The Worst Week for Deaths Since the Pandemic Began The COVID Tracking Project
Editor’s Note:
The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here.
Updated at 10:00 a.m. ET on January 15, 2021.
For 16 weeks, throughout the fall and then straight through the data disruptions around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day, the number of people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 has risen. On October 13, there were 36,000 people with COVID-19 in U.S. hospitals. Yesterday, on January 13, there were 130,000.
This week, after two weeks of holiday-muddled death data, the inevitable consequence of these rising hospitalizations arrived. States reported 23,259 COVID-19 deaths this week, 25 percent more than in any other week since the pandemic began. For scale, the COVID-19 deaths reported this week exceed the CDC s current estimate for flu-related deaths during the
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Artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg walks among thousands of white flags planted in remembrance of Americans who have died of Covid-19 in Washington DC. The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus topped 300,000 on 14 December as the first doses of a vaccine became available. (AP)
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n 14 December, a nurse in New York was the first person in the US outside of a clinical trial to receive a dose of vaccine for Covid-19.
The arrival and potential promise and success of a widely available vaccine marked a turning point in the public health crisis, a glimmer of hope to stem the overwhelming tides of death and suffering as a polarised government – led by Donald Trump’s administration that has all but ignored the surging infections and deaths in the final weeks of his term in office – struggles to combat the disease.
The Pandemic Is Crashing Through the South and the West The COVID Tracking Project
Editor’s Note:
The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here.
We’ll begin with the good news: In every midwestern state and in several others COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are declining. Elsewhere, however, the picture is mixed. In several large states, already large outbreaks appear to be rapidly worsening and despite intense interest in how Thanksgiving gatherings affected reported cases, even public-health experts have found it difficult to interpret the numbers we’ve seen.
Other news this week is tragically easy to interpret: As of yesterday, December is already the deadliest month since the beginning of the pandemic in the United States. The 3,379 deaths states and territories reported yesterday pushed December’s total to 57,638 COVID-19 deaths, for an average of 2,506 deaths reported per day in Dece