Coronavirus infections in the US have exceeded 24 million cases and over 60% of these were only reported since Election Day.
In recent months since Election Day, the number of coronavirus cases in the US surged dramatically, adding hundreds of thousands of new cases on a daily basis, while Covid-19 hospitalizations and the death toll reached all-time highs.
The COVID Tracking Project reported that over 123,800 Americans are currently hospitalized with Covid-19. Although this may be lower than its January 6 peak of 132,476, hospitals and health care workers are still under extreme pressure to accommodate patients.
In the city of Laredo in Texas, residents are being urged to stay home because hospitals have run out of ICU beds. City spokeswoman Noraida Negron mentioned that they had to send multiple patients to hospitals in other areas to accommodate them.
January's screaming level of transmission
The US has added a whopping 3.9 million new Covid-19 cases and over 51,000 coronavirus-related deaths just past the midway of January.
According to an expert, the number of new Covid-19 cases in the US represent a ‘screaming level’ of transmission in the country. The total Covid-19 death toll in the US is nearing 400,000.
This number of deaths goes beyond the combined number of Americans who died in World War I, Vietnam War and the Korean War and is almost as many as those who died in World War II.
Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said: "The numbers are quite dire. This is a screaming level of transmission across the United States and people are scared, people are upset."
"There is an enormous amount of work that’s going to have to happen starting January 20," Dr. Hotez added.
A recent study indicated that hundreds of thousands more infections continue to be reported on a daily basis and that the US has had over 200,000 daily cases on all but three days this January.
Since the actual number of cases may be several times higher than those reported, Hotez estimates that there were actually almost a million new cases daily in the US.
Despite the ongoing and upcoming vaccination efforts, experts have warned that the country is still not out of danger. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, incoming director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said there are "dark weeks ahead."
Dr. Walensky warned: "By the middle of February, we expect half a million deaths in this country. We still yet haven’t seen the ramifications of what happened from the holiday travel, from holiday gathering, in terms of high rates of hospitalizations and the deaths thereafter."
Keeping cautious
While there is a downtrend of new cases since its peak last week, experts are calling on Americans to remain vigilant.
Infectious disease expert Amesh Adalja said: "The virus has established itself in the human population and it's not going anywhere. We're going to see a lot of transmission until we cross the threshold for herd immunity."
Additionally, the new variant that was first detected in the UK is spreading across the country. While this variant does not seem more deadly, experts have warned that it is more easily transmittable.
Data from the CDC shows that more than 120 cases of the new variant have been found in 20 states and it the agency warned that a model trajectory of the variant in the US "exhibits rapid growth in early 2021."
Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, pointed out: "In some ways, it's much worse that it is more contagious because it will infect many, many more people and unfortunately probably will end up killing more people."
