The United States reached Tuesday’s grimmest milestone in the pandemic. According to the CDC figures, there are now more deaths due to Covid in 2021 that there were in 2020. Many Americans may find this difficult to believe, given how difficult it was last year.
Covid-19 claimed 362,208 American deaths by the end 2020. Yesterday, 773,779 people died from the pandemic. This means that America has lost 411,571 people to the virus so far in 2021. The year is still just five weeks old. Another 40,000 souls could die before January 1, 2022, with daily deaths at an average of 1,000.
Early this summer, it appeared that the pandemic was over. By June 21, the number of new daily cases in the U.S. had dropped to 8,654, down from an average of 300,000 per night in winter. Vaccine adoption was encouraging hope that Covid-19 would be a manageable virus. President Biden spoke out in April to Congress and said that the nation is making progress against Covid.
The summer surge saw cases rise to 200,000 per day with an average of over 2,000 deaths daily. Cases are now at a 7-day average of around 100,000. That’s far better than the 7-day average of nearly 175,000 on the same day last year.
However, the number of cases among children has risen to 32% in the last two weeks. According toThe New York Times, hospitalizations in nearing capacity or completely overwhelmed in areas such as Buffalo, Michigan, Colorado, Minnesota and California ruralFears of another winter surge are rife to close the year.