The United States recorded more deaths from COVID-19 in a single day than ever – almost 3,900 – the same day that the crowd’s attack on the Capitol revealed some of the same deep political divisions that made it difficult to battle the pandemic.
The virus is increasing in several states, with California being hit particularly hard, reporting on Thursday a record two-day total of 1,042 coronavirus deaths. The growing number of cases threatens to force hospitals to ration care and essentially decide who lives and who dies.
“People are trying to breathe. People seem to be drowning when they are in bed right in front of us, ”said Dr. Jeffrey Chien, an emergency room physician at the Santa Clara Valley Regional Medical Center, asking people to do their part to help reduce the burden. propagation. “I am begging everyone to help us because we are not the front line. We are the bottom line. “
Meanwhile, the number of Americans who received their first injection of the COVID-19 vaccine rose to at least 5.9 million on Thursday, a one-day gain of about 600,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Diseases. Hundreds of millions will need to be vaccinated to stop the coronavirus.
About 1.9 million people worldwide died from the virus, more than 360,000 in the United States alone. December was by far the deadliest month in the country, and health experts are warning that January could be even more dire because of family reunions and holidays.
A new, more contagious variant is spreading across the globe and in the United States. Furthermore, it remains to be seen what effect the thousands of supporters of President Donald Trump who converged this week in Washington, many of them without masks, will have on the spread of the scourge.
Trump has long downplayed the virus and neglected masks, and many of his ardent supporters have followed suit. He also raged against blockades and instigated protesters who opposed restrictions in states like Michigan, where armed supporters invaded the government palace last spring.
On Wednesday, the day that a horde of protesters violated the U.S. Capitol, interrupting efforts to certify Joe Biden’s election, the U.S. reported 3,865 virus deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. Numbers can fluctuate dramatically after holidays and weekends, and numbers are subject to review.
“Domestic terrorists invaded the Capitol police, just as the virus was allowed to invade Americans,” said Dr. Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. “The US has lost control of a crowd incited by Trump and a pandemic virus minimized by Trump.”
Some of the forces that contributed to the outbreak of violence were partly predicted by experts in global disease planning when they performed a table exercise in 2019, said Dr. Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety who directed the exercise.
“We are considering the possibility of active disinformation and the use of a pandemic for political gains,” said Toner. “Real life turned out to be much worse.”
In California, health officials reported Thursday 583 new deaths, the day after 459 people died. The total death toll there is more than 28,000. The state also recorded more than a quarter of a million new cases weekly, and only Arizona outperforms California in cases per resident. Florida broke its record for the highest number of cases in a single day, with more than 19,800, while the death toll reached 22,400.
Los Angeles County, the most populous in the country with 10 million residents, and nearly two dozen other counties, basically ran out of beds in intensive care units for patients with COVID-19.
“This is a health crisis of epic proportions,” said Barbara Ferrer, director of public health for Los Angeles County.
Guidelines posted on the Southern California Methodist Hospital website warned: “If a patient becomes extremely ill and very unlikely to survive his illness (even with life-saving treatment), then certain resources … can be allocated to another patient who is more likely to survive. “
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Associated Press writers Olga Rodriguez in San Francisco and Tamara Lush in Tampa, Florida contributed to this report.