U.S. passes 13 million COVID-19 cases
CDC estimates true number of infections closer to 53 million, not 7.2 million reported through September
The United States surpassed 13 million known coronavirus cases on Friday, after a Thanksgiving upended by the pandemic and amid a Black Friday hampered by virus fears and capacity limits on stores.
Here are some significant developments:
South Dakota became the latest state where more than one in every 1,000 residents have now died of coronavirus-related causes, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. Daily virus deaths in the United States have reached levels not seen since early in the pandemic.
The Transportation Security Administration reported screening 560,902 people on Thanksgiving, about one-third of the nearly 1.6 million screened on the holiday last year.
Traditional Black Friday “doorbuster” sales have mostly moved online, and retailers are staggering their in-store offers to allow for social distancing.
Questions swirled about the coronavirus vaccine developed by pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca with the University of Oxford, one of three early contenders for approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Critics suggested the company was less than transparent and wondered whether its most promising results would survive scrutiny.
A new study from researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that just 1 in 8 coronavirus infections nationwide were reported through the end of September. While roughly 7.2 million infections were reported in that time frame, the CDC estimates that the true number may have been closer to 52.9 million.
British officials are attempting to swab the entire population of Liverpool to test whether mass screening can help curtail the virus.
Even with several states not reporting their new infections Thursday, the United States still logged more than 127,500 cases, nearly 1,400 new deaths and roughly 90,500 current hospitalizations, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. The impact of the holiday on the virus’s spread may not be apparent until next week, when jurisdictions return to reporting their data regularly and people who may have gotten the virus at family gatherings receive their test results.
Health officials asked people who gathered with others for Thanksgiving to get tested for the virus. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and health-policy professor at George Washington University, said on CNN that they should spend time outdoors if they’re still around relatives and then self-quarantine when they return home.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, predicted that Christmas and New Year’s celebrations will be as subdued as Thanksgiving.
“If the surge takes a turn of continuing to go up and you have the sustained greater than 100,000 infections a day and 1,300 deaths per day and the count keeps going up and up . . . I don’t see it being any different during the Christmas and New Year’s holidays than during Thanksgiving,” he told USA Today in an article published Friday.
As cases, deaths and hospitalizations continue to trend upward, eyes are trained on the possibility that vaccine distribution could begin as soon as December, pending regulatory approval.