Coronavirus deaths in the United States exceeded 450,000 on Thursday and daily deaths remain stubbornly high, at more than 3,000 a day, despite falling infections and the arrival of multiple vaccines.
Infectious disease specialists expect deaths to start falling soon, after new cases reach their peak earlier this year. New deaths from COVID-19 could decrease as early as next week, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
But there is also the risk that improving trends in infections and hospitalizations can be offset if people relax and gather, including this Sunday, to watch football, he added.
“Honestly, I’m worried about Super Bowl Sunday,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press.
Walensky said one of the reasons cases and hospitalizations are not increasing as dramatically as weeks ago is that the effect of holiday meetings has faded.
The effect on deaths is delayed. The daily toll amounts to 50,000 new deaths in the last two weeks alone.
“We’re still in a pretty bad place,” he said.
The nation on Wednesday reported 3,912 deaths from COVID-19, below the pandemic high of 4,466 deaths on January 12th.
The main driver of the death toll in the United States over the past month has been California, which has averaged more than 500 deaths a day in recent weeks.
Dora Padilla was one of thousands of Californians who died last month.
The 86-year-old daughter of Mexican immigrants served as a school administrator in the Alhambra Unified School District in Southern California after serving as a volunteer parent and band reinforcement for her children. own children. She was one of the few Latinos to hold the position elected at the time.
He tested positive in December at the facility where he lived, then had a fever and saw his oxygen level drop. The facility was going to call an ambulance, but decided to treat it amid an increase in infections that filled local hospitals with virus patients, said her daughter Lisa Jones.
“They were almost ready to call an ambulance, but they realized there was nowhere to go. It’s going to end up in a hallway somewhere, ”Jones said.
Padilla was stable for days and seemed to improve, but suddenly fell ill again before dying.
“I’m still a little sleepy,” her daughter said.
The California experience has reflected many of the inequalities that have been exposed since the pandemic began almost a year ago, with people of color especially affected.
For example, Latinos account for 46% of all deaths in California, despite being 39% of the state’s population. The situation has worsened in recent months. In November, the daily number of Latino deaths was 3.5 per 100,000 residents, but that rate shot up to 40 deaths per 100,000 last week.
Alabama is another hot spot. The average of seven days of deaths there has increased in the last two weeks, from 74 to 147 deaths a day. Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee also recorded death increases.
The most affected demographic groups remain the oldest and most fragile, said Dr. Thomas Holland of Duke University.
When the coronavirus first spread across the country, it was concentrated in residences, prisons, and other congregated care centers. It later spread more widely.
“But deaths have still been concentrated among elderly patients and patients” with other health problems, Holland said. “While the pandemic has spread more widely to the population, the demographics of those dying of COVID have not really changed.”
In Florida, for example, 83% of deaths attributed to the virus have been in people 65 and older.
However, this has not been enough to inspire some people to wear masks. A recent viral video from Oakes Farms Seed to Table, a local grocery store in Naples, Florida, showed customers and employees without masks chatting and laughing without social distancing.
This was said by Alfie Oakes, owner of the store NBC’s “Today” program knows the masks aren’t working and doesn’t believe the coronavirus has killed hundreds of thousands of people in the United States.
“That’s a total hogwash,” Oakes said, adding, “Why don’t we close the world because of heart attacks? Why don’t we close cities for heart attacks?”
No AP calls were returned on Thursday.
Public health experts are watching Florida closely this week because the Super Bowl will be played in Tampa. City and NFL leaders are trying to ensure social distancing by limiting attendance to a third of the stadium’s capacity: 22,000 people. However, there will be parties, events in bars and nightclubs and other activities that will bring people together.
While most infected people will recover, others face a much longer path. It can take a week or two to get sick enough to end up in the hospital. Then those who are seriously ill can end up in the ICU for many weeks and some will die.
“Patients who don’t do well usually take part in these long, very stormy courses, and patients who die are usually weeks after their stay in the hospital,” Holland said.
Treatments have evolved for COVID over time, but there has been no “game-changing miracle treatment” at the same time as the vaccine development, Holland said.
“We’ve had things on the sidelines that are useful,” Holland said.
Among them, the use of steroids for patients in need of oxygen, different strategies of ventilation and prevention and management of blood clots. There is also the use of monoclonal antibodies for outpatients at the beginning of their disease who do not need oxygen, but who may have a higher risk of complications.
In addition, changes in testing have helped.
“Clearly, if people know they’re infected, they’ll be more likely to do the things they need to do, like stay home and quarantine or isolate,” he said.
Looking to the future, the big concern is how the virus changes, shifting to potentially more infectious new strains that are better able to evade antibody products or make vaccines less effective.
“We’ve always been in a race,” Holland said. “But it’s much more evident now that we’re in a race to vaccinate people fast enough to slow down transmission, so that the virus has fewer opportunities to mutate and change and create these stress problems for us.”
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Associated Press writers Mike Stobbe in New York City and Tamara Lush in St. Petersburg, Florida contributed to this report.