Recent reports suggests death toll due to COVID-19 continues to rise in Florida, Texas, California, Arizona including some other states that are suffering badly for these expanding outbreaks. Johns Hopkins University has revealed some data that can help to understand the current scenario to a better extent.
It was only three months ago when the death rate had already reached up to 2,000 per day mostly driven by New York and New Jersey, fatalities in the U.S. was showing a gradual decline — and death rate had gone down to an average of less than 600 fatalities per day from June 23 through July 8. Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. have decreased or stayed almost stable for weeks, even though we have seen number of infections have more than doubled compared to mid-May. But again the daily death toll seems to rise again in the U.S., as per epidemiologists’ opinion.
Covid-19 deaths have increasingly gone up across the country. Over last three consecutive days the average number of fatalities has increased to more than 600 on based on the last 7 day average of daily no of deaths. Reports show that due to sudden spike in several hot spots the death toll has also gone up. Epidemiologists have expressed their concern as the deaths have again started to accelerate which is reflected in last three days data.
Larry Levitt, the executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, has stated, since it is very difficult to predict the situation a few weeks in advance, so they could not anticipate that the rise in death is coming. Common tendency is as more people are getting infected, more people are being hospitalized and in due course more people die.
Hopkins data has already shown that the death toll in Florida, Texas, California and Arizona has shown a sudden rise to record highs in the past three days.
New reported cases in California regarding COVID-19 deaths was 85 daily over the past seven days, which is more than 29% in comparison with a week before data. Hopkin data shows the state’s Covid-19 death toll is now 6,859.
In Florida the average death per day is now 56 as per past seven days report, and it is more than 35% compared with a week ago. Hopkins’ data says over 4,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the state so far.
The same picture is seen in Texas where the number of deaths has been reported to be 66 per day as per last seven days data, which is shockingly more than 106% compared to past week. Hopkins data shows more than 3,000 COVID -19 patients have died in the state so far.
Some epidemiologists have claimed the data might be faulty. In case a Covid-19 patient has any additional health issue, such as heart disease, and the virus can further worsens their condition the chances of death can be severe. So this factor should be categorized by the doctors. Elderly patients dying nursing homes mostly have been infected with corona virus but they aren’t often tested.
Epidemiologists also opined, hopefully the country is now much better equipped at present to manage an influx of Covid-19 patients than it was during the start of the outbreak. That should certainly help the health department to avoid the similar spike in fatalities that we have seen to overwhelm the hospitals and funeral homes in the Northeast and Washington region during March and April.
Nevertheless, three epidemiologists in Florida and Texas have forecasted the deaths rate to remain upward for at least a few up coming weeks, if not longer.
