Tag Archives: Death

U.S. loses one life every 33 seconds to COVID-19 in deadliest week so far

(Reuters) – In the United States last week, someone died from COVID-19 every 33 seconds.

The disease claimed more than 18,000 lives in the seven days ended Dec. 20, up 6.7% from the prior week to hit another record high, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county reports.

Despite pleas by health officials not to travel during the end-year holiday season, 3.2 million people were screened at U.S. airports on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Health officials are worried that a surge in infections from holiday gatherings could overwhelm hospitals, some of which are already at capacity after Thanksgiving celebrations.

And while the country has begun to administer two new vaccines, it may be months before the inoculations put a dent in the coronavirus outbreak.

The number of new COVID-19 cases last week fell 1% to nearly 1.5 million. Tennessee, California and Rhode Island had the highest per capita new cases in the country, according to the Reuters analysis. In terms of deaths per capita, Iowa, South Dakota and Rhode Island were the hardest hit.

Across the United States, 11.3% of tests came back positive for the virus, down from 12% the prior week, according to data from the volunteer-run COVID Tracking Project. Out of 50 states, 31 had a positive test rate of 10% or higher. The highest rates were in Iowa and Idaho at over 40%.

The World Health Organization considers positive test rates above 5% concerning because it suggests there are more cases in the community that have not yet been uncovered.

(Graphic by Chris Canipe, writing by Lisa Shumaker, editing by Tiffany Wu)

U.S. CDC reports 330,901 total deaths from coronavirus

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Sunday reported 18,909,910 cases of new coronavirus, an increase of 179,104 cases from its previous count, and said deaths had risen by 1,309 to 330,901.

The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19 as of 4 p.m. ET on Saturday versus its previous report a day earlier.

The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.

(Reporting by Vishal Vivek in Bengaluru; Editing by Richard Chang)

One million Americans vaccinated for COVID; Tennessee new epicenter

By Gabriella Borter and Dan Whitcomb

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Tennessee emerged alongside California on Wednesday as an epicenter of the latest COVID-19 surge even while more than 1 million Americans have been vaccinated as U.S. political leaders sought to guard against a highly contagious coronavirus variant sweeping across Britain.

Tennessee averaged nearly 128 new infections per 100,000 people over the last week, the highest of any U.S. state, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. California stood second at 111 new cases per 100,000 residents.

“Our state is ground zero for a surge in COVID-19 and we need Tennesseans to (do) their part,” Governor Bill Lee said on Twitter, urging residents to wear face masks and gather only with members of their own household over Christmas.

Some public health officials say Americans’ traveling and gathering for Thanksgiving contributed to the latest nationwide explosion in cases.

All told, 31 U.S. states have reported a grim record in new COVID-19 infections for December as hospitalizations and deaths also spiral. More than 194,600 new cases were confirmed on Tuesday alone.

The CDC said that as of Wednesday morning more than 1 million people nationwide had been given the first of the two doses required for the two coronavirus vaccines that have been approved. But most Americans have been told that it could be six months or more before they are eligible for the shots as priority is given to healthcare workers, nursing home residents and in some cases top government officials.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease official, received the Moderna vaccine on live television on Tuesday. Joe Biden was inoculated with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in front of cameras on Monday.

CONCERN GROWS OVER MUTANT VARIANT

U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota, earlier this week criticized political leaders for putting themselves at the front of the line for the shot.

“We are not more important then frontline workers, teachers etc. who are making sacrifices everyday. Which is why I won’t take it,” Omar said on Twitter.

The Trump administration said on Wednesday it had reached a $2 billion deal with Pfizer to distribute 100 million additional doses of its vaccine by July.

But Americans who saw a ray of hope in the release of the two vaccines in December learned of an even more transmissible coronavirus variant spreading in the United Kingdom. Drug makers Pfizer and Moderna were testing their vaccines against the variant, but believed the drugs would be effective against the mutant virus.

The United States, unlike many nations worldwide, has not banned travelers from Britain.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city would order international travelers to quarantine for 14 days on arrival and provide contact information to government officials. Sheriff’s deputies will make visits to enforce the order on those arriving from Britain, the mayor said.

Travelers found to violate those orders face fines of $1,000 per day, de Blasio said.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has asked airlines to screen British travelers for COVID-19. The state was an early epicenter of the virus and has recorded more than 36,000 COVID deaths, far more than any other state.

Washington state Governor Jay Inslee this week ordered a 14-day quarantine for travelers arriving from the UK, South Africa or other countries where the new variant had been detected.

In New York City, vaccination programs expanded to the Fire Department, where roughly 6,000 personnel have contracted the virus, Fire Commissioner Dan Nigro told reporters. Some 400 FDNY paramedics lined up to receive their first doses of the Moderna vaccine on Wednesday, including Verena Kansog, advanced life support coordinator for Manhattan, who got her shot at a training center on Randalls Island.

“I feel relieved,” Kansog, who worried about bringing the disease home to her elderly mother, told Reuters in a phone interview. “I was not one single bit nervous.”

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter and Dan Whitcomb; Additional reporting by Anurag Maan, Carlo Allegri, Jonathan Allen, Peter Szekely, Lisa Lambert, Susan Heavey and Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Leslie Adler)

‘My second life’: California nurse walks out of hospital after 8-month COVID-19 ordeal

By Steve Gorman

LONG BEACH, Calif. (Reuters) – As a veteran ICU nurse whose job is to care for the most critically ill patients at her hospital in Long Beach, California, Merlin Pambuan was well aware of the deadly ravages COVID-19 can inflict on the human body.

Last spring in a tragic role reversal, Pambuan became one of those patients – admitted to the intensive care unit of St. Mary Medical Center, her workplace for the past 40 years, where she was rendered unconscious by paralysis-inducing sedation and placed on a ventilator to breathe. A feeding tube was later added.

She came close to death on several occasions, her doctors later revealed. So dire was her condition at one point that end-of-life options were discussed with her family.

By the time she awoke and could breathe on her own again, she was too weak to stand. But she fought back and struggled through weeks of painful therapy to regain her strength and mobility, celebrating her 66th birthday in St. Mary’s acute rehabilitation ward in late October.

On Monday Pambuan beat the odds of her eight-month ordeal by walking out the front door of the hospital, drawing cheers, applause and exhilaration from colleagues lining the lobby to rejoice in her discharge.

“This is my second life,” Pambuan said moments earlier, as she prepared to leave her hospital room, accompanied by her husband, Daniel, 63, and their daughter, Shantell, 33, an aspiring social worker who spent months at her mother’s bedside as her patient advocate and personal cheerleader.

The spectacle of Pambuan striding slowly but confidently through the hospital lobby – she had insisted on making her exit without assistance of a wheelchair or walker, although was still connected to supplementary oxygen – marked a transformative victory for the diminutive but tough ICU nurse.

‘WHAT WE LIVE FOR’

The outpouring of affection she received from colleagues – including many of the physicians, fellow nurses and therapists who took part in her care – also reflected a rare moment of communal triumph for the pandemic-weary hospital staff.

“This is what we live for … seeing our patients going home alive and in good condition,” said Dr. Maged Tanios, a pulmonary and critical care specialist at St. Mary. He said Pambuan’s recovery was especially rewarding since she is part of the hospital’s extended “family.”

Tanios said he was not aware of other St. Mary medical staff being admitted to the ICU for COVID. However, studies show frontline healthcare workers’ frequent, close contact with coronavirus patients puts them at higher risk of contracting the disease, hence the decision to give them top priority in getting immunized.

Pambuan’s discharge, ironically, coincided with the recent rollout of COVID-19 vaccines to medical workers, as well as a crushing surge in coronavirus infections that have overwhelmed hospitals, and ICUs in particular, across California.

Pambuan said she has no recollection of the four months she spent hooked to a breathing machine – from early May to early September – but recalls first waking up from deep sedation unable to move her extremities.

With encouragement from nursing staff and her daughter Pambuan said she grew determined to regain her mobility and her life.

“I said, ‘No, I’m going to fight this COVID,'” she recounted. “I start moving my hand (and) a physical therapist come and say, ‘Oh, you’re moving your hands,’ and I said, ‘Oh, I’m going to fight, I’m going to fight. I’m trying to wiggle my toes. I’m going to fight it.'”

Pambuan spent the last few months of her hospital stay undergoing physical and respiratory rehabilitation and will continue recuperation from home, while making peace, she said, with a change in pace.

“It’s going to be very difficult for me,” she said. “But I have to accept it, that I’m going to be on oxygen for a while and slow down a little bit.”

When or if she will return to work in the ICU remains an open question, she said.

In the meantime, Pambuan said she feels indebted to her co-workers for their “really professional” care, grateful for the support of loved ones and newly convinced of the power of optimism.

Her message to others in her shoes – “Don’t lose hope. Just fight. Fight, because look at me, you know. I’m going home and I’m walking.”

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Long Beach, California; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Europe crosses 500,000 COVID-19 deaths as new variant spreads

By Anurag Maan and Shaina Ahluwalia

(Reuters) – Europe became the first region worldwide to cross 500,000 COVID-19 deaths on Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally, as a new variant of the coronavirus discovered in Britain threatened the region’s prevention measures to curb the pandemic.

Reports of the mutated variant out of England prompted a pre-Christmas lockdown and have forced dozens of countries to close their borders to British travelers this week.

Italy, the nation with the highest death toll in Europe, on Sunday detected a patient infected with the new variant as have Denmark and France.

To curb the spread, European countries are considering screening passengers on flights from UK and obligating quarantine for travelers upon arrival.

Earlier this month, the United Kingdom became the first nation to approve the Pfizer Inc – BioNTech vaccine followed by the United States, European Union and other countries.

Europe has reported about 30% of the global COVID-19 fatalities and cases so far, according to a Reuters tally.

Europe’s death toll has accelerated in recent months. Since the first COVID-19 death was reported in France in February, it took eight months for the region to reach 250,000 deaths. It took only 60 days for the region to go from 250,000 to 500,000 deaths.

France, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom and Russia have reported hundreds of deaths a day and the five countries account for almost 60% of the region’s total fatalities.

Globally there have been 77.52 million cases and 1.71 million deaths, according to a Reuters tally.

(Reporting by Anurag Maan and Shaina Ahluwalia in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

U.S. tops 18 million COVID-19 cases as officials eye new virus variant in UK

By Susan Heavey and Gabriella Borter

(Reuters) – Total U.S. COVID-19 cases surpassed 18 million on Tuesday as health officials tried to tamper fears about a new, highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus in the United Kingdom.

Reports of the new virus variant in England, which prompted a pre-Christmas lockdown and caused dozens of countries to close their borders to British travelers this week, have spurred talks among government officials of mandatory COVID-19 testing for travelers from the UK and a possible quarantine mandate.

News of the coronavirus mutation comes as the United States deals with a surge in new infections that is overwhelming hospitals in some states. The latest million cases were recorded in just six days, according to a Reuters tally, as U.S. COVID-19 fatalities approach 320,000, the most in the world.

Some U.S. health officials on Tuesday sought to assuage fears about the new virus variation, saying that it should be monitored, but that its discovery should not be cause for despair.

U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar told Fox News on Tuesday that both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which received U.S. emergency use authorizations this month, should be effective at preventing illness from the recently discovered variant of the virus. He also said it did not seem to have different physical effects on individuals.

Moderna Inc and BioNTech SE, which worked with Pfizer Inc to develop its vaccine, are scrambling to test their shots against the variant, but expressed confidence in them.

“Scientifically it is highly likely that the immune response by this vaccine can also deal with this virus variant,” BioNTech Chief Executive Ugur Sahin told reporters.

More than 600,000 Americans, mostly healthcare workers, had received their first COVID-19 vaccine doses as of Monday, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some states began vaccinating long-term care facility residents on Monday.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert who received the Moderna vaccine on camera on Tuesday, said surveillance is necessary to monitor spread of the British variant, but that officials should not overreact.

“Travel bans are really rather draconian things to do,” Fauci told ABC News’ “Good Morning America.”

Along with Fauci, Azar and National Institutes of Health head Dr. Francis Collins rolled up their sleeves for the Moderna shot on live television on Tuesday.

‘EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE ON THE TABLE’

State and federal officials are strategizing how to prevent the spread of the new virus variant in the United States, considering such measures as screening passengers on flights from England or, at the federal level, mandating quarantine for travelers upon arrival.

The U.S. government is considering requiring all passengers traveling from the UK receive a negative test within 72 hours of departure as a condition of entry, airline and U.S. officials briefed on the matter said on Monday.

Michael Osterholm, a pandemic adviser for Joe Biden, on Tuesday said all options need to be considered to stem the spread of the new variant, and urged the Trump administration to come up with a plan now.

“We really need to develop a national response,” he told CNN. “Everything needs to be on the table.”

He said the U.S. could mandate a 14-day quarantine period for travelers from the UK as an added precaution beyond requiring a negative test result.

With no national plan and state and local governments already overwhelmed, it was unclear who could enact and enforce such quarantines, Osterholm said.

“Nothing will stop this virus from transmitting from country to country. Our job is to slow it down,” he added.

British Airways, Delta Air Lines and Virgin Atlantic said on Monday they will allow only passengers who test negative for the coronavirus to fly to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee on Monday ordered travelers arriving from the UK, South Africa or other “countries with circulation of a new, potentially more contagious COVID-19 variation” to quarantine for 14 days after arriving in his state.

“This common-sense measure will protect Washingtonians in our fight against COVID-19,” Inslee said on Twitter.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Lisa Lambert, Peter Szekely, Anurag Maan and Gabriella Borter; Writing by Gabriella Borter; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

No intensive care beds for most Californians as COVID-19 surges

By Sharon Bernstein

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) -There are no intensive care beds available in densely populated Southern California or the state’s agricultural San Joaquin Valley, together home to nearly 30 million people, amid a deadly surge of COVID-19, Governor Gavin Newsom said on Monday.

The pandemic is crushing hospitals in the most-populous U.S. state, even as the U.S. government and two of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains began a nationwide campaign on Monday to vaccinate nursing home residents against the highly contagious respiratory disease.

The U.S. death toll from the virus has accelerated in recent weeks to 2,627 per day on a seven-day average, according to a Reuters tally.

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has said U.S. COVID-19 deaths will peak in January, when its widely cited model projects that more than 100,000 people will die as the toll marches to nearly 562,000 by April 1.

Nationwide, the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients on Monday stood at nearly 113,400, near a record high of over 114,200 set on Friday, according to a Reuters tally.

In California, Newsom told a remote news conference he had requested help from nurses, doctors and medical technicians in the U.S. military, and is hoping that 200 people can be deployed. The state has also sent nearly 700 additional medical staff to beleaguered hospitals, and opened up clinics in unused state buildings, a closed sports arena and other locations.

California Secretary of Health and Human Services Mark Ghaly said many hospitals in the state may also soon run out of room for patients who need to be admitted but do not require intensive care.

Ghaly told the news conference the current surge was related to gatherings that took place over the Thanksgiving holiday and that a similar surge is expected after Christmas and New Year’s, he said.

Newsom pleaded with Californians to comply with stay-at-home orders that restrict activity in most but not all of the state. “We are not victims of fate,” he said.

The governor added that the strain of the virus ravaging California was not the new, highly contagious version emerging in the UK, Newsom said.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Peter Cooney)

U.S. CDC reports 316,844 deaths from coronavirus

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday reported 17,790,376 cases of new coronavirus, an increase of 197,616 cases from its previous count, and said the number of deaths had risen by 1,584 to 316,844.

The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 p.m. ET on Dec. 20 versus its previous report a day earlier.

The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.

(Reporting by Trisha Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)

COVID-19 surge pushes U.S. hospitals to brink as 2nd vaccine nears approval

By Susan Heavey and Sharon Bernstein

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An unrelenting U.S. coronavirus surge pushed besieged hospitals further to the brink as the United States pressed on with its immunization rollout on Thursday and prepared to ship nearly 6 million doses of a new vaccine on the cusp of winning regulatory approval.

COVID-19 hospitalizations rose to record heights for a 19th straight day, with nearly 113,000 coronavirus patients counted in U.S. medical facilities nationwide on Wednesday, while 3,580 more perished, the most yet in a single day.

The virus has claimed over 311,000 lives in the United States to date, and health experts have warned of a deepening crisis this winter as intensive care units (ICUs) fill up and hospital beds spill over into hallways.

“We expect to have more dead bodies than we have spaces for them,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said at a briefing on Thursday, adding that the country’s second-largest city had fully exhausted its ICU capacity.

The number of U.S. cases rose by at least 239,018 on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, the highest one-day increase since the pandemic began, driving the number of known infections nationally to more than 17 million.

The tolls mounted as U.S. regulators weighed whether to grant emergency use authorization for a vaccine developed by Moderna Inc, just a week after an earlier vaccine from Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SE won consent for mass distribution.

A panel of outside advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration overwhelmingly endorsed Moderna’s vaccine candidate for emergency use after a daylong meeting on Thursday. FDA authorization could come as soon as Friday.

Both vaccines require two doses, given three or four weeks apart, for each person inoculated.

The initial 2.9 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine began shipping on Sunday and were still making their way to hospitals across the country and into the arms of doctors, nurses, and other frontline medical professionals.

Some of the first shots were also going to residents and staff of long-term care facilities. Other essential workers, senior citizens and people with chronic health conditions will be next on the list.

BEDS IN CORRIDORS

It will take several months before vaccines are widely available to the public on demand, and opinion polls have found many Americans are hesitant about getting inoculated.

Some are distrustful of immunizations in general, and some are wary of the unprecedented speed with which the first vaccines were developed and rolled out – 11 months from the first documented U.S. cases of COVID-19.

Health authorities have sought to reassure Americans that large-scale clinical trials and rigorous scientific review found the vaccines to be safe as well as highly effective at preventing illness.

Those messages have been combined with urgent pleas for Americans to remain diligent about social distancing and mask-wearing until immunizations become widely available.

Data shows infections continuing to spread virtually unabated across much of the country, apparently fueled by increased transmissions of the virus as many Americans disregarded warnings to avoid social gatherings and unnecessary travel over the Thanksgiving holiday last month.

California has been hit particularly hard in recent weeks, with many of its hospitals reporting ICUs at or near capacity, a dire situation that triggered a renewal of sweeping stay-at-home orders across much of the state.

“Hospitals and healthcare workers continue to be stretched to the limit, as we continue to surge beyond even what we anticipated. And we’re not even through the holidays yet,” said Adam Blackstone, a spokesman for the Hospital Association of Southern California.

In San Bernardino County, where available ICU space was down to zero, newly admitted patients at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center were lined up in beds in corridors waiting for care, spokeswoman Justine Rodriguez told Reuters.

With the strain taking a growing toll on medical staff, the race to expand vaccinations is seen as critical to preventing a collapse of healthcare systems.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told CNBC on Thursday that 5.9 million Moderna vaccine doses had been allotted for state governments to receive and were ready to distribute nationwide starting at the weekend.

The Moderna vaccine has less onerous cold storage requirements than the Pfizer/BioNTech shot, making it a better option for remote and rural areas.

Nevertheless, ambivalence over the vaccine has emerged even among pockets of healthcare workers designated as first in line for inoculation.

“Some are on the fence. Some feel that we need to get it done. It’s split down the middle,” Diego Montes Lopez, 28, a phlebotomist at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in South Los Angeles, said of co-workers after getting injected himself.

But Dr. Simon Mates, an ICU co-medical director at Dignity Health California Hospital Medical Center in downtown Los Angeles, said the physicians and nurses he knows view the vaccine as having arrived at a crucial moment.

“Our biggest concern was: ‘What if one of us gets sick?’ But now with the vaccine, that concern seems to be ebbing,” said Mates, who learned Wednesday that he had already received the vaccine, rather than a placebo, as a participant in the Pfizer trials. “It’s one less thing to worry about.”

(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Sharon Bernstein, Dan Whitcomb, Manas Mishra, Peter Szekely, Richard Cowan, Susan Cornwell, Lucy Nicholson and Anurag Maan; Writing by Daniel Trotta and Steve Gorman; Editing by Steve Orlofsky, Bill Berkrot, Grant McCool and Richard Pullin)

“Lock down,” says Italy adviser, as deaths head for wartime levels

By Reuters Staff

ROME (Reuters) – An adviser to Italy’s health ministry has called for coronavirus restrictions to be drastically tightened to avoid a “national tragedy” after the national statistics bureau ISTAT said deaths this year would be the highest since World War Two.

“We are in a war situation, people don’t realize it but the last time we had this many deaths, bombs were dropping on our cities during the war,” public health professor Walter Ricciardi told the television channel la7 on Tuesday evening.

Ricciardi, the adviser to Health Minister Roberto Speranza, said the government, which is considering tightening restrictions over the Christmas and New Year holidays, should lock down the main cities completely.

In an interview with Wednesday’s daily La Stampa, he said Rome had been “constantly late” in responding to the second, autumn wave of the virus.

Italy reported 846 COVID-19 deaths on Tuesday, taking the official total to 65,857, the fifth highest in the world.

As in many other countries, that total is widely considered to be an underestimate because many people who died of COVID-19 during the first wave were never tested for the virus.

ISTAT head Gian Carlo Blangiardo said on Tuesday that the overall number of deaths in Italy this year would exceed 700,000, against 647,000 in 2019.

“The last time something like this happened was in 1944 when we were at the height of the Second World War,” he told RAI state television.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on Tuesday urged Italians to avoid “irresponsible” gatherings over the holidays and said the government might make some “small adjustments” to its current restrictions.

But Ricciardi told La Stampa this was not enough:

“The Netherlands has locked down with half our deaths, Germany has locked down with a third of them – I don’t understand this hesitation. If we don’t take adequate measures, we are heading for a national tragedy.”