Daily virus deaths highest since May
Holiday gatherings may fuel spread, experts fear
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 about 254,000. 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 the hospital with COVID-19 hit another all-time high at more than 80,000.
With health experts deeply afraid Thanksgiving travel and holiday gatherings next week 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 starting Saturday, covering 94 percent of the state’s 40 million residents.
The Texas border county of El
Paso, where more than 300 people have died from COVID-19 since October, is advertising jobs for morgue workers capable of lifting bodies weighing 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.
In California, the curfew affects 41 of the state’s 58 counties. Its impact will depend heavily on voluntary compliance. Some county sheriffs said they won’t enforce the rules for people not on essential errands to stay home after 10 p.m.
The curfew is less strict than the near-total ban on nonessential business and travel that Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed in March, which he credited with flattening the rate of COVID-19 cases.
Rocco Temasamani, who was selling jewelry Friday at San Diego’s Ocean Beach, said the curfew will do little to curb the coronavirus and will instead anger people who consider it government overreach.
“It’s really, really throwing gasoline on a fire,” said Temasamani, who was skeptical that police will enforce the curfew.
In other developments:
■ The state agency that owns and operates Boston Logan International Airport must cut about 25 percent of its workforce amid a $400 million budget deficit brought on by a steep drop in travel during the coronavirus pandemic, agency executives say.
■ Former U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’amato has been hospitalized with COVID-19. The New York Post reported Friday that the New York Republican was being treated at a Long Island hospital.
■ A judge on Friday declined to halt a three-week ban on indoor dining in Michigan that is one of the most recent coronavirus restrictions imposed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration.