“Covid-19 Live Updates: U.S. Hits Record Daily Death Toll, With Worse Likely to Come”, The New York Times
Sabrina Tavernise, Sheila Kaplan and
With cases in the U.S. blowing past the spring peak, more than 100,000 people were hospitalized for Covid-19 on Wednesday. Experts warn that the nation could be facing the most difficult time in its public health history.
The day was still young when Dr. Robert Redfield, the head the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions, took the virtual stage at a business group gathering and offered the starkest of warnings about the months of pandemic ahead.
“I actually believe they’re going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation,” Dr. Redfield declared to the Chamber of Commerce Foundation on Wednesday morning.
As the day unfolded, the numbers did nothing to undercut him.
First, Americans learned in the afternoon that the number of people in the hospital for Covid-19 was more than 100,000. That was nearly double the high point in spring, when the pandemic hit its first peak, according to the Covid Tracking Project.
Then, not long after evening fell, the U.S. recorded its greatest daily death toll ever: 2,760, with no sign of a letup. That surpassed the record set in April, when the pandemic hit its first peak in the country. And with hospitals filling, the days ahead seemed all too clear.
“If you tell me the hospitalizations are up this week, I’ll tell you that several weeks down the road, the deaths will be up,” said Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Dr. Redfield told the Chamber of Commerce Foundation that the winter might prove devastating, and that perhaps by February, 450,000 Americans might be dead. (The number now is about 273,000.)
But the C.D.C. head seeded his caution with a grain of hope. Americans, he said, could reduce their losses through simple measures like wearing a mask.
“It’s not a fait accompli,” he said. “We’re not defenseless. The truth is that mitigation works. But it’s not going to work if half of us do what we need to do. Probably not even if three-quarters do.”
For all the similarities to the spring pandemic peak, there are some profound differences.
In April, the virus and the deaths were concentrated in New York and New England. Today, the pandemic’s toll is being felt across the country.
Still more sobering: The April peak represented the worst moment of spring. It was followed by a decline in deaths as lockdowns were imposed and many Americans altered their behavior.
And as staggering as it is, the death toll reported Wednesday appears likely only to worsen, experts say, as the delayed effects of Thanksgiving travel are felt. And many Americans are now weighing how to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s.
“This is a much worse situation,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health. “Summer is not going to bail us out. Things are not shut down.”
There are other differences from the spring, some more hopeful.
Though coronavirus cases have exploded recently, with new infections topping one million a week, a far smaller proportion of people who get the virus these days are dying from it. National data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the share of cases resulting in death dropped from 6.7 percent in April to 1.9 percent in September.
But over all, deaths in the United States are still climbing.
“It’s terrible, because it was avoidable,” said Dr. Leora Horwitz, an associate professor of population health and medicine at the N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine. “We are a world outlier in this regard.”