The coronavirus deaths in the United States surpassed 450,000 Thursday, and the daily death rate remains stubbornly high at more than 3,000 a day, despite declining infections and the advent of multiple vaccines.
Infectious disease specialists expect the number of deaths to decline rapidly, after new cases peak around the beginning of the year. New COVID-19 deaths could be fading as early as next week, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
But there’s also the risk that improving trends in infections and hospitalizations could be offset by people relaxing and getting together – including this Sunday to watch football, she added.
“I am honestly concerned about Super Bowl Sunday,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press.
Walensky said one of the reasons the number of cases and hospital admissions is not increasing as dramatically as weeks ago is that the effect of holiday meetings has faded.
The effect on deaths is delayed. The daily toll is 50,000 new fatalities in the past two weeks alone.
“We’re still in a pretty bad place,” she said.
The nation reported 3,912 COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday, down from the pandemic peak of 4,466 deaths on Jan. 12.
The biggest cause of the death toll in the US in the past month is California, which has caused an average of more than 500 deaths a day in recent weeks.
Dora Padilla was one of thousands of Californians who died in the past month.
The 86-year-old daughter of Mexican immigrants served as a school administrator for Southern California’s Alhambra Unified School District for two decades after helping out as a parent volunteer and band booster for her own children. She was one of the few Latinos to hold elected office at the time.
She tested positive in the facility where she lived in December, developed a fever and saw her oxygen levels drop. The facility was supposed to call an ambulance, but decided to treat her there amid a wave of infections filling local hospitals with virus patients, her daughter Lisa Jones said.
They were almost ready to call an ambulance, but they realized there was nowhere to go. She’ll end up in a hallway somewhere, ”Jones said.
Padilla was stable for days and seemed to be improving, but suddenly fell ill again before dying.
“I’m still a little numb,” said her daughter.
The California experience mirrors many of the inequalities that have come to light since the pandemic began nearly a year ago, which hit people of color particularly hard.
Latinos, for example, make up 46% of the total death toll in California, despite making up 39% of the state’s population. The situation has deteriorated in recent months. In November, the daily Latino death rate was 3.5 per 100,000 residents, but that number soared to 40 deaths per 100,000 last week.
Alabama is another hot spot. The seven-day moving average of deaths there has increased from 74 to 147 deaths per day in the past two weeks. Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Tennessee also saw a rise in deaths.
The demographics most affected remain the oldest and weakest, said Dr. Thomas Holland of Duke University.
When the coronavirus first spread across the country, it was concentrated in nursing homes, prisons and other municipal health facilities. It later spread more widely.
“But deaths are still concentrated among elderly patients and patients” with other health problems, Holland said. “Even as the pandemic has spread more widely among the population, the demographics of those dying from COVID has not really changed.”
In Florida, for example, 83 percent of deaths attributed to the virus were in people over 65.
Still, that wasn’t enough to inspire some people to wear masks. A recent viral video from Oakes Farms Seed to Table, a local grocery store in Naples, Florida, showed both mask-less customers and employees chatting and laughing, without any social distance.
Alfie Oakes, the store’s owner, told me NBC’s “Today” show that he knows masks don’t work, and he doesn’t believe the coronavirus killed hundreds of thousands of people in the United States.
“That’s total bullshit,” Oakes said, adding, “Why don’t we shut the world down because of the heart attacks? Why don’t we shut down cities for heart attacks? “
He did not call back on Thursday.
Public health experts are keeping a close eye on Florida this week as the Super Bowl is played in Tampa. City leaders and the NFL are trying to ensure social distance by limiting the number of visitors to a third of the stadium’s capacity – 22,000 people. Still, there will be parties, events in bars and clubs, and other activities that bring people together.
While most people who become infected will recover, others face a much longer road. It may take a week or two before you get sick enough to end up in the hospital. Then those who are seriously ill could end up in an ICU for weeks, and some will die.
“The patients who don’t do well often get these long and very stormy courses, and the patients who die, that’s usually weeks after their hospital stay,” said Holland.
Treatments for COVID have evolved over time, but there have been no “breakthrough miracle treatments” comparable to the development of the vaccine, Holland said.
“We have things on the fringes that are useful,” said Holland.
These include the use of steroids for patients in need of oxygen, different ventilation strategies, and the prevention and control of blood clots. There is also the use of monoclonal antibodies for outpatients at the beginning of their disease who do not require oxygen but are at higher risk of complications.
In addition, changes in testing have helped.
“Obviously, if people know they are infected, they will be more likely to do the things they need to do, such as stay home and quarantine or isolate,” he said.
Looking ahead, the major concern is how the virus is changing, shifting to new strains that may be more contagious and better able to evade antibody products or make vaccines less effective.
“We have always been in a race,” said Holland. “But it is much more evident now that we are in a race to vaccinate people fast enough to slow transmission so that the virus has fewer opportunities to mutate and change and create these stem problems for us.”
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Associated Press authors Mike Stobbe in New York City and Tamara Lush in St. Petersburg, Florida contributed to this report.