U.S. Exceeds 400,000 Coronavirus Deaths

According to a Reuters tally, the U.S. coronavirus deaths toll topped 400,000 on Tuesday, as the country hardest hit by the pandemic struggled to meet the demand for vaccines to stem the spread of infection.

States including Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, and Vermont have shown signs of vaccine supply strain and are asking for more doses of both approved vaccines, one from Pfizer-BioNTech and the other from Moderna.

The number of deaths has spiked since Christmas.

According to a Reuters analysis, during the past three weeks, U.S. coronavirus fatalities have totaled 63,793 compared with 52,715 deaths in the three weeks before Christmas, an increase of 21%.

The daily COVID-19 death numbers crossed 4,000 for the first time on Jan. 6.

According to the Reuters tally, eighteen U.S. states, including California, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington, reported their highest daily death numbers in January.

The number of coronavirus cases has risen across all U.S. regions and on Tuesday crossed 24 million since the pandemic started.

While seriously ill patients are straining healthcare systems in parts of the country, especially in California, the national rate of hospitalizations has leveled off in the past two weeks and was near 124,000 on Tuesday.

President-elect Joe Biden, due to be sworn in on Wednesday, has proposed a $1.9 trillion aid package that includes $415 billion to bolster the response to the virus and the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, some $1 trillion in direct relief to households, and roughly $440 billion for small businesses and communities hardest hit by the pandemic.

The United States lost more than 23,000 lives to COVID-19 last week, setting a record for the third week in a row, though the number of new infections and the number of patients in hospitals fell from the previous seven days.

According to a Reuters analysis, the country reported more than 1.5 million new cases of COVID-19 in the week ended Jan. 17, down 12% from the previous week, and only eight out of 50 states posted a rise in new infections of state and county reports.

The average number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals fell 2% from the previous week to about 128,000, the first drop since October, according to a Reuters analysis of data from the volunteer-run COVID Tracking Project.

Patients are held in the hallway as St. Mary Medical Center resorts to using tents outside to handle the overflow at its 200 bed hospital in Apple Valley, California, U.S., January 12, 2021. REUTERS/Mike Blake

While some health officials have expressed concerns about a more contagious variant of the virus spreading across the United States, California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly took comfort that California hospitals were admitting 2,500 coronavirus patients every 24 hours, down from 3,500 a day.

Ghaly told reporters last week that it was “the biggest signal to me that things are beginning to flatten and potentially improve.”

Cumulatively, nearly 400,000 people have died from the novel coronavirus or one in every 822 U.S. residents. The country set a single-day record with 4,336 deaths reported on Jan. 12, according to the Reuters analysis of state and county reports.

Alabama had the highest death rate per capita last week at 16 per 100,000 residents, followed by Arizona at 15.5 per 100,000 people.

The United States set a record on Jan. 15 with over 2.2 million COVID-19 tests performed in a single day. Last week, 11% of tests came back positive for the virus, down from 13.3% the prior week, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project. The highest positive test rates were in Iowa at 46%, Idaho at 40%, and Pennsylvania at 35%.

(Writing by Lisa Shumaker, editing by Tiffany Wu)

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