COVID kills three every minute on America s deadliest day with 3,775 fatalities: Arizona, California and Rhode Island now have world s worst infection rates per capita as highly contagious Super-COVID hits seven states
The COVID-19 death toll in the US hit yet another record high with 3,775 fatalities on Tuesday - or 2.6 Americans every minute
Cases and hospitalizations also continue to surge with 131,195 patients being treated for the virus yesterday, which is an increase of more than 5,600 in just two days, and 229,055 new infections reported
The number of people hospitalized nationwide has exceeded 100,000 for 35 days
Arizona , California and Rhode Island are currently seeing higher rates of infections per capita than any country in the world
Coronavirus variant discoveries in UK and South Africa began with a bet of a bottle of wine
The discovery of important new coronavirus variants in the UK and South Africa began with a bet of a bottle of wine.
In mid-November, Tulio de Oliveira, who leads a genetics lab in South Africa, began receiving anxious phone calls from physicians in the Eastern Cape province who were seeing an explosive growth in Covid-19 patients. Hospitals were quickly becoming overrun. The increase had seemingly come out of nowhere.
“It was shocking,” said de Oliveira, a professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban.
A more contagious coronavirus variant first identified in the United Kingdom continues to crop up across the U.S. and around the globe, threatening to further strain overburdened health care systems just as vaccines are rolling out worldwide.
At least eight U.S. states and 33 countries have identified the new variant, known as B.1.1.7. Several nations have also identified an additional variant, first identified in South Africa, that also appears to infect people more easily. Because the variants spread more rapidly, they could lead to more cases and put even more strain on our heavily burdened health care systems, said Dr. Henry Walke, incident manager for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention s COVID-19 response.