The U.S. suffered another sad day on Wednesday amid the chaos at the Capitol, with the country’s daily coronavirus mortality rate the highest recorded in any country during the course of the pandemic.
The daily toll of 3,865 for January 6 was the fourth day in three weeks in which more than 3,500 Americans died from coronavirus-related complications. More than 30,000 people have died since Christmas, according to Johns Hopkins data.
The US toll surpassed 350,000 on Sunday, leading to the leading expert on infectious diseases – and an intermediary of the White House’s pandemic response task force – dr. Anthony Fauci to issue an implicit reprimand to Donald Trump, who claimed in tweets that morning that the case numbers were exaggerated and deaths attributed incorrectly.
“Go into the trenches,” Fauci told Meet the Press to NBC. ‘Go to the hospitals, go to the intensive care units and see what happens. These are real numbers, real people and real deaths. ”
US health officials warned on Wednesday that Arizona had become the Covid “hotspot of the world”, five months after Trump considered the US state’s pandemic response to be exemplary.
“It’s worse than in July, and it’s going to get worse. “As far as our situation is concerned, we are probably two weeks behind LA,” said Will Humble, head of the Arizona Public Health Association, referring to Los Angeles County, where a coronavirus surge caused a shortage of oxygen. The situation has led to ambulance personnel transporting patients who cannot be resuscitated in the field, and one in every 119 people in the state tested positive last week.
According to Arizona health officials, who now have the worst rate of coronavirus diagnosis in the country, there are a three-digit number of new virus-related deaths and more than 7,200 cases for the second consecutive day.
As hospitals become increasingly overwhelmed, pressure is mounting for the introduction of more powerful controls such as mandatory masks across the country.
With more than 21 million cases and 361,123 deaths, the US is responsible for one in four infections and one in five deaths worldwide. The global total case of coronavirus is 87 million, and 1.9 million people die within just over a year of the onset of the pandemic.