Ominous numbers: U.S. sets record for virus deaths.
US sets single-day record for virus deaths at 3,157
States drafted plans Thursday for who will go to the front of the line when the first doses of COVID-19 vaccine become available later this month, as U.S. deaths from the outbreak eclipsed 3,100 in a single day, obliterating the record set last spring.
With initial supplies of the vaccine certain to be limited, governors and other state officials are weighing health and economic concerns in deciding the order in which the shots will be dispensed.
States face a Friday deadline to submit requests for doses of the Pfizer vaccine and specify where they should be shipped, and many appear to be heeding nonbinding guidelines adopted this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to put health care workers and nursing home patients first.
But they’re also facing a multitude of decisions about other categories of residents, some of them specific to their states, some of them vital to their economies.
Colorado’s draft plan, which is being revised, puts ski resort workers who share close quarters in the second phase of vaccine distribution, in recognition of the $6 billion industry’s linchpin role in the state’s economy.
In Nevada, where officials have stressed the importance of bringing tourists back to the Las Vegas Strip, authorities initially put nursing home patients in the third phase, behind police
officers, teachers, airport operators and retail workers. But they said Wednesday that they would revise that plan to conform to the CDC guidance.
Plans for the vaccine are being released as the surging pandemic swamps U.S. hospitals and leaves nurses and other medical workers shorthanded and burned out.
Nationwide the coronavirus is blamed for over 275,000 deaths and 14 million confirmed infections.
The U.S. recorded a record 3,157 deaths on Wednesday, according to the tally kept by Johns Hopkins University. That’s more than the number of people killed on 9/11, and shattered the mark of 2,603, set on April 15, when the New York metropolitan area was the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak.
The number of Americans in the hos
pital with the coronavirus likewise hit an all-time high Wednesday at more than 100,000, according to the COVID Tracking Project. The figure has more than doubled over the past month. And new cases per day have begun topping 200,000, by Johns Hopkins’ count.
The three main benchmarks showed a country slipping deeper into crisis, with perhaps the worst yet to come – in part because of the delayed effects from Thanksgiving, when millions of Americans disregarded warnings to stay home and celebrate only with members of their household.
Health authorities had warned that the numbers could fluctuate strongly before and after Thanksgiving, as they often do around holidays and weekends.