The United States recorded more than 5,000 Covid-19 deaths on Thursday.
The increase, the largest number so far, appears to be largely due to an accumulation of data that was just released in Indiana, adding 1,500 deaths to the national number, according to the Wall Street Journal. Although the cases are decreasing, the number of deaths is usually a reflection of what happened in the previous weeks, as it is usually a slow indicator of the spread of the virus. Yesterday, there were 5,077 deaths in the US in total, according to data from John Hopkins University, and 122,473 new cases.
Southern California and Arizona remain the nation’s top spots, although California Governor Gavin Newsom has eased restrictions in recent days, including the return of al fresco dining. Meanwhile, the vaccine’s release has been dragging on, with about 1.3 million injections being administered every day, shy of Joe Biden’s goal of 1.5 million injections daily.
There is hope that the approval of a new vaccine from Johnson & Johnson will speed up inoculations – especially since only one dose of that vaccine is needed. The president promised to buy another 200 million doses of the Pfizer and Modern vaccines in the coming months, as well as to give the green light to the Defense Production Act, which gives the government more control over industrial production, to produce other necessary items like syringes.
For now, however, the United States is still expected to see a high number of deaths in the coming days and the hospitals remain full. Public health officials are also trying to analyze the growing threat of the new Covid-19 variants. These new virus mutations were originally thought to only accelerate the number of cases, but the head of Germany’s disease control center said on Friday that the UK variant also appeared to be causing a “more difficult course of disease, “according to the Wall Street Journal.