The United States recorded more COVID-19 deaths in a single day than ever before – nearly 3,900 – just as the mob’s attack on the Chapter revealed some of the same deep political divisions that prevented the battle against the pandemic.
The virus is on the rise in several states, with California being hit particularly hard, reporting a record two days of 1,042 coronavirus deaths on Thursday. The increase in the number of cases there threatens to force hospitals to rational care and to decide, in essence, who lives and who dies.
“People are panting for breath. People seem to drown when they are in bed right in front of us, ”said Dr. Jeffrey Chien, emergency physician at Santa Clara Valley Regional Medical Center, urging people to do their part to slow the spread. “I beg everyone to help us because we are not in the front line. We are the last line. “
Meanwhile, the number of Americans receiving the first COVID-19 vaccine rose to at least 5.9 million on Thursday, a one-day gain of about 600,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hundreds of millions will need to be vaccinated to stop the coronavirus.
About 1.9 million people worldwide have died from the virus, more than 360,000 in the United States alone. December has been by far the nation’s deadliest month so far, and health experts warn that January could be even worse because of family reunions and holiday trips.
A new, more contagious variant is spreading around the world and in the United States. It remains to be seen what effect the spread of thousands of President Donald Trump supporters who converged on Washington this week, many without masks, will have. of the scourge.
Trump has long downplayed the virus and despised masks, and many of his ardent supporters have followed suit. He also angered the blockades and called on protesters opposed to restrictions in states such as Michigan, where armed supporters invaded the state house last spring.
On Wednesday, the day a horde of protesters violated the US Chapter, disrupting efforts to certify the election of Joe Biden, the US recorded 3,865 deaths from the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University. The numbers can fluctuate dramatically after holidays and weekends, and the figure can be revised.
“Local terrorists have overtaken the Capitol police, just as the virus has been allowed to overtake the Americans,” said Dr. Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Institute. “The United States has lost control of a mob caused by Trump and a pandemic virus played by Trump.”
Some of the forces that contributed to the eruption of violence were partially predicted by global disease planning experts when they held a mass exercise in 2019, said Dr. Eric Toner, a senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security who directed the exercise.
“We have considered the possibility of active misinformation and the use of a pandemic for political purposes,” Toner said. “Real life turned out to be much worse.”
In California, health authorities reported 583 new deaths on Thursday, a day after 459 people died. The total death toll there is over 28,000. The state has also registered more than a quarter of a million new cases a week, and Arizona alone leads California in resident cases. Florida broke the record for the highest number of cases in a single day, with over 19,800, while the number of deaths reached 22,400.
Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, with 10 million residents, and nearly two dozen other counties have been essentially left without intensive care beds for COVID-19 patients.
“This is a health crisis of epic proportions,” said Barbara Ferrer, director of public health for Los Angeles County.
The guidelines posted on the Southern California Methodist Hospital website warned: “If a patient becomes extremely ill and is very unlikely to survive his or her illness (even with life-saving treatment), then certain resources … can be assigned to another patient who is more likely to survive. “
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Associated Press writers Olga Rodriguez of San Francisco and Tamara Lush of Tampa, Florida, contributed to the report.