The US tops 100,000 coronavirus infections for third straight day, as hospitalizations soar
(CNN) The United States topped 100,000 new coronavirus cases for the third straight day Friday, in a week that also saw Covid-19 hospitalizations climb.
By Friday evening, there had been at least 120,009 new cases and at least 1,098 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Additionally, more than 54,000 Americans are hospitalized with Covid-19, with about 11,000 of them in intensive care, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
That's alarming for several reasons, health experts say.
For one, officials around the nation are warning that hospitals could soon run out of capacity. New Mexico authorities said hospitals could run out of beds "in a matter of days," while in Kansas City, physicians voiced concerns about staffing.
More people in the hospital and intensive care could also lead to a rise in deaths. An ensemble forecast by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projects another 31,000 people could lose their lives over the next two-and-a-half weeks.
The worsening situation is leading officials to take new steps to prevent the spread of the virus, including curfews, limitations on restaurants and restrictions on gatherings -- despite the fatigue that many are feeling.
States are seeing record high numbers
In a week with record nationwide case numbers, many states also reported all-time highs.
Thirteen states reported their highest numbers of new cases on Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins: Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah and West Virginia.
And at least 38 states are reporting more new infections than the previous week. Only two states -- Alabama and Tennessee -- are trending in the right direction.
At least 236,025 Americans have died from Covid-19, and there have been at least 9,727,345 US coronavirus cases since the pandemic's start, Johns Hopkins University data show.
Hospitals are reaching capacity
In the first five days of November -- with the country focused on elections -- 22 states reported at least one record-high day of Covid-19 hospitalizations, according to data from the Covid Tracking Project.
The states are: Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
In Kansas City, hospitals are reaching capacity because of the strain of Covid-19, officials say.
Chief medical officers from seven hospital systems told reporters that city hospitals could be overwhelmed in a matter of weeks. They said that hospitalizations in the region were at their highest levels since the pandemic started.
A major concern, they added, is that there wouldn't be enough staffing at hospitals to support patients with the virus.
"Covid is the leading admission diagnosis" at the University of Kansas, said Dr. Steven Stites, chief medical director at the University of Kansas Health System.
Meanwhile, Colorado's Department of Health and Environment said Friday that the newest Covid-19 model indicates state hospitalizations are increasing more sharply than last week's projections.
The state has reached its greatest number of Covid-19 hospitalizations to date, surpassing its peak in April, the department said in a news release.
"Keeping hospitals at or below demand capacity will require substantial and rapid action to prevent transmission," according to the release.
New state restrictions include curfews
With the virus now running rampant across American communities, several state and local leaders have pushed new measures to help curb the spread.
Officials in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Denver, for example, are recommending nightly curfews.
On Friday, Denver officials announced a 10 p.m. curfew for residents and nonexempt businesses -- a last-ditch effort to curb rising cases and avoid another citywide stay-at-home order.
The curfew, which Mayor Michael Hancock called a "Home By 10 Order," goes into effect on Sunday and will last 30 days. It differs slightly from a traditional curfew because it came from the city's health department rather than the mayor's office.
That means that public health officials will enforce the order rather than law enforcement.
Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo announced a stay-at-home advisory that will last from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. on weeknights and will begin at 10:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. That advisory, one of several new restrictions, also takes effect on Sunday.
Gatherings such as house parties have been the main source of virus spread in the state, the governor added. And if those don't stop, she said, "I will be back in two weeks with a shutdown order."
Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont recommended that residents stay home between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. to limit socializing. New measures on Friday will further limit restaurants, religious ceremonies and event spaces, with the governor also tightening restrictions around private gatherings through Thanksgiving.
Social distancing earlier might have prevented 59,000 deaths
More than 1 million US Covid-19 cases and more than 59,000 deaths could have been prevented by early May if mitigation steps had been implemented two weeks earlier, according to a modeling study published Friday in Science Advances.
Sen Pei, a research scientist at Columbia University, and colleagues built a Covid-19 transmission model that looked at all US counties from February 21 through May 3.
Broad coronavirus transmission control measures were announced March 15, researchers wrote. But had interventions such as social distancing and business closures started a week earlier on March 8, there would have been 600,000 fewer confirmed cases and 32,000 fewer deaths.
If those interventions started two weeks earlier, on March 1, there would have been more than a million fewer confirmed cases and more than 59,000 fewer deaths, the authors found.
Though long shutdowns are burdensome, Pei and his colleagues wrote that it is vital to balance a return to social and economic activity with avoiding spread of the virus.
The researchers pointed to South Korea, Vietnam, New Zealand and Germany as countries that had potentially achieved that balance.
"Our results demonstrate the dramatic impact that earlier interventions could have had on the COVID-19 pandemic in the US," the authors wrote. "Looking forward, the findings underscore the need for continued vigilance when control measures are relaxed."
Still, they noted that their experiments were based on idealized assumptions. Initiating and implementing social distancing rules during an outbreak is complicated, and it could take a while for people to comply.
But as the virus continues to spread across the nation, they wrote, leaders might apply some of those lessons when looking to control rebound outbreaks.
