More Americans died of COVID on Wednesday than on 9/11
More than 3,000 people died in the United States on Wednesday from complications of COVID-19, another single-day record for deaths since the coronavirus pandemic began.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, there were 221,267 new reported cases of the virus on Wednesday and 3,124 deaths.
The number eclipsed the mark set last Wednesday, when a record 2,885 deaths were reported.
It also eclipsed the 2,977 people who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Overall, more than 290,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, and more than 15 million have been infected in the U.S. — far more than in any other country.
The latest grim milestone comes amid a holiday season in which health officials are bracing for many more.
Infectious-disease experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, say the full effect of Thanksgiving travel and gatherings still lies ahead.
“We have got to own the problem,” Fauci said Wednesday. “And we can’t have, as we’re seeing in some parts of the country, what would be the equivalent of almost denial — where people still don’t think this is a big deal. They think this is fake news or a little bit of a hoax or what have you. It’s not. It’s real. The numbers are absolutely real. We’re having record numbers of hospitalizations, record numbers of cases and, most recently, deaths.”
A new “ensemble forecast” released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts that the number of newly reported COVID-19 deaths will “likely increase over the next 4 weeks, with 12,600 to 23,400 new deaths likely to be reported in the week ending January 2, 2021,” and a cumulative total of 332,000 to 362,000 deaths by that date.
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