COVID-19: Infection Cases Rising In New York
160,606 new cases, 2,051 deaths on New Year day
Doctors warn of ‘breaking point’ limits
Fears of more deaths in vaccine chaos
Amid the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, infections and hospitalizations are daily rising again in New York, the most populous city in the United States.
Confirmed reports from health authorities said worst-hit is New York City, the clear hotspot in the world last spring during the first wave of the pandemic, even as vaccinations are currently behind schedule.
With an estimated 2019 population of 8,336,817, the final hours of the harrowing year 2020 saw New York City in a worrying position as hospitalizations rose for the fourth consecutive month.
Similarly, while the positive test rate in some areas doubled, vaccinations that were supposed to bring normalcy only got off to a very slow start.
This is as the US is braced for a post-holiday coronavirus surge as its death toll nears 350,000, with thousands more predicted to die in the coming month and doctors warning they are at “breaking point” and fighting “world war three”.
New Year’s Day saw 160,606 new cases and 2,051 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University, bringing the total caseload to 20.1million and the death toll to 347,788.
In South Florida, seniors seeking inoculation jammed phone lines and crashed a state health department website during the week as they tried making appointments, the Sun-Sentinel reported.
Broward County, around Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton, said appointments for vaccination are already booked through February.
Florida has recorded 1.3 million coronavirus cases, with the highest one-day total of the entire pandemic in the state reported on Thursday, December 31, 2020 just over 17,000 new cases.
On 1 January, shortly after midnight at Houston’s United Memorial Medical Center (UMMC), Duc Nguyen sat up in his hospital bed for a video call with his wife.
The glow of a television and a street lamp outside his window provided the only light as a nasal cannula delivered oxygen to his lungs.
It was not how the 33-year-old had envisioned welcoming in the New Year, but he said he was grateful UMMC had a vacant bed so he could be treated for pneumonia brought on by COVID-19.
Nguyen said he was confident he would recover, but he predicted the worst days of the pandemic were ahead. “It’s not over yet,” he rasped.
UMMC nurse Tanna Ingraham has herself overcome two bouts of COVID-19, which has decimated frontline healthcare workers across the country.
In normal times, Ingraham might have rung in the New Year sharing drinks with friends. Instead, she was still coming to terms with the sudden death this week of a patient who had just been taken off a ventilator amid signs she had been on the mend.
The patient was 43, the same age as Ingraham, who choked back tears as she drew the tubes from the patient’s corpse and placed her into a body bag – a task she has grown used to this year.
The death represented yet another American for whom the miraculous vaccines now being hastily distributed and haphazardly administered in the US, as the government fell far short of its own goals to vaccinate 20 million citizens by the end of 2020, came too late.
“I’m just hoping that at the end of this there is going to be a light because, honestly, that’s the only thing that keeps me going. That and my faith,” Ingraham said, adding: “So, 2021 I’m ready.”
David Persse of the Houston health department said the risk of further US spread of the highly infectious new coronavirus variant discovered in Britain was a “huge concern”.
“We are all sort of bracing to see if that occurs,” he said.
