First, Theresa Pirozzi’s 85-year-old father became ill and was taken by ambulance to a hospital. Days later, his mother was so weak that she could barely walk.
Now, instead of making preparations for Christmas, Pirozzi anxiously awaits what the staff of the hospital where his parents are cared for by coronavirus in an intensive care unit are telling him.
“I’m not putting decorations here. It’s not okay right now,” Pirozzi said from his parents’ home in Oak Park, California. “I’m physically sick of worry.”
The couple is representative of the crisis deepening at an alarming rate in California, where hospitals are on the brink due to the incessant rise in infections in the state.
Nearly 17,000 people were hospitalized on Friday for confirmed or possible COVID-19 infections, and according to a model based on the latest data to project future trends, the number could reach the state the immense figure of 75,000 for media January.
With California’s 48,000 new cases at the top of the statistics, the United States added to its total in a single day the record figure of 249,709 more patients with COVID-19, according to the Johns Hopkins University count on Saturday. The national death toll has exceeded 315,000.
Texas, Florida, New York and Tennessee each registered more than 10,400 new cases. In the past two weeks, the average of seven-day new cases in the United States soared to 219,324 per day compared to the previous average of 183,787, an increase of nearly 20%.
Contagions were on the rise before Thanksgiving and increased due to meetings for the celebration. Health authorities now fear the increase will worsen over Christmas and New Year.
In many places, people are ignoring the suggested precautions because they are tired of wearing a mask and keeping social distancing, according to health authorities.
Although federal authorities have authorized the use of two COVID-19 vaccines and doses have already been applied to thousands of people, mostly health personnel, widespread inoculation to the general public is expected to take place until later. of spring.
Several state governments have noted that the federal government has instructed them that shipments of Pfizer-BioNtech vaccines for the week will be lower than initially scheduled.
Army General in charge of distributing COVID-19 vaccines in the United States, Gustave Perna, apologized on Saturday for “lack of communication” with states about the number of doses that will be delivered in the initial stages of distribution.
Of the more than 272,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine applied through Saturday morning, federal health authorities said they had warned of six cases of a severe allergic reaction. One in six people had a history of adverse reactions to vaccines, they said.