These three states account for a third of last week’s COVID deaths
Just three states collectively racked up a third of U.S. COVID deaths last week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
In the past week nearly 9,500 people have died of complications from the novel coronavirus, and a third of them resided in Texas, Georgia and Alabama, ABC News reported Tuesday.
Likewise, 10 states are outstripping the nation as a whole in hospitalizations, ABC News said. While the number of COVID patients in the hospital is down to 90,000 from upward of 100,000 about three weeks ago, 10 or more states have set hospitalization records. Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia are all reporting record hospitalizations, ABC News said.
Currently, West Virginia has the most number of cases in the U.S., but is closely followed by Alaska, Montana, Idaho, Alabama, Wyoming, Kentucky, North Dakota, Tennessee and Ohio, ABC News reported.
In Alabama, deaths from COVID shrunk the overall population, reported NBC News, with more deaths than births in the state last year — the first time that has happened since record-keeping began.
Those somber stats helped push the total number of deaths in this country past the mark made by the 1918-19 flu epidemic, which killed an estimated 675,000 people. On Monday, the U.S. logged 675,446 deaths, and by Tuesday it had risen to 678,205.
Nationwide the number of deaths has topped a daily average of more than 1,900 a day for the first time since early March, mostly among the 71 million unvaccinated Americans, The Associated Press reported.
The increasingly lethal turn has filled hospitals, complicated the start of the school year, delayed the return to offices and demoralized health care workers.
“It is devastating,” said Dr. Dena Hubbard, a pediatrician in the Kansas City, Mo., area who has cared for babies delivered prematurely by Caesarean section in a last-ditch effort to save their mothers, some of whom died.
To say it’s demoralizing for health workers would be an understatement, she added. The deaths, combined with misinformation and disbelief about the virus, have been “heart-wrenching, soul-crushing.”
Now, nearly 64% of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. And yet, average deaths per day have climbed 40% over the past two weeks, from 1,387 to 1,947, according to Johns Hopkins. More than 70 million are eligible for the vaccine but have yet to get a shot.
With News Wire Services
