(Reuters) – US coronavirus cases crossed the 20 million mark on Friday as officials sought to speed up vaccinations and a more contagious variant in Colorado, California and Florida.
The United States has seen an increase in the number of daily deaths under COVID-19 since Thanksgiving with 78,000 lives lost in December. A total of 345,000 have died from COVID-19, or one in every 950 residents of the U.S., since the virus first appeared in China in 2019. (Graph: tmsnrt.rs/34pvUyi)
To delay the death toll, Senator Mitt Romney on Friday called on the U.S. government to combat veterinarians and medics to hand out coronavirus vaccines.
The US rate of new COVID-19 infections increased in the second half of last year. An analysis of Reuters data shows that it took 200 days to reach the first 5 million cases, 93 days to go from 5 million cases to 10 million, 31 days from 10 million to 15 million cases and only 25 days of 15 million to 20 million cases.
California has the most cases of any state, with about 2.28 million infections, followed by Texas with 1.76 million cases and Florida with 1.32 million cases.
The United States is increasing an average of 186,000 cases per day, compared to a peak in mid-December of more than 218,000 new infections per day. Health officials have warned that matters are likely to increase again after holiday gatherings.
There are currently more than 125,000 COVID-19 patients in U.S. hospitals, up 25% in the past month.
While the United States has approved two vaccines, the rollout is going slower than the government had hoped. About 2.8 million Americans received a COVID-19 vaccine by December 31, which did not reach the 20 million target.
Despite early setbacks in the deployment of vaccines, the leading US specialist in infectious diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said on Wednesday that he expects Americans to achieve enough collective COVID-19 immunity by the fall of 2021 through vaccinations.
The government’s goal is to have 100 million gunshots by 1 March.
Reporting by Anurag Moon and Kavya B in Bengaluru; Edited by Lisa Shumaker