New York began the new year with darker news from COVID-19, with the number of daily deaths from the virus rising to 166, the highest number of deaths in a day since May, while the number of coronavirus cases across the country exceeded 20 million.
Meanwhile, Florida officials were investigating a newly discovered case of a mutant coronavirus variant that appears to be far more contagious – the first case confirmed on the East Coast after the variant was found several days ago in California and Colorado.
Twenty-three Long Islanders were among those who died of the disease on Thursday: 12 from Suffolk and 11 from Nassau, according to a press release from Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s office.
During the summer, the number of people who died across COVID-19 each day was usually in single digits. On December 14, the daily death count exceeded 100 for the first time since spring – and has remained there every day since, except one.
The 166 deaths on Thursday were up from 136 on Wednesday and is the highest number since May 12, according to the state Department of Health.
More than 30,200 New Yorkers have died of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, including 2,401 people in Nassau and 2,311 in Suffolk.
The confirmed number of deaths across the state differs from the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center count, which uses different calculations – includes probable and confirmed COVID-19 deaths – and lists the number of deaths in New York to date. Friday afternoon as 38,155.
Across the country, on Friday afternoon, the death toll exceeded 347,000 and the number of cases reached almost 20.1 million, according to Johns Hopkins. This is by far the largest number of cases in the world and almost double the number of confirmed cases in the second most affected country, India, although India’s population is more than four times as large.
The number of coronavirus hospitalizations across the state on Thursday fell to 7,886, Cuomo’s office said. This represents a drop of 49 from the previous day, but the effects of Christmas, New Year’s Eve and other holidays have not yet been seen, as hospitalizations tend to delay new infections by a few weeks.
Almost 1,300 of those hospitalized were in intensive care, with 776 of them intubated.
The photo in LI
The percentage of positive coronavirus tests has dropped again in Suffolk and Nassau, although the number remains much higher than just a few weeks ago.
In Suffolk, 9.7% of tests were positive on Thursday, for a total of 1,874 new cases. The rate was 10.5% on Wednesday and 12.8% on Tuesday.
In Nassau County, 1,556 people – 8% of the total number of results – recently tested positive for the virus. This represents 8.9% on Wednesday and 10.5% on Tuesday.
Across the state, the positivity rate was 7.52%.
Nassau County executive Laura Curran said in a statement that “although expanding the distribution and availability of the vaccine is a bright light at the end of this dark tunnel, we are still in the tunnel. Please continue to use common sense, avoiding large agglomerations. it could start 2021 with a clear path to recovery. “
New York City had 5,293 new cases of coronavirus, according to the state.
Variant found in Florida
In Florida, the state health department reported on Thursday night that a man in his 20s with no recent travel history had the coronavirus variant, called the United Kingdom strain, in honor of the United Kingdom, where it was detected for the first time and spread rapidly across southern England.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working with the Florida Department of Health to investigate the case.
The variant is a mutated and probably more infectious strain of the new coronavirus. About half of the virus’s 350,000 known sequences come from the UK, where authorities are pushing to reactivate previously disabled field hospitals to deal with the expected crush of new patients.
In San Diego County, California, officials said they believed the variant was “widespread in the community” because none of the four men there diagnosed with the strain had any known interactions with each other and at least three did not travel abroad.
At the moment, experts say they predict that the variant will have little or no influence on the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The variant’s discovery in California on Wednesday occurred when state hospitals are “on the brink of catastrophe”, according to a local health official, while the pandemic has taken deaths and illnesses to surprising levels and some medical centers have struggled to provide oxygen for the seriously ill.
Infections in California have been getting out of hand for weeks, and the state has set new records for infections and deaths. The state today has the worst rate of coronavirus diagnosis in the country.
California has nearly 26,000 COVID-19 deaths, placing it in third place after New York and Texas, where more than 27,000 people died.
With AP
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David Olson covers health care. He has worked at Newsday since 2015 and previously covered immigration, multicultural issues and religion at The Press-Enterprise in Southern California.