The United States topped 4 million cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, as the pandemic shows no signs of relief. Already, almost 144,000 people in the country have died from the disease.
More than 70,000 new cases were recorded yesterday, with a seven-day average of nearly 67,000 new cases per day, according to data collected by The COVID Tracking Project.
With continued waves, hospitalizations are approaching a new record during the pandemic. There are currently 59,628 people hospitalized across the country. That is slightly below the previous peak on April 15 of 59,940. Deaths are also on the rise, with a seven-day average of 834 deaths per day. The past two days have seen more than 1,000 deaths. Southern states and hotspots in western states, such as California, are seeing the spread of the disease more significantly.
With the sick still arriving at hospitals, experts expect the death rate to continue to rise in the coming weeks or months. That is what happens before some of the patients who enter the hospital now succumb to their disease.
Soon
To exacerbate the crisis, there are reports that the COVID-19 testing labs are overwhelmed. The response time for returning test results to patients has slowed down, somewhere taking weeks. This has left the uninfected unnecessarily waiting in long quarantines. For those who are infected, the results of delayed tests make it impossible to trace contacts and quarantine anyone exposed before they can transmit the virus themselves.
Labs have access to high-performance machines that can run thousands of tests a day. In fact, the United States is conducting more tests now than ever during the pandemic, reporting results of 800,000 tests on Wednesday. In mid-April, the country conducted around 150,000 tests per day.
Still, the labs may be running even more tests than they have now. As AP reports, testing laboratories and hospitals are suffocated by the global shortage of test reagents and supplies, in addition to growing demand. For example, Bobbi Pritt of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, told the store that the hospital’s machines are running at only 20 percent capacity due to shortages.
Quest Diagnostics, one of the nation’s largest test chains, told AP that it simply cannot meet demand during the current surge in cases. The company said patients should wait a week or more to wait for results. She also recommended that doctors delay testing for low-priority patients, such as those with no symptoms or known contact with an infected person.
