Christmas has arrived around the world amid a surge in COVID-19 infections that kept many families apart, overwhelmed hospitals and curbed religious observances.
U.S. Has Record 4,327 COVID Deaths in One Day By Ralph Ellis
Jan. 14, 2021 -- The United States set another grim record on Tuesday with 4,327 coronavirus-related deaths -- the most in a 24-hour period.
Deaths have been rising sharply in recent months, apparently spurred by increased socializing over Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s.
And the daily average of deaths over seven days is now 3,299, compared to just under 700 four months ago, according to the Covid Tracking Project. The U.S. first topped 4,000 daily deaths on Jan. 7.
Texas recorded its 30,000th death over the weekend. The only other states to surpass that number of deaths are California with over 31,000 and New York with 40,000. Most of the New York deaths occurred in March and April of last year.
At Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, they have implemented their COVID-19 surge plan.
"We are already seeing overflow of our intensive care unit into the post-anesthesia care unit or the PAC-U," said Dr. Christopher Colwell, Chief of Emergency Medicine at Zuckerberg SF General Hospital.
Dr. Colwell says a combination of the Thanksgiving and Christmas surge plus New Year cases all at once, left them no other option but to add additional floors to treat COVID-19 patients.
"At least 4 regular floor wards and 3 ICU areas," said Dr. Colwell.
Currently, Zuckerberg SF General Hospital has 59 COVID-19 positive cases. This is the highest number of cases they've had in the entire pandemic. A number of cases that automatically puts them in the orange level of their surge plan, one case away from the highest level.
Los Angeles County reported another 20,414 new cases of COVID-19 and 207 additional deaths Friday, although 40 of the deaths were from a backlog associated with a Spectrum outage and holiday reporting delays.
"That's because a lot of people are closed for the holidays in terms of labs so they are not reporting these numbers until people open back up next week. So, what will happen probably next week is a huge bump in cases," said Dr. Chin-Hong.
In March, medical experts met to discuss a response plan for an unprecedented rise in cases. Dr. Peter Chin-Hong says those meetings equipped them for what could take place in the upcoming weeks.
UVA COVID-19 model predicts post-holiday surge
UVA COVID-19 model predicts post-holiday surge By CJ Paschall | December 28, 2020 at 5:35 PM EST - Updated December 29 at 12:30 AM
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - Hospitals are bracing for a potential COVID-19 surge in the new year, which could be greater than the one we saw after Thanksgiving. The researchers behind an influential projection of the virus say if vaccine rollout continues smoothly and additional steps are taken, the worst could be avoided.
Despite warnings from health officials, millions of people traveled for the holidays. Researchers at the University of Virginia’s Biocomplexity Institute say what happens next will be critical, with a wide range of possibilities in the model they curate for the Virginia Department of Health.