New York kicked off the new year with grimer COVID-19 news as the daily death toll from the virus rose to 166 on Thursday, the highest one-day death toll since May, while the number of coronavirus cases nationwide exceeded 20 million has.
Meanwhile, officials in Florida are investigating a newfound case of a mutant variant of the coronavirus that appears to be much more contagious – the first case confirmed on the East Coast after the variant was found in California and Colorado several days ago.
Twenty-three Long Islanders were among those who died Thursday from the disease: 12 from Suffolk and 11 from Nassau, according to a news release from Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s office.
During the summer, the number of people dying of COVID-19 nationwide daily was in the single digits. On December 14, for the first time since spring, the daily death toll exceeded 100 – and it has remained there every day since then, except for one.
The 166 deaths Thursday were 136 on Wednesday and are the highest number since May 12, according to the state health department.
More than 30,200 New Yorkers have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic began, including 2,401 people in Nassau and 2,311 in Suffolk.
The confirmed death toll across the country differs from the count by the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, which uses different calculations – it contains probable as well as confirmed COVID-19 deaths – and cites the number of deaths in New York to Friday afternoon as 38,155 .
Nationwide as of Friday afternoon, the death toll exceeded 347,000 and the number of cases, according to Johns Hopkins, stood at nearly 20.1 million. This is by far the highest number of cases in the world, and almost double the number of confirmed cases in the country hit the second worst, India, although the population of India is more than four times larger.
Cuomo’s office dropped to 7,886 in the country on Thursday. That’s 49 from the previous day, but the effects of Christmas, New Year’s Eve and other holiday gatherings have not yet been seen, as hospitalizations often delay a few weeks with new infections.
Nearly 1,300 of those admitted to the hospital were in intensive care, with 776 intubations.
The picture on LI
The percentage of coronavirus tests that came back positive has dropped again in Suffolk and Nassau, although the number is much higher than just a few weeks ago.
In Suffolk, 9.7% of tests returned positive on Thursday, for a total of 1,874 new cases. The rate was 10.5% on Wednesday and 12.8% on Tuesday.
In Nassau County, 1556 people – 8% of the total number of results – were newly tested positive for the virus. It drops from 8.9% on Wednesday and 10.5% on Tuesday.
Overall, the positivity was 7.52%.
Laura Curran, CEO of Nassau County, said in a statement that “although the distribution and availability of the vaccine is a bright light at the end of this dark tunnel, we are still in the tunnel. Continue to common sense to use, and avoid large gatherings so that we can kick off 2021 with a clear path to recovery. ‘
According to the state, New York had 5,299 new cases of coronavirus.
Variant found in Florida
In Florida, the state health department reported late Thursday that a man in his twenties with no recent travel history had the coronavirus variant, called the British strain, to the United Kingdom, where it was first detected. is and where it spread rapidly across southern England. .
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working with the Florida Department of Health to investigate the matter.
The variant is a mutated and probably more contagious strain of the new coronavirus. About half of the 350,000 known strains of the virus come from the UK, where authorities are pushing for reactivation of field hospitals to cope with the expected pressure of new patients.
In San Diego County, California, officials said they believe the variant is ‘widespread in the community’ because none of the four men there were diagnosed with the strain, had any interaction with each other and at least three were not outside. have not traveled the country.
At present, experts say they expect the variant to have little or no effect on the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The discovery of the variant in California came Wednesday when state hospitals are on the verge of a catastrophe, according to a health official there. critically ill.
Infections in California have been driving out of control for weeks, and the state has regularly set new records for infections and deaths. The state now has the worst coronavirus diagnosis in the country.
California has nearly 26,000 COVID-19 deaths, making it the third largest after New York and Texas, where more than 27,000 people died.
With AP
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David Olson covers healthcare. He has been working at Newsday since 2015 and has previously discussed immigration, multicultural issues and religion at The Press Enterprise in Southern California.