Peter Wells
The US had its deadliest day in more than six months on Tuesday after reporting more than 2,000 coronavirus fatalities.
States attributed a further 2,028 deaths to coronavirus, according to Covid Tracking Project data, up from 956 on Monday and compared with 1,555 on Tuesday last week.
That took the national death toll to 250,925. Johns Hopkins University, which uses an alternative methodology to CTP, said last week that fatalities crossed the quarter-of-a-million mark.
The latest increase in deaths was the biggest one-day jump in fatalities since the record of 2,753 on May 7, when northeastern states like New York and New Jersey were hit hard during the early stage of the pandemic.
The US has averaged 1,517 fatalities a day over the past week, the highest rate since mid-May, according to a Financial Times analysis of CTP data.
Coronavirus deaths tend to lag behind cases and hospitalisations.
The recent rise in the fatality rate beyond levels experienced during the summer surge runs counter to claims the record levels of coronavirus cases — and hospital admissions — over the past month were simply a function of nationwide daily testing capacity that had been continually ramped up.
Commuters wearing masks wait at a bus stop in Detroit
Several states each reported more than 100 fatalities, including Texas (162), Michigan (154), Illinois (150), Indiana (103). Missouri (189) and Wisconsin (114) both set single-day records for deaths, as did Alaska (13), Maine (12) and Oregon (21), according to an FT analysis of Covid Tracking Project data.
The number of people currently being treated for Covid-19 in US hospitals hit 88,080, a record high for the 15th day running. Seventeen states reported their highest level of hospitalisations of the pandemic, compared with 19 that hit records on Tuesday last week.
States reported 166,672 coronavirus cases, up from 150,975 on Monday, and nearly 10,000 more than the tally on Tuesday last week.
While there were some concerning developments — with Texas and California reporting their biggest and second-biggest one-day jumps in new cases since the start of the pandemic — trends in the Midwest are showing nascent signs of improvement.
Ohio was the only one of the 12 states in the region where its seven-day average of cases hit a record on Tuesday, while six of them are down at least 10 per cent from peak rates, according to CTP data.
