Officials and public health experts are begging people to avoid Super Bowl parties on Sundays to reduce the chance of the virus spreading.
“Now is not the time for a Super Bowl party,” said Dr. Scott Harris, the Alabama state health officer, Friday. “Now is not the time to fiddle with the ball, because you’ve become careless spending time with a bunch of people who aren’t in your household.”
Dr. Carlos del Rio, executive associate dean of Emory University School of Medicine at Grady Health System, said he is concerned that these parties could get things back on track.
“If there are a lot of Super Bowl parties and a lot of superspreader events, we will start (to see) things come up again,” del Rio said Saturday. “I really hope that doesn’t happen because we really need cases to be cured … so eventually mortality will decrease too.
“I want to get back to fewer than 1,000 deaths a day.”
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the US has averaged no less than 1,000 Covid-19 deaths per day for a week since the beginning of November.
The country’s current average over a week is 3,250 deaths per day – not far from the peak average of 3,357 reached on Jan. 13, according to data from Johns Hopkins.
However, the number of cases and hospital admissions has recently fallen after holiday peaks.
The country has recorded an average of more than 125,800 new Covid-19 cases per day in the past week – a 49.6% drop since a pandemic peak average of 249,836 on Jan. 8, data from Johns Hopkins shows.