U.S. DEATH TOLL FROM COVID HITS 1 MILLION
The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 hit 1 million on Monday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.
The confirmed number of dead is equivalent to a 9/11 attack every day for 336 days. It is roughly equal to how many Americans died in the Civil War and World War II combined.
“It is hard to imagine a million people plucked from this earth,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, who leads a new pandemic center at the Brown University School of Public Health in Providence, R.I. “It’s still happening and we are letting it happen.”
Three out of every four deaths were people 65 and older. More men died than women. White people made up most of the deaths overall. But Black, Hispanic and Native American people have been roughly twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as their White counterparts.
Most deaths happened in urban areas, but rural places — where opposition to masks and vaccinations tends to run high — paid a heavy price at times.
The death toll less than 21⁄2 years into the outbreak is based on death certificate data compiled by the CDC. But the real number of lives lost to COVID-19, either directly or indirectly, as a result the disruption of the health care system, is believed to be far higher.
The U.S. has the highest reported COVID-19 death toll of any country, though health experts have long suspected that the real number of deaths in places such as India, Brazil and Russia is higher than the official figures.
The milestone comes more than three months after the U.S. reached 900,000 dead. The pace has slowed since a harrowing winter surge fueled by the Omicron variant.
The U.S. is averaging about 300 COVID-19 deaths per day, compared with a peak of about 3,400 a day in January 2021. New cases are on the rise again, climbing more than 60 percent in the past two weeks to an average of about 86,000 a day — still well below the all-time high of more than 800,000, reached when the Omicron variant was raging during the winter.
The largest bell at Washington National Cathedral in the nation’s capital tolled 1,000 times a week ago, once for every 1,000 deaths. President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered flags lowered to half-staff and called each life “an irreplaceable loss.”
“As a nation, we must not grow numb to such sorrow,” he said in a statement. “To heal, we must remember.”
More than half the deaths occurred since vaccines became available in December of 2020. Twothirds of Americans are fully vaccinated, and nearly half of them have had at least one booster dose. But demand for the vaccine has plummeted, and the campaign to put shots in arms has been
plagued by misinformation, distrust and political polarization.
Unvaccinated people have a 10 times greater risk of dying of COVID-19 than the fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.
“To me, that is what is just so particularly heartbreaking,” Nuzzo said. Vaccines are safe and greatly reduce the likelihood of severe illness, she said. They “largely take the possibility of death off the table.”
The new surge is likely worse than what is being recorded because many coronavirus infections are not included in the official tally. Many positive results from at-home virus tests go unrecorded.
Hospitalizations are increasing across the country, though more slowly than new cases. The number of patients with coronavirus in U.S. hospitals surpassed 21,000 over the past week — well below the peak levels seen in prior surges but still a 23 percent rise from two weeks ago.
The rise shouldn’t surprise people, given the large number of unvaccinated Americans, said Ajay Sethi, an associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In Wisconsin, for example, a rise in hospitalizations is “inevitable as long as we have so many people who are vulnerable,” he said.
New-case reports in the state have increased by 81 percent from the average two weeks ago. Deaths related to the virus have increased to an average of five a day.
Health officials across the Midwest are beginning to warn high-risk people to once again wear masks indoors and to get booster shots, as counties in several states move to higher-risk COVID-19 community levels, as defined by the CDC.
On Monday, New York City health officials, citing high community transmission and rising hospitalizations, strongly recommended that all individuals wear medical-grade masks in offices, grocery stores and other public indoor settings citywide.
The new recommendations, issued in a health advisory by the city health commissioner, came as the city approached the orange, or “high” alert, level for the coronavirus, a benchmark it expects to hit in the coming days. The new advisory also called on those who are at increased risk for severe illness, including unvaccinated children younger than 5 and people older than 65, to avoid nonessential indoor gatherings and crowded settings.
New York Mayor Eric Adams, who rolled back school masking regulations and vaccination checks at restaurants and theaters months ago, has not signaled a willingness to return to mandates, though he has said he is watching the situation closely.
“We are not at the point of mandating masks,” Adams said Monday, adding that city hospitals were not overwhelmed and that there were new tools, like antivirals, to deal with the virus. “We are not at the point of doing anything other than urging New Yorkers, while you are indoors in large settings, social settings, wear your masks.”
Rising case rates caused health officials across California to issue warnings to reiterate recommendations to wear masks in indoor public settings, from Fresno County, where case rates have doubled recently to nearly 70 cases a week for every 100,000 residents, to the San Francisco Bay Area, which is reporting more than 200 cases a week for every 100,000 residents. A weekly coronavirus case rate of 50 or more is considered substantial, and 100 or more is considered high.
“People are at an elevated risk of contracting COVID-19 right now,” Dr. Susan Philip, the San Francisco health officer, said in a statement. “Wearing a mask in indoor, public settings is a smart move, as is staying up-to-date on vaccinations and, importantly, having a plan to reach a doctor if you get infected.”
Hospitalizations are rising in the state, but still remain at relatively low levels. As of Saturday, there were 1,378 coronavirus-positive patients in California’s hospitals, up 16 percent over the prior week. The number of coronavirus-positive patients in intensive care units remains at near-record lows, hovering between about 140 and 180 on any particular day so far this month.