Public health officials and experts are pleading with people to avoid Super Bowl parties on Sunday, to reduce the chance of the virus spreading.
“This is not the time for a Super Bowl party,” said Dr. Scott Harris, Alabama health officer, said Friday. “This is not the time to fiddle with the ball, because you have become indifferent by spending time with a bunch of people who are not in your household.”
Dr. Carlos del Rio, executive co-dean of the Emory University School of Medicine at Grady Health System, said he was concerned that these parties could bring cases back up.
“If there are a lot of Super Bowl festivals and a lot of superspreader events, we’ll start seeing things again,” Rio said. “I’m sure it does not happen, because we really need things to come down … so eventually deaths will go down as well.
“I want to return to less than 1,000 deaths a day.”
According to Johns Hopkins University data, the U.S. has averaged less than 1,000 Covid-19 deaths a day on average in a week since early November.
The country’s current average over a week is 3,250 deaths per day – not far from the highest average of 3,357 reached on January 13, according to Johns Hopkins data.
However, business and hospitalization levels have recently dropped following holiday training.
Johns Hopkins data show that the country averaged more than 125,800 new Covid-19 cases per day in the past week – 49.6% lower than a pandemic average of 249,836 on 8 January.