The number of deaths in Covid-19 in the USA exceeds 250,000 as cases continue to increase
Hospitals are warning that they are running out of beds and staff as the pandemic increases throughout the country.
Hospital beds are located in Reno, Nevada on November 11, 2020, in the parking garage of the Renown Regional Medical Center, which has been converted into an alternative care facility for Covid patients Lucia Starbuck / KUNR Public Radio / Report for America on AP
Deaths from US coronaviruses exceeded a quarter of a million on Wednesday as the pandemic continued to ravage the country and threatened to overwhelm healthcare systems.
The milestone, based on a tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University, was reached when the nation averaged more than 150,000 cases per day last week and about 70,000 people were hospitalized, according to the Covid Tracking Project.
According to the Johns Hopkins Tracker, the U.S. continues to lead the world in deaths and confirmed cases with approximately 11.5 million infections. The U.S. is responsible for about 18.5 percent of coronavirus deaths worldwide, although it accounts for only 4 percent of the world’s population. Brazil has the second-highest total number of deaths with 166,699, followed by India with 130,993.
Public health officials have long warned of a bleak winter and rising daily death rates that will pass the peak of the summer wave. However, the quarter-million mark is particularly strong when one considers that government scientists last spring considered 240,000 U.S. deaths a high-end estimate.
Meanwhile, hospitals in the Midwest and elsewhere are already warning that there are not enough doctors and nurses to cope with the rising number of cases. According to HHS, 22 percent of hospitals – with the exception of those that focus on psychiatric care or rehabilitation – reported staff shortages in mid-November, according to HHS. Intensive care units are almost fully utilized, and several states have 90 percent capacity utilization in all facilities.
In some regions, large hospitals are again discontinuing all elective procedures in order to free up scarce staff and resources. Unlike in the spring, the nationwide reach of the current increase means that fewer healthcare workers are traveling to hot spots.
“The ability to obtain ventilators and PSA has increased significantly, but we have no way to hire more staff,” said Lewis Kaplan, president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine, in an interview. “There is no one left.”
States and communities across the country are again imposing restrictions on indoor restaurants and group meetings, and some Red State governors who previously resisted mask mandates during the pandemic have reversed their course.
One ray of hope is the promising results of vaccination trials, which have raised hopes that the pandemic could finally be ended. According to Anthony Fauci, the government’s leading expert on infectious diseases, the distribution of viable vaccines will probably take months and will not be available to the general population until April at the earliest. Healthcare workers and medically vulnerable Americans will be among the first to benefit.
