restrictions, GOP governors are ordering residents to sometimes wear masks in public as infections in their states continue to soar.
Yesterday, the U.S. recorded more than 160,000 cases for the first time, eight days after recording 100,000 new cases in one day for the first time. The country also set a record for hospitalizations for the third day in a row, with 67,096 receiving treatment.
The drugmakers Pfizer and BioNTech, a German company, said in a news release that the Covid vaccine they are jointly developing and testing is 90 percent effective in clinical trials and no serious safety concerns have yet emerged. If those results hold, it would make the coronavirus vaccine as effective as common childhood vaccines.
