New coronavirus cases in US may be leveling off -- but more and more are being hospitalized and dying

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Wed, 2020-12-23 09:09 — mike kraft

(CNN) An average of more than 200,000 people have tested positive for coronavirus every day for two straight weeks in the United States, a toll that has led to record numbers of people hospitalized and dying of the virus.

The US reported over 195,000 new cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday, putting the seven-day average of daily new cases at just over 215,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. That is only slightly changed from the number of newly infected back on December 10, when the seven-day average of daily new cases reached 212,000, which suggests that new cases may have flattened at a high daily average.

Yet because hospitalizations and deaths from Covid-19 generally follow a week or two after new cases, the number of Americans hospitalized and dying from the virus has continued to increase.

On Tuesday, the US reported 117,777 people hospitalized with Covid-19, the most since the pandemic began, according to the Covid Tracking Project. In addition, 3,400 people were reported dead of the virus on Tuesday, the second-highest number of Covid-19 deaths in a single day.

The nationwide data also somewhat masks how different states are dealing with the virus. States like California, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Rhode Island are seeing huge surges in new cases, while cases in much of the Midwest have declined since its recent peaks.

Whether the number of new daily cases begins to decline nationally from here is dependent, as always, on people's behavior -- and how America's systems of power influence that behavior. Public health officials, like Dr. Anthony Fauci, have cautioned people against holding large, indoor, unmasked gatherings this Christmas and New Year's. ...

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