Even with all the warnings, more passengers were infected at airports on Sunday than any day since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Millions of people traveled despite the post-Thanksgiving rush that overwhelmed California hospitals.
About 1.3 million passengers have been subject to airport security, the largest number since the start of the pandemic, according to the Transportation Security Administration. The holiday crowd has raised fears of another increase in coronavirus cases.
“I think we are now in a viral tsunami,” said Dr. Robert Kim Farley, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It just keeps coming. It just keeps coming.”
Kim Farley fears what’s next. If there is an increase in the increase, he said, “your hospitals are becoming overloaded, and your ICU beds become unavailable.”
The mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, received a blunt warning about the consequences of celebrating New Year’s Eve. “It is a choice that you can make that will either save lives or take lives,” he said.
Although US health officials have promised 20 million doses of the vaccine by the end of the year, only 11.4 million have been distributed and 2.1 million people have received the first dose of the vaccine.
In New York, officials are investigating reports that a clinic “fraudulently obtained the vaccine” and distributed it across the state. Governor Andrew Cuomo said Monday that anyone in violent A state’s rules on setting vaccine priorities could lose its license and face a $ 1 million fine.
“We want to send a clear signal to service providers that if you violate the vaccination law, we will find out and you will be prosecuted,” Cuomo said.
In Florida, hundreds of elderly people camped overnight to receive the Moderna Inc. vaccine. In California, the outbreak is so bad that the US military is sending dozens of doctors and nurses to help.
We’ll take care of you. We’ll find places. We’ll put you in hallways. We’ll put you in conference rooms. But ask yourself, it’s a bed in a conference room like a regular bed, said Dr. Vanessa Walker, a frontline physician in California: “The patient room? I do not think so”.
Coronavirus has now killed 1 in 1,000 Americans.
There is also growing concern about a new strain of the virus in the UK that appears to be more contagious. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now asking passengers from Great Britain to show negative test results before boarding a plane bound for the United States.
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