The United States hit a new pandemic record on Friday, surpassing 700,000 deaths from COVID-19, just as the delta wave is beginning to subside and bring some relief to overwhelmed hospitals.
It took the United States three and a half months to go from 600,000 to 700,000 deaths, an increase driven by the spread of the variant among unvaccinated Americans. The national death toll is greater than the population of Boston.
The new brand is deeply frustrating for public health authorities and front-line medical professionals, because the vaccines have been available to all eligible Americans for nearly six months, and they prove to protect against hospitalizations and death.
An estimated 70 million Americans who could be inoculated are still not doing so, providing fuel for the variant.
“You lose patients to COVID and it shouldn’t happen,” said Debi Delapaz, a head nurse at UF Health Jacksonville, who recalled how at one point the hospital was recording eight COVID-19 deaths a day during the summer rebound. “This is something that should not happen.”
Despite the rising death toll, there are signs of improvement.
Nationwide, the number of people who are hospitalized with COVID-19 has dropped to approximately 75,000, compared to more than 93,000 in the first days of September.
New cases average 112,000 a day, a drop of roughly a third in the last two and a half weeks.
Deaths also appear to be declining, averaging about 1,900 a day versus more than 2,000 about a week ago.
The decrease in cases in relation to the summer outbreak has been attributed to the fact that more people are using masks and that more are being vaccinated.
The decline could also be because the virus has already passed through susceptible people in some places and there are fewer to infect.
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