US Covid-19 deaths: December is the deadliest month since the pandemic began

The grim death toll comes on the heels of several brutal months for the US, with Covid-19 ravaging communities from coast to coast, crippling hospital systems and prompting new widespread restrictions.

“We very well might see a post-seasonal — in the sense of Christmas, New Years — surge,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning, pointing to holiday travel and private gatherings taking place despite the advice of health experts.

The nation’s top infectious disease expert described the potential rise in cases as a “surge upon a surge,” telling CNN’s Dana Bash, “If you look at the slope, the incline of cases that we’ve experienced as we’ve gone into the late fall and soon to be early winter, it is really quite troubling.”

More than 1.1 million people were screened at airports on Saturday, according to the TSA, marking the third busiest day for US air travel since March. More than 616,000 were screened on Christmas Day alone, and hundreds of thousands more traveled in the days leading up to the holiday.

Covid-19 hospitalization numbers across the US are already at record-high levels. On Saturday, the country recorded its fifth-highest number of hospitalizations — with more than 117,300 Covid-19 patients nationwide, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

Another surge of cases and hospitalizations will, inevitably, mean more deaths — on top of an already devastating death toll.

“When you’re dealing with a baseline of 200,000 new cases a day and about 2,000 deaths per day, with the hospitalizations over 120,000, we are really at a very critical point,” Fauci said.

“As we get into the next few weeks,” he added, “it might actually get worse.”

Health officials brace for a surge in US Covid-19 cases after the holidays

Nearly 332,000 Americans have died of Covid-19. Another 193,000 could lose their lives over the next two months, according to predictions from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

“The projections are just nightmarish,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, an infectious disease specialist at the Baylor College of Medicine. “People can still save the lives of their loved ones by practicing that social distancing and masks. And remember, vaccines are around the corner.”

Vaccine roll-out slow in some places, expert says

Nearly 2 million Covid-19 vaccine doses have been administered in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than 9.5 million doses have been distributed.

Those numbers now include both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines. And while there are lags in data reporting, federal officials had previously said they would vaccinate 20 million people by the end of the year.

Asked about the apparent slow rollout of vaccines, Fauci told CNN Sunday that large, comprehensive vaccine programs with a new vaccine start slow before gaining momentum.

“I’m pretty confident that as we gain more and more momentum, as we transition from December to January and then February to March, I believe we will catch up…

Go to the news source: US Covid-19 deaths: December is the deadliest month since the pandemic began — …