NEW YORK (Reuters) – More Americans were hospitalized with COVID-19 on Wednesday than ever before since the pandemic began, as total coronavirus infections exceeded the 21 million mark, deaths rose in much of the United States and a historic vaccination attempt was behind.
U.S. COVID-19 hospitalizations reached a record 130,834 late Tuesday, according to a Reuters version of public health data, while 3,684 reported the second-highest death toll in the pandemic.
The terrible toll means someone dies of COVID-19 every 24 seconds in the United States on Tuesday. With a total death toll of more than 357,000, one in every 914 residents in America has died from COVID-19 since the pandemic began, according to a Reuters analysis.
In California, health authorities have ordered hospitals in more than a dozen southern and central provinces overloaded with COVID-19 patients to stop elective surgery for at least three weeks.
The order, issued late Tuesday by the Department of Public Health, applies to 14 counties, including Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego, where critical care capacity in the hospital has been expanded.
Total U.S. COVID-19 cases surpassed the 21 million mark on Wednesday, and with many healthcare systems reaching a breaking point, pressure was placed on government and local officials to distribute the two authorized vaccines from Pfizer Inc. with partner BioNTech SE and Modern to accelerate. Inc.
The lack of a federal blueprint for the crucial final step to get the vaccines into tens of millions of guns left government officials and local officials in charge of the monumental effort, which created a patchwork quilt of various plans in the United States.
VACCINE MEGA HUBS AND THE NATIONAL WATCH
Some states have called for additional resources to expedite vaccine administrations. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper on Tuesday mobilized the state’s national guard to provide “support to local health care providers” to spread coronavirus vaccines faster.
“We will use all necessary resources and personnel,” Cooper said in a statement.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan also announced that state emergency national emergency response teams will lend a hand to local health departments in their vaccination efforts.
“At the current rate of allocation,” Hogan said, the state expects to be able to vaccinate the initiative of the 1b priority group – people aged 75 and over and essential workers – by the end of January.
In New York City, where Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo splashed over the slow vaccine administration, officials said Wednesday the city is sharpening its “vaccine buttons”, which will include 15 seats by January 16, five “mega “” sites between them. Officials have the ability to vaccinate 100,000 New Yorkers a week, the official said.
According to the data published on Wednesday, the city completed about 10,000 shots on Tuesday.
De Blasio also said in a newsletter that home health supporters and some members of the New York Police Department could receive the vaccine for the first time on Wednesday.
After blaming local officials earlier this week for the slow pace of vaccinations at some New York hospitals, Cuomo said Wednesday that the rate among hospital staff in the country has tripled to 30,000 vaccinations a day since Monday.
In Florida, which set a new one-day record of coronavirus cases, Ron DeSantis announced that the Hard Rock Stadium in the metropolitan area of Miami was turning its testing operations into a vaccination center.
Another three million doses of the two vaccines were sent to U.S. states on Tuesday, Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller said in a statement, bringing the total to more than 19 million doses in 21 days, of which only a fraction has been administered so far. .
Both authorized vaccines require two doses of three to four weeks apart. Healthcare workers in several states this week began receiving their second dose of Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, which was approved before the Moderna shot.
The US government is considering halving the doses of Moderna’s vaccine to release the stock for more vaccinations. But scientists from Moderna and the National Institutes of Health said it could take two months to investigate whether the halved doses would be effective.
Meanwhile, CVS Health Corp said on Wednesday it expects to complete the first doses of COVID-19 vaccines at nearly 8,000 U.S. nursing homes by January 25.
A massive global vaccination campaign is needed to establish a level of herd immunity that could put an end to the devastating pandemic that is raging in large parts of the United States and many other countries, with more transmissible variants of the virus.
A variant swept across the UK has been reported in at least five U.S. states, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins said Wednesday in an interview with the Washington Post.
“We’ve now seen the same virus in the United States in at least five states in the US, and I would be surprised if it doesn’t grow fast,” Collins said, noting that it doesn’t look more serious. .
Reporting by Maria Caspani, Peter Szekely in New York and Gabriella Borter in Fairfield, Connecticut, Dan Whitcomb and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Anurag Moon in Bengaluru, Lisa Shumaker in Chicago and Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Written by Maria Caspani; Edited by Bill Berkrot and Jonathan Oatis