HOSPITALIZATIONS, DEATHS HIT RECORD SINGLE-DAY HIGH

CDC issues new guidance on testing and quarantines

The United States on Wednesday recorded its single-worst daily death toll since the pandemic began, and on a day when COVID-19 hospitalizations also hit an all-time high, the pace of loss showed no signs of slowing.

Not since spring, during the pandemic’s first peak, were so many deaths reported. The high point then was 2,752 deaths on April 15. On Wednesday, it was at least 2,760.

Hospitalizations from the virus topped 100,000 — more than double the number at the beginning of November. That is a clear indicator of what the days ahead may look like, experts say.

“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.

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.”

Though coronavirus cases have exploded recently, with new infections topping 1 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 overall, deaths in the United States are still climbing.

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidance on quarantines.

The standard 14-day coronavirus quarantines potentially can be shortened to 10 days or even seven, the CDC said in an effort to boost compliance with one of the most important tools for limiting spread of the virus.

The move reflects the agency’s recognition that the two-week quarantine rule is onerous for many people and that most of the public health benefit from quarantining people exposed to the virus can be gained with a more flexible approach.

The CDC acknowledges that this new guidance involves a trade-off. The existing 14-day recommendation reflects the ability of the virus to incubate for a long period before symptoms appear. But lack of compliance — for example, among people who are reluctant to talk to contact tracers because they fear they or their friends or family members could lose a job or two weeks of income — can undermine the public health benefit from that standard.

CDC officials also announced new guidance for testing before and after traveling: Someone planning a trip should get a test one to three days in advance and then be tested again three to five days after returning. And the agency reiterated its preThanksgiving recommendation against travel this holiday season.