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One of the striking coincidences of the US pandemic year is that the first anniversary of the first case, 20 January 2021, falls on the day of Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration. That sets a sharp frame through which to view the year: the devastation that has befallen America as a result of the political mishandling of the crisis must wholly be owned, down to the day, by Donald Trump.
The numbers crudely tell the story. Nobody knew it then, but the initial confirmed case in Washington state was the opening drop in what was to become a tsunami of infection. That first patient may have survived and is doing well. But he was followed by nearly 400,000 people who were not so fortunate.
Related: 'An unmitigated disaster': America's year of Covid
According to the numbers from Johns Hopkins university, yesterday the US recorded 174,513 new coronavirus cases, and 1,723 further deaths. Numbers are often reduced at the weekend because of different collection methodologies which means some numbers do not get reported over the weekend. Nevertheless, the US is on course to exceed 24 million total cases and 400,000 total deaths before Joe Biden is inaugurated on Wednesday.
The Covid Tracking Project reports that yesterday there were 124,387 people in the US hospitalized with Covid. It is the 48th consecutive day that more than 100,000 people have been in hospital with the coronavirus.
We could have persistently high levels of infection in the spring until we finally get enough people vaccinated. The only backstop against this new variant is the fact that we will have a lot of infection by then so there’ll be a lot of immunity in the population, and we will be vaccinating more people. But this really changes the equation and I think what we’re looking at is a relentless strike from this virus, heading into the spring.
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