In comparison, the entire month of November recorded about 36,964 deaths, CNN reported.
The bloody death toll comes after several brutal months for the US, with COVID-19 devastating coast-to-coast communities, affecting hospital systems and causing new widespread restrictions.
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Authorization of two COVID-19 vaccines in early December provided a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. But experts continue to warn that while the end is visible, the pandemic is not over and another wave of the Christmas holiday may be underway.
“We may very well see post-seasonal growth – in the sense of Christmas, the New Year -” Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday morning, pointing to vacation travel and private meetings taking place. despite the advice of health experts.
The nation’s leading infectious disease expert described the potential increase in cases as “growth after growth,” telling CNN’s Dana Bash: “If you look at the slope, the tilt of the cases I’ve experienced As we get into late fall and soon early winter, it’s really quite worrying. “
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More than 1.1 million people were screened at airports on Saturday, according to the TSA, marking the third day of the busiest air travel in the United States since March. Over 616,000 were screened on Christmas alone and hundreds of thousands more traveled in the days leading up to the holiday.
COVID-19 hospitalization numbers in the US are already at record levels. On Saturday, the country recorded the fifth largest number of hospitalizations – with more than 117,300 patients with COVID-19 nationwide, according to the COVID follow-up project.
Another wave of cases and hospitalizations will inevitably mean more deaths – in addition to an already devastating death toll.
“When you’re dealing with a baseline of 200,000 new cases a day and about 2,000 deaths a day, with over 120,000 hospitalizations, we’re really at a very critical time,” Fauci said.
“As we go into the next few weeks,” he added, “it could actually get worse.”
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Fauci’s comments on Sunday came as the US surpassed 19 million cases of coronavirus, another milestone for the pandemic, which came just over 11 months after the first case was registered in the US in late January.
Nearly 332,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. Another 193,000 could die in the next two months, according to forecasts from the Institute for Health Metrics and Assessment at the University of Washington.
“The projections are just a nightmare,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, an infectious disease specialist at Baylor College of Medicine. “People can save the lives of loved ones by practicing social distance and masks. And remember, vaccines are around the corner.”
The vaccine is being launched slowly in some places, says the expert
Nearly 2 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than 9.5 million doses have been distributed.
These numbers now include both Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. And while there are delays in reporting the data, federal officials have previously said they will vaccinate 20 million people by the end of the year.
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Asked about the apparent slow release of vaccines, Fauci told CNN on Sunday that large and comprehensive vaccine programs with a new vaccine are starting slowly before gaining momentum.
“I’m pretty confident that as we gain more and more momentum, as we move from December to January and then from February to March, I think we’ll catch up with the projection,” he said.
Dr. Esther Choo, a professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health + Science University, explained that the distribution of the vaccine is “just a very complicated thing.”
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“At every step, there is complexity and there are possibilities for delay, whether it is individual state planning, allocation, training, vaccine delivery, storage … there are (are) so many factors at this stage,” he said. Choo.
“We need to be prepared for the fact that it will be a slow launch in many places and that it will not necessarily change our behavior or the trajectory of the pandemic in this country in the short term,” Choo said.
Choo’s words echo a number of other experts who have warned the American public not to let their guard down when vaccinations begin and continue public health measures, including wearing masks, social distancing, avoiding crowds and gatherings, and regular hand washing.
Vaccines are unlikely to be widely available in the summer and will begin to have a significant impact on the pandemic, officials said. Fauci estimates that about 70% to 85% of the population needs to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order for the country to obtain herd immunity.
Expert: Test requirements will not help control the spread of COVID-19
The CDC also announced last week new testing requirements for travelers arriving from the UK, which will take effect on Monday.
Passengers must have had a negative PCR or antigen test within 72 hours of boarding a flight from the United Kingdom to the United States, together with documentation of their laboratory results. Airlines will be asked to confirm the test before the flight.
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This comes after the appearance of a new variant COVID-19 detected for the first time in Great Britain, which health officials say that “it was predicted that it could be transmitted faster”. Since the discovery of the variant, more than 40 countries have restricted travel to the UK and, in some cases, travel to other countries that have documented cases with the variant.
The third case of the variant first identified in the UK was detected in Ottawa, Canada, an Ontario government press release said on Sunday.
The case is a person who recently traveled from the UK, according to the statement. This individual is now in self-isolation.
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The two previous cases, which were reported on Saturday, have since been shown to have been in contact with a recent traveler from the UK, the statement said.
One expert said the new testing requirements for US travel were not implemented fast enough to be effective against a reported variant.
“It makes sense that for any place that is experiencing regional growth in cases where we are implementing new measures,” emergency physician Dr. Richina Bicette told CNN. “But if they try to ensure that the virus is not imported into the United States, these measures will have no effect on that.”
(The-CNN-Wire & 2020 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner company. All rights reserved.)
The video presented comes from a previous report