January will be worst month for U.S. pandemic so far with post-holiday travel cases seen surging

[Anta Assamey]

U.S. sets fresh record for hospitalizations and Los Angeles County says a COVID-19 patient is dying every 15 minutes

The number of global cases of the coronavirus-borne illness COVID-19 edged toward 86 million on Tuesday and the U.S. set yet another record for hospitalizations, as experts warned that January will likely be the worst month of the pandemic so far due to a surge in new infections after holiday travel. 

U.S. airports screened the most passengers on Sunday since March, according to data from the Transportation Security Administration, which counted 1.3 million travelers, or more than half the year-earlier’s total of 2.4 million, as many Americans defied the advice of health officials to visit family and friends and mingle with other households.

The U.S. added at least 196,386 new cases on Monday, according to a New York Times tracker, and at least 2,047 people died, numbers experts feared would materialize if people did not socially distance. In the last week, the U.S. has averaged 214,014 cases a day, numbers that experts had predicted as worst-case scenarios early in the crisis.

There were a record 128,210 COVID-19 patients in U.S. hospitals on Monday, according to the COVID Tracking Project, breaking the record of 125,562 set a day earlier. With just 4% of the world’s population, the U.S. continues to account for about a fifth of all cases, at 20.8 million, and a fifth of all deaths, at 354,778, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

The situation is especially dire in Los Angeles County in California, where hospitals are so overwhelmed and intensive-care units so full that the LA County Emergency Medical Services Agency has directed ambulance crews not to transport any patients with low chances of survival and to conserve the use of oxygen for the most critical. Those patients who are taken to hospitals by ambulance face long hours of waiting for a bed to become available.

LA County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer said a patient is dying of COVID-19 every 15 minutes and that things will get worse. 

“This is likely to be the worst month of the pandemic in LA County,” the agency said in a tweet. “The surge from holiday gatherings is here and cases will increase due to parties and travelers returning to LA County. We must use the tools we have to prevent more suffering & death and protect frontline workers.”

[Anta Assamey]