US sets coronavirus hospitalization record on NYE with 125,379

The US set a new record for coronavirus hospitalizations for the fourth day in a row on New Years Eve with nearly 125,400.   

The country is on pace to reach 20 million total coronavirus cases by the end of the weekend as 227,315 new infections were confirmed on Thursday, bring the tally to 19,968,087, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. 

Deaths dropped slightly to a still-harrowing 3,419 on Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins, after two consecutive record-setting days with over 3,700 each on Tuesday and Wednesday. 

Thursday’s figure marked the 10th day this month that deaths have exceeded 3,000, with 345,737 recorded to date.   

While the nation pinned its hope for finally bringing the pandemic to its knees on coronavirus vaccines, widespread issues with the rollout saw 2020 come to a close with only about 2.8 million people vaccinated – 14 percent of the official 20 million target for the end of the year. 

Adding to anxieties over the current surge is the emergence of a mutant strain of COVID-19 that has now been confirmed in three states. The strain was first detected in the United Kingdom and is thought to be 70 percent more transmissible than the original. 

Florida became the third state to confirm a case of the strain on Thursday evening after it was detected in a man his 20s who lives in Martin County and has no history of travel. 

California, which reported its first case of the strain on Wednesday, confirmed three more people have been infected with it in the San Diego area on Thursday night.  

Earlier this week, the first case was confirmed in Colorado and officials say they are also investigating a second suspected case in the state.  

The fact that the confirmed cases in Colorado and Florida both involved individuals with no recent travel history means that the variant must already be circulating on US soil. 

Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, has been sounding the alarm that it’s only a matter of time before other states detect the strain.   

‘We predicted it would be, when you have so much of it in the UK, which then spread to other countries in Europe and Canada, it was inevitable that it would be here,’ Fauci told Today on Thursday. 

‘You’ll be hearing reports from other states and more cases in the state that is already reported. Unfortunately, that’s just the reality of the way these viruses spread’. 

But he added: ‘The good news is that it does not appear to be more virulent, namely, making people more sick and leading to more death.’  

Fauci’s prediction followed a new forecast from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which projects a total of 383,000 to 424,000 COVID-19 deaths will be reported by the week ending January 23, 2021.  

On the high end of the model, that could mean that more than 82,000 people could die within the next month.

There are fears the number of infections – followed by hospitalizations and deaths – will only continue to rise in the coming weeks as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) revealed that it screened 1,163,696 people at airport checkpoints on Wednesday, December 30.

It marked the fifth consecutive day that the number of passengers screened exceeded one million and the ninth day this month that the threshold was passed. 

Offering a bit of hope, Operation Warp Speed chief Dr Moncef Slaoui on Wednesday announced that a one-shot coronavirus vaccine could be in use by February if Johnson & Johnson’s jab is approved.

Slaoui said Phase 3 trial recruitment for the vaccine has been completed and Johnson & Johnson is currently working with the Operation Warp Speed team to accelerate the availability of the vaccine doses.  

‘I think it can be quite a game-changer,’ Slaoui told reporters. ‘We’re hopeful that this vaccine, which is a one-shot vaccine will have equivalent efficacy to those of Moderna and Pfizer.’ 

Single-dose shots would mean faster rollout, and that people would likely be protected from coronavirus in a matter of weeks after the injection – rather than the about one-month period it takes for Moderna or Pfizer’s shots to reach their protective peak.  

In the weeks since Pfizer and Moderna’s jabs were approved several states have struggled to implement effective plans to get them out to patients. 

The US has only administered about 10 percent of the 20 million doses it promised to give to Americans by the end of 2020, despite having distributed more than 12 million doses to states and territories.

CDC data revealed that as of 9am ET on Wednesday, fewer than 2.6 million people had received their first doses of Moderna or Pfizer’s vaccines – both of which are difficult to ship and handle because they need to be stored at freezing temperatures.

The bottleneck is caused by officials on state and federal level who have failed to create plans to get those shots into the arms of Americans according to a former FDA official who told DailyMail.com that the failure is akin to dropping the baton on the last leg of the vaccine race. 

While Americans continue to wait to be vaccinated, the UK on Wednesday authorized a vaccine by AstraZeneca that will almost certainly accelerate vaccine distribution there because it is cheaper, far easier to ship, handle and store than the Pfizer and Moderna alternatives.

Yet US regulators have no intention of approving the more efficient shot until April – two months after AstraZeneca’s US trial will have enough data to prove to the FDA that it works. Other trials have already shown that AstraZeneca’s $4 vaccine is safe and about 70 percent effective – well above the efficacy the FDA said it will require to approve a vaccine.  

But in the US, federal government has punted distribution plans almost entirely to states, where health departments are already stretched thin by surging COVID-19 cases. 

The result is a helter-skelter patchwork of last minute plans that look vastly different from state to state, bumping drug addicts and prisoners to the front of the line in some places, while in others, like Florida, elderly Americans are camping out in lawn chairs overnight in a bid to get vaccinated. Others say essential workers and the aged are being told to ‘call around’ to see if they can get a vaccine.  

Florida becomes THIRD state to get Super-COVID and California finds three more cases 

Florida has become the third state in the US to confirm a case of the mutant strain of COVID-19 as California officials find three more infections.  

The Florida Department of Health confirmed the diagnosis on Thursday night. Officials said the man is in his 20s, lives in Martin County and has no history of travel. 

On Thursday night, California officials also confirmed three more people have been infected with the virus variant. The state now has four cases of the strain, which was first detected in the United Kingdom and is thought to be 70% more transmissible than the original. 

A 30-year-old man tested positive on Wednesday, and three more men – two in their 40s, and one in his 50s – also have been confirmed to have the strain. 

Officials said that two of the men had not traveled outside the country and none of the men had any known interaction with each other.  

Earlier this week, the first case was confirmed in Colorado and officials say they are also investigating a second suspected case in the state. 

The fact that the confirmed cases in Colorado and Florida both involved individuals with no recent travel history means that the variant must already be circulating on US soil. 

Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, has been sounding the alarm that it’s only a matter of time before other states detect the strain.  

The emergence of the strain in the US comes as many states weather harrowing surges in cases, hospitalizations and deaths while the vaccine rollout falls further and further behind schedule. 

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis came under fire earlier this week after his state chose to ignore CDC recommendations and give the vaccine to elderly people ahead of frontline workers.  

Florida is ranked among the nation’s top coronavirus hotspots, with more than 1.32 million cases and 21,673 deaths reported to date.  

The state broke its record for daily new cases on Thursday with 17,192, after posting near-record increases in the three consecutive days prior. 

As of Thursday the state’s test positivity rate stands at 11.57 percent, down from 26.29 percent on Tuesday. 

Concerns have grown in recent days that the state’s vaccine rollout plan could lead to even more infections, as long lines of high-risk elderly residents form outside vaccination sites. 

Florida’s first case of the mutant strain was reported just north of Miami in Martin County, which is home to about 146,300 residents. 

The first US case of the mutant ‘super-COVID’ strain was confirmed on Tuesday when Colorado officials said identified it in a male member of the National Guard who is in his 20s and works in a care home. 

A second suspected case was also being investigated in Colorado on Wednesday, when California Governor Gavin Newsom announced the first case in his state.  

‘Just an hour or so ago we were informed that this new variant, this new strain that we have identified obviously from the UK and some other parts of the globe, identified in Colorado yesterday has been identified here in the state of California, in southern California,’ Newsom said during a virtual conversation with Fauci.  

The strain is not thought to be more deadly but is said to be significantly more contagious, marking a blow to the Golden State as its already buckling under the weight of the pandemic. 

One Californian is now dying every three minutes from the virus with the state smashing its record for daily COVID-19 deaths Tuesday.

Newsom did not say where exactly the case was detected other than in Southern California.

He also gave no details on the identity of the individual or whether they have recently traveled. DailyMail.com has contacted Newsom’s office for more information. 

Newsom asked Fauci about the new strain and what it could mean for the state and the US. 

‘I know there has been a lot of conversations about the issue of variants, about the issue of transmissibility,’ the governor said. 

‘I am curious more broadly on the issue of diagnostics on the testing side, immunity… have we received enough information to really understand the impacts in other categories? 

‘Not just on the issue of severity of the disease and the transmissibility of this disease.’

Fauci told Newsom he was ‘not surprised’ that there was a case detected in California and said he expects other states to soon report cases of the strain. 

‘I am not surprised that you have a case and likely more cases in California,’ the nation’s top immunologist said.

‘We likely will be seeing reports from other states – Colorado was the first place to do that and I think we will start seeing it as if you have that much of a prominence of this in the UK with all the travel not just directly to the United States but through other countries intermittently like when you go from the UK to France, France to the Unites States etc. then Canada has cases.

‘And so I don’t think the Californians should feel this is something odd. This is something that is expected.’  

Fauci said there is ‘a lot we know’ already about the new strain because UK experts have been studying it but there is also a lot that will become clear as the ‘days and weeks go by’.

‘It looks pretty clear from the UK group that in fact the transmissibility of this mutant is more efficient than the transmissibility of the standard virus that we have been dealing with up to now,’ he explained.