CORONAVIRUS
Daily death toll inU.S. reaches highest level sinceMay.
The surging coronavirus is taking an increasingly dire toll across the U.S. just as a vaccine appears close at hand, with the country now averaging over 1,300 COVID-19 deaths per day — the highest level since the calamitous spring in and around New York City.
The overall U.S. death toll has reached more than 254,000, by far the most in the world. Confirmed infections have eclipsed more than 11.8 million, after the biggest one-day gain on record Thursday — almost 188,000. And the number of people in hospitals with COVID-19 hit another high, at more than 80,000.
With health experts afraid that Thanksgiving travel and holiday gatherings nextweek will fuel the spread of the virus, many states and cities are imposing near-lockdowns or other restrictions. California ordered a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew that starts Saturday and covers 94 percent of the state’s 40 million residents.
El Paso County, where more than 300 people have died from COVID-19 since October, is advertising jobs for morgue workers capable of lifting bodiesweighing 175 pounds or more. Officials are
offering more than $27 an hour for work described as not only physically arduous but “emotionally taxing as well.”
The county had already begun paying jail inmates $2 an hour to help move corpses and has ordered at least 10 refrigerated trucks as morgues run out of room.
COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. are at their highest level since late May, when the Northeast was emerging from the first wave of the crisis. They peaked at about 2,200 a day in late April, when New York City was the epicenter and bodieswere being loaded onto refrigerated trucks by forklift.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, failed to persuade leaders of the GOP-controlled Legislature to reject a bill thatwould lim
it his administration’s power to deal with the crisis.
At issue is a Senate bill that would ban the state health department from issuing mandatory quarantine orders enforced against people who are not sick or exposed to disease — such as the order announced by the governor Tuesday setting a 10 p.m. curfew.
DeWine said he will veto the bill when it reaches his desk. Republicans in the House and the Senate have enough votes to override the veto if they choose.
“This bill isadisaster,” DeWine said Thursday. “This is not a bill that can become law.”
In California, the curfew will be in place in 41 of the state’s 58 counties. Its effect will depend heavily on voluntary compliance.
Sheriffs of some counties said they won’t enforce it. Under the rules, people who are not on essential errands must stay home after 10 p.m.
The curfew is less strict than the near-total ban on nonessential business and travel that Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, imposed in March and which he credited with flattening the rate of COVID-19 cases.
In Kansas, new cases have risentoanaverageof over 2,700per day, nearly four times higher than a month ago.
“Our hospitals are overwhelmed with coronavirus patients. Health care workers are burned out,” Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly said Friday.
In rural western Kansas, the number of people seeking testing at aKearny County clinic doubled over the past week to about 80 per day, said Dr. Lane Olson, a family practice doctor.
In Arizona, four Democratic mayors urged Republican Gov. Doug Ducey to impose a statewide requirement for people to wear masks in public. The move came as health officials reported more than 4,000 additional COVID-19 cases for the second consecutive day.
Ducey’s chief of staff, Daniel Scarpinato, pushed back on the request, saying the mayors are doing little to enforce their own mask ordinances or ensure that existing safety measures put in place by the governor are being enforced.