Here’s what happens on Tuesday with the U.S. pandemic:
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THREE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY
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– Despite growing access to vaccines, January looks bleak around the globe as the virus reappears and transforms itself from the UK to Japan to California. It refills hospitals and closes livelihoods as governments put new lockdowns to keep people apart.
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There are more virus patients in Mexico City hospitals than ever before. Germany reported one of the highest daily fatalities on Tuesday. Even the virus success story in Thailand is battling an unexpected wave of infections. Doctors are facing or stepping up to a rising number of COVID-19 patients after year-end holiday meetings. And more and more countries are reporting cases of a new, contagious variant of the virus that is already spread across the UK.
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Distribution problems and logistical challenges have slowed the adoption of the coronavirus vaccine in California. Governor Gavin Newsom said the pace was “not good enough”. Only about 1% of California’s 40 million residents have been vaccinated. About 454,000 doses of the vaccine have been given – just a quarter of the 1.3 million doses the state received. The state’s death toll on Monday stood at 26,500, confirming that nearly 2.4 million cases have occurred since the pandemic began . California hospitals are overcrowded with more than 22,000 COVID-19 patients.
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– Rhode Island emerged as a surprising COVID-19 hotspot last month, briefly recording the highest rate of new cases in the country. The smallest state in the country hasn’t seen the death toll in more populous states. However, experts say the Rhode Island experience offers lessons for other states struggling with the same factors, including high population density, an aging population, and many nursing homes, as well as poverty and an economy that relies on low-wage workers that are not be able to work from home.
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THE NUMBERS: As of January 4, according to Johns Hopkins University, the seven-day moving average for daily new deaths in the US rose in the past two weeks from 2,655.3 on December 21 to 2,664.9 on January 4.
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DEATH TOLL: The number of COVID-19 deaths in the United States stands at 353,628.
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QUOTE: “We are in a race to prevent infection, eradicate cases, protect health systems, and save lives as we introduce two highly effective and safe vaccines to high risk populations. That is not easy. Those are the hard miles. “- Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
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ICYMI: If you’ve had the coronavirus before, it is possible you could get it again, but such cases seem rare. Some reinfections have been confirmed, but two new studies suggest that it would be unusual for at least a few months and possibly longer. In a human study in the United States, only 0.3% of people infected tested positive for the virus over the next several months. A similarly low rate of reinfection was found in a study of health workers in the UK. The results bode well for current COVID-19 vaccines, which trigger the kind of immune responses the studies found protective.
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ON THE HORIZON: Dozens of residents in an impoverished neighborhood of Miami remain nourished thanks to the efforts of a woman whose generous deeds have sparked widespread donations. Since August, Sherina Jones has been feeding the hungry through free communal refrigerators. When it became known that one of the refrigerators was stolen just before Thanksgiving, donations were poured in. Residents in a neighborhood where people can barely pay their rent volunteered to give everyone something that was quite a lot. A former classmate of Jones bought two fridges and a local pastor donated another. Other people contributed enough money to enable Jones to give Christmas presents to 400 families.
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For AP’s full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, please visit https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
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