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 U.S. COVID-19 hospitalizations reached a record 130,834 late on
Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally of public health data, while
3,684 reported fatalities was the second-highest single-day death
toll of the pandemic.
That appalling toll meant that on Tuesday someone died from COVID-19
every 24 seconds in the United States. With total deaths surpassing
357,000, one in every 914 U.S. residents has died from COVID-19
since the pandemic began, according to a Reuters analysis.
In hard-hit California, public health authorities ordered hospitals
in more than a dozen southern and central counties overwhelmed with
COVID-19 patients to suspend elective surgeries for at least three
weeks.
The order, issued late on Tuesday by the state's Department of
Public Health, applies to 14 counties, including Los Angeles, Orange
and San Diego counties, where hospital critical care capacity has
been severely stretched.
Total U.S. COVID-19 cases surpassed the 21 million mark on
Wednesday, and, with many healthcare systems approaching a breaking
point, pressure mounted on state and local officials to speed up
distribution of the two authorized vaccines from Pfizer Inc with
partner BioNTech SE and Moderna Inc.
The lack of a federal blueprint for the crucial final step of
getting the vaccines into tens of millions of arms has left state
and local officials in charge of the monumental effort, creating a
patchwork of different plans across United States.
VACCINE MEGA HUBS AND THE NATIONAL GUARD
Some states have summoned extra resources to speed vaccine
administrations. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper on Tuesday
mobilized the state's National Guard to "provide support to local
health providers" to more quickly distribute coronavirus vaccines.
"We will use all resources and personnel needed," Cooper said in a
statement.
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan also announced that emergency support
teams from the state's National Guard will lend a hand to local
health departments in their vaccination efforts.
"At the current pace of allocation," Hogan said, the state expects
to be able to start vaccinating the 1b priority group - people age
75 and older and frontline essential workers - by late January.
In New York City, where Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew
Cuomo have sparred over slow vaccine administration, officials said
on Wednesday the city was ramping up its "vaccine hubs," which would
include 15 locations by Jan. 16, five "mega sites" among them. The
sites will have the capacity to vaccinate 100,000 New Yorkers a
week, official said.
The ambitious goal comes as the city administered roughly 10,000
shots on Tuesday, according to data posted on Wednesday.
De Blasio also said at a news briefing that home health aides and
some members of the New York Police Department could receive the
vaccine for the first time on Wednesday.
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 After earlier this week laying
blame on local officials for the sluggish pace
of vaccinations at some New York hospitals,
Cuomo said on Wednesday that the rate among
hospital staff statewide has tripled to 30,000
inoculations per day since Monday.
In Florida, which set a new single-day record of
coronavirus cases, Ron DeSantis announced that
the Hard Rock stadium in Miami’s metropolitan
area was converting its testing operations into
a vaccination center.
Another 3 million doses of the two vaccines were
sent to U.S. states on Tuesday, acting Secretary
of Defense Christopher Miller said in a
statement, bringing the total to more than 19
million doses in 21 days, only a fraction of
which have been administered so far.
Both authorized vaccines require two doses three or four weeks
apart. Healthcare workers in several states this week began getting
their second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which was approved
before the Moderna shot.
The U.S. government was considering halving the doses of Moderna's
vaccine to free up supply for more vaccinations. But scientists at
Moderna and the National Institutes of Health said it could take two
months to study whether the halved doses would be effective.
Meanwhile, CVS Health Corp said on Wednesday it expected to complete
administering the first doses of COVID-19 vaccines at nearly 8,000
U.S. nursing homes by Jan. 25. A massive global
vaccination campaign will be needed to establish a level of herd
immunity that could put an end to the devastating pandemic raging
across much of the United States and many other countries, with more
highly transmissible variants of the virus cropping up.
A variant that has swept through the United Kingdom has been
reported in at least five U.S. states, National Institutes of Health
Director Francis Collins said in an interview with the Washington
Post on Wednesday.
"We have now seen that same UK virus in the U.S. in at least five
states, and I would be surprised if that doesn't grow pretty
rapidly," Collins said, adding, however, that it doesn't seem to be
more severe.
(Reporting by Maria Caspani, Peter Szekely in New York and Gabriella
Borter in Fairfield, Connecticut, Dan Whitcomb and Steve Gorman in
Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Anurag Maan in Bengaluru, Lisa
Shumaker in Chicago and Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Writing by
Maria Caspani; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Jonathan Oatis)
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