First, Theresa Pirozzi’s 85-year-old father became ill and was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. Days later, his mother was so weak that she could barely walk. Now, instead of preparing for Christmas, Pirozzi anxiously awaits updates from the hospital, where his parents are in intensive care with the coronavirus.
“I don’t put decorations here. It’s just not right, right now, ”Pirozzi said from his parents’ home in Oak Park, California. “I’m physically ill from worry.”
The couple is emblematic of the deepening crisis at an alarming rate in California, where hospitals are spreading to their limits as the virus explodes across the state. About 17,000 people were hospitalized with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 infections as of Friday, and a state model that uses current data to predict future trends shows the figure could reach 75,000 unfathomable by mid-January.
With more than 48,000 new cases in California at the helm, the United States as a whole added a record 249,709 new cases of COVID-19 in one day, Johns Hopkins University reported Saturday. The death toll is more than 315,000.
Texas, Florida, New York and Tennessee recorded more than 10,400 new cases each. Over the past two weeks, the seven-day average of new cases in the United States jumped to 219,324 daily from 183,787, an increase of nearly 20%.
Cases were increasing before Thanksgiving and holiday meetings made them increase even more. Health officials now fear the increase will only increase until Christmas and New Year. In many places, say health officials, people tired of wearing masks and walking away from others simply ignore the suggested precautions.
Although federal regulators have approved two vaccines to fight the disease and doses have already been administered to thousands of people, mostly health workers, widespread vaccines are not expected for the general public before spring.
Several states have said the federal government told them that shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine next week will be less than initially planned. The army general in charge of making COVID-19 vaccines in the United States apologized Saturday for “poor communication” with states about the number of doses to be administered in the early stages of distribution.
Of the more than 272,000 shots of the Pfizer vaccine that had been administered Saturday morning, U.S. health officials said they had seen six cases of a severe allergic reaction. One in half a dozen people had a history of vaccination reactions, they said.
In a possible complication, the English chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, said on Saturday that the UK had informed the World Health Organization that officials believe a new variant of the coronavirus could spread more quickly. The British health secretary said this week that the new variant was believed to be related to the rapid wave of COVID-19 cases in the south and south-east of England.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Saturday imposed stricter restrictions on the region, meaning millions have to cancel Christmas meetings and most shops have to close in London before the holidays. New, but less stringent, restrictions were imposed on the U.S. capital, with the ban on eating cutlery in restaurants from next week until mid-January.
In California, hospitals across the state are shrinking under a wave of patients and morgue space is running out. Hospitals are running out of beds in the intensive care unit and patients are being cared for at various overflow sites. In some places, patients are being picked up in tents and ambulances are backing up outside of emergency rooms because there is nowhere to put patients.
When Pirozzi’s father, Jerry, arrived at Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousands Oaks, he was so full of patients that he had to spend two days in the emergency room before an intensive care bed was opened. said Pirozzi. He kept calling the hospital, but emergency nurses told him they had no rooms, he said.
“I’m sure it was very difficult for him, being confused, not being able to breathe, being alone,” Pirozzi said. “They’re doing the best they can, but they’re totally stressed and overworked.”
Her mother, Shirley, was taken to the same hospital four days later and taken to a separate room, she said. Pirozzi said his family did not tell Jerry that his wife of more than 57 years is also hospitalized; he fears this will only get worse.
“I want him to be a little stronger so he doesn’t back down,” he said. “Because I know the only thing he cares about is his girlfriend.”
Pirozzi said his parents have had panic attacks. Since relatives cannot visit her, she has been handing out notes written in a plastic bag asking nurses to read them.
He begged the public to take the virus seriously.
“I wouldn’t like that to my worst enemy, for the two of them to come down within five or seven days of each other,” he said. “Do everything you can to protect yourself because you don’t want this to happen to you.”
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Richer reported from Boston. Associated Press writer Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama, contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s pandemic coverage: http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.