The U.S. Passes 4 Million Cases in November Alone, Doubling Octobers Tally – The New York Times

Heres what you need to know:A hospital in Pipestone, Minn., last week.Credit...Erinn Springer for The New York Times

The total number of coronavirus cases in the United States for November surpassed four million on Saturday, more than double the record set in October of 1.9 million cases. And the sharp escalation is likely to continue or grow even steeper.

We are on track to continue this accelerated pace of the epidemic and see even more speed of rise of cases because of the movement indoors, of activities around the country and because large numbers of people have moved around the country for the holidays, said Tom Inglesby, the director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University.

The milestone came as Americans traveled by the millions for the long Thanksgiving weekend and amid a Black Friday that saw some store crowding, even as merchants guided customers to online sales and limit in-person shopping. In the end, retail trackers reported

More than 170,000 people in the United States are now testing positive on an average day. More than 1.1 million people tested positive in the past week alone. The countrys overall total, from the start of the pandemic, is over 13 million infections by far the worlds largest outbreak.

The Thanksgiving holiday, however, caused skews in reporting at the end of the week, with a steep drop-off in new cases reported on Thursday, and then a huge jump on Friday. Many states did not report data on the Thanksgiving holiday, when the national tally rose more than 103,000 cases and more than 1,100 deaths far lower levels than on the previous Thursday, Nov. 19, when 187,000 cases and 1,962 deaths were recorded.

For that very reason, the numbers were artificially high on Friday, when many states reported two days worth of data. That pushed the country past 200,000 cases in a single day for the first time, with more than 205,000 reported as of late Friday night, along with more than 1,400 deaths. The preceding Friday, Nov. 20, the reports were more than 198,600 infections and more than 1,950 deaths.

The blurry data could persist. Access to testing around the country was likely to have decreased for a few days, meaning more infections could go uncounted. In Louisiana, testing sites run by the National Guard were slated to be closed both Thursday and Friday. In Wisconsin, some National Guard testing sites closed all week.

Many hospitals across the country are already overcrowded and struggling to keep up with rising numbers of patients seeking care, and the pressure on the health care system is likely to only increase. Hospitalizations on Saturday reached a daily record of 91,635, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

The countrys monthly case numbers have varied considerably, but have exploded over the past two months. Officials announced more than 188,000 cases for the month of March, followed by a significantly higher 887,000 cases for April. From there, the monthly total dropped to more than 723,500 for May, and then, after the Memorial Day holiday, rose to more than 854,000 for June. That skyrocketed to more than 1,918,000 for July, dropped to more than 1,473,000 for August and more than 1,216,000 for September, and then shot back up past 1,946,000 for October.

The number for this month, as of midday Saturday, was 4,006,548, with more than two days left for the tally to grow.

Monthly deaths have been rising more slowly, but they are already higher than at any point since the spring surge, when New York, New Jersey and Louisiana became global hot spots.

News of the likely approval of at least one vaccine in mid-December has raised hopes that the virus can be slowed, but until a significant proportion of the population can be vaccinated, experts say, people need to act responsibly. And, they say, officials should add or create rules that discourage indoor and group gatherings.

There has to be a combination of individual members of the public making different decisions and policymakers restricting the activities or settings with highest transmission risk, like restaurants and bars where people are sitting close for prolonged periods without masks, said Dr. Inglesby.

On April 15, 2,752 people across the United States were reported to have died from Covid-19, more than on any day before or since.

Now daily deaths are rising sharply and fast approaching that dreadful count again. On Wednesday, 2,300 deaths were reported nationwide the highest toll since May.

The pandemic has now claimed more than 264,800 lives in the country. But how the virus kills has changed in profound ways. Months of suffering have provided a horrific but valuable education: Doctors and nurses know better how to treat patients who contract the virus and how to prevent severe cases from ending in fatality, and a far smaller proportion of people who catch the virus are dying from it than were in the spring.

Yet the sheer breadth of the current outbreak means that the cost in lives lost every day is still climbing.

And unlike during the peak of the spring wave in April, when the deaths were concentrated in a handful of states like New York, New Jersey and Louisiana, now they are scattered widely across the entire nation. There is hardly a community that has not been affected.

Twenty-five states set weekly death records in November, and Thanksgiving gatherings and the start of the holiday shopping season may cause infections to spread still more widely in the coming days.

We are at risk of repeating what happened in April, Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and a member of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.s coronavirus task force, said of the death toll. I shudder to imagine what things might be like in two weeks.

Once you go over the case cliff, where you have so many cases that you overwhelm the system, basically at that point when you fall off that case cliff, youre going to see mortality rates go up substantially, he said.

Texas and Illinois have reported more than 800 deaths over the past week, while Pennsylvania, Michigan, California and Florida added more than 400 each. In the Upper Midwest, where reports of new cases have started to level off, deaths are still mounting. Nearly 40 percent of all coronavirus deaths in Wisconsin have been reported since the start of November. In North Dakota, where military nurses have been deployed in hospitals, more than 1 out of every 1,000 residents has now died.

Around the country, medical examiners and funeral home directors are grappling with a steady rise in the toll. On a recent night, Dale Clock, who along with his wife owns and operates two funeral homes in western Michigan, handled four Covid-19 deaths in just 12 hours, he said. In the past two weeks, nearly half of the families they serve lost relatives to the virus.

The blows came in quick succession when the Kansas City Fire Department lost two longtime firefighters to Covid-19 last weekend, one of them a captain, as the coronavirus continued to rage across much of the Midwest.

More than 200 members of the department have tested positive since the pandemic began, and at least 70 of those have active infections now, according to Fire Chief Donna Lake. The two over the weekend were the second and third to die of the disease; the first was an emergency medic in the spring.

It affects morale in a big way, Chief Lake said of the losses.

The International Association of Fire Fighters, which represents more than 320,000 professional firefighters across the United States, said that more than 3,400 members have had the virus nationwide, and 22 have died. There have been many more cases among the nations roughly 750,000 volunteer firefighters.

When we think of firefighters, the first thing we think of is fire trucks, said Doug Stern, a spokesman for the union. But in the overwhelming majority of America, firefighters are also paramedics. Theyre also E.M.T.s. Theyre the first link in the public health chain. They really are health workers, much like doctors and nurses.

Firefighters are often working in uncontrolled environments, he said, dealing with emergencies in houses, buildings or vehicles where surfaces may not have been disinfected, and encountering people who may not be wearing masks or taking other protective measures.

To mitigate those risks, the Kansas City Fire Department has changed its protocols, and now initially sends in a single person in full protective gear to assess some emergency situations, instead of a whole group going in right away.

But the department has also had to send exposed workers back to the front lines, Chief Lake said, because lengthy quarantines were leaving the department critically short of personnel.

The two who died over last weekend were Capt. Robert Rocha, 60, a 29-year veteran of the department, and Scott Davidson, 45, a communications specialist and paramedic. Both were remembered as vital figures in the community.

Captain Rocha was a very gregarious, larger-than-life kind of guy who mentored younger firefighters, Chief Lake said. She recalled Mr. Davidson as a family man who brought a valuable frontline perspective from his paramedic service to his more recent job in communications.

The department deems death from Covid-19 to be in the line of duty, and firefighters across the country are known for turning out to ceremonially honor fallen colleagues. But the pandemic necessarily constrained the send-offs in Kansas City, with attendance limits at services and social distance between members of the department who stood at curbside to salute a procession for Mr. Davidson.

A drive-through visitation for Captain Rocha will be held on Sunday, and his funeral service will be closed to the public in person but streamed online.

Sarah Fuller became the first woman to play during a regular-season game in one of college footballs Power 5 conferences by booting a kickoff on Saturday for Vanderbilt to start the second half against Missouri.

Fuller, a senior and the starting goalkeeper for Vanderbilts womens soccer team, was tapped this week after every member of the Commodores kicking squad was forced to stop practicing because at least one came into contact with someone who tested positive for the coronavirus.

Fuller wore the No. 32 the number she wears on her soccer jersey and a helmet with the phrase Play Like a Girl.

Lets make history, she posted on Twitter on Friday night.

Last Sunday, Fuller helped Vanderbilt clinch its first Southeastern Conference womens soccer title since 1994 with a 3-1 victory over Arkansas. She was planning on heading home to Wylie, Texas, for Thanksgiving when her soccer coach called her about kicking this weekend, she told the school. Her parents watched from the stands as her kickoff traveled to the Missouri 35-yard line.

I was just really calm, she said. The SEC championship was more stressful.

She added: Honestly its just so exciting that I could represent for all the little girls out there that they can play football or any sport, really.

Football players and other athletes offered Fuller words of encouragement posted to social media, including Billie Jean King, Dak Prescott and Nick Folk, a New England Patriots kicker.

Vanderbilt was blown out by Missouri, 41-0, and Fuller did not have an opportunity to attempt a field goal. Vanderbilt is 0-8 this season.

Fullers hasty addition to the team was one example of many of how much the surging virus has affected college football. The Commodores were originally supposed to play the University of Tennessee, but that game was postponed to accommodate several postponements elsewhere in the SEC as teams struggle to contain the virus. Other conferences, like the Big Ten and Mountain West, have canceled games amid outbreaks, while the Ivy League have halted fall and winter sports altogether.

The British police arrested over 150 people on Saturday while trying to shut down anti-lockdown protests in central London, as tensions escalated over Englands lockdown.

The Metropolitan Police said the arrests were for breaking coronavirus regulations, assaulting a police officer and various drug offenses.

The lockdown in England, which bars mass gatherings, is scheduled to end on Dec. 2, when some rules will be relaxed.

Police officers lined up along several streets in central Londons West End shopping district and confronted protesters in St. Jamess Park, near Westminster, the Reuters news agency reported. The anti-lockdown protesters were joined by groups demonstrating against vaccines.

Protesters marched along Oxford and Regent streets, ignoring requests to disperse, and scuffled with the police as bottles and smoke bombs were thrown, The Associated Press reported.

Though the current lockdown is ending next week, a new set of rules announced on Thursday will divide England into three tiers of restrictions. That means access to bars and restaurants will differ drastically from place to place depending on the governments assessment of the local threat posed by the virus, and the more than 23 million people who live in the most restricted tier still face a ban on one of the nations favored activities: a visit to the pub.

Even in the worst-hit parts of England, shops, gyms and hair salons are being allowed to reopen, and religious services, weddings and outdoor sports to restart. Retailers will have a chance to open during the lucrative Christmas shopping season.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson also announced plans to relax rules on social mixing to allow up to three households to gather together Dec. 22-27 to celebrate Christmas, but health experts warn this is likely to cause a spike in infections.

Opinion polls generally show that Britons support tough measures and prefer to prioritize health over the economy.

Amazon has embarked on an extraordinary hiring binge this year, vacuuming up an average of 1,400 new workers a day and solidifying its power as online shopping becomes more entrenched during the coronavirus pandemic.

The spree has accelerated since the onset of the pandemic, which has turbocharged Amazons business and made it a winner of the crisis. Starting in July, the company brought on about 350,000 employees, or 2,800 a day. Most have been warehouse workers, but Amazon has also hired software engineers and hardware specialists to power enterprises such as cloud computing, streaming entertainment and devices, which have boomed in the pandemic.

The scale of hiring is even larger than it may seem because the numbers do not account for employee churn, nor do they include the 100,000 temporary workers who have been recruited for the holiday shopping season. They also do not include what internal documents show as roughly 500,000 delivery drivers, who are contractors and not direct Amazon employees.

The new hires have increased Amazons global work force to more than 1.2 million employees.

Amazons rapid employee growth is unrivaled in the history of corporate America. It far outstrips the 230,000 employees that Walmart, the largest private employer with more than 2.2 million workers, added in a single year two decades ago. The closest comparisons are the hiring that entire industries carried out in wartime, such as shipbuilding during the early years of World War II or home building after service members returned, economists and corporate historians said.

The company has also almost tripled the number of U.S. warehouses used for last-mile deliveries this year, said Marc Wulfraat, founder of the logistics consulting firm MWPVL International, who tracks Amazons operations. The delivery drivers are usually contractors, so Amazon does not disclose their numbers in regulatory filings.

They have built their own UPS in the last several years, Mr. Wulfraat said. This pace of change has never been seen before.

Two and a half months into the school year, Massachusetts compiled its data and found sobering results: Enrollment in public schools was down 37,000, or almost 4 percent, from last year, a startling drop for a system that has mostly held steady.

Though no nationwide data is available, similar snapshots are emerging all over the country. Enrollment in New York City public schools is down 31,000 students, or 3.2 percent, according to preliminary data obtained by Chalkbeat.

Officials in Montana reported a drop of 2 percent. Wisconsin and Missouri have reported declines of 3 percent. North Carolina has reported a drop of 4 percent.

The reason is no mystery. With public schools mostly shifting to remote or hybrid learning, parents are pulling their children out entirely, opting to keep them at home or looking for options that offer more in-person instruction.

In some cases, the charter schools are taking them, in some cases privates and parochials, said Glenn Koocher, who heads the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. The bigger tragedy is that some kids arent getting anything, because theyve fallen off the map.

Mr. Koocher said he believes a third of the students that left public schools this year are in that category. The districts have lost touch with them, he said. Theyre staying home, probably doing nothing, and were out of touch with them.

A reverse phenomenon has taken place at private schools, many of which began the school year with in-person learning. In New England, 36 percent of independent schools reported a rise in enrollment in September compared with last year, according to the National Association of Independent Schools.

The National Association of Independent Schools said in August that 58 percent of its schools had reported an increase in interest from the previous summer.

In some areas, like the tristate region outside New York City, private schools have had a surge of affluent parents intent on getting their children into in-person classes for the fall. That option wasnt possible at many public schools and in big cities hit hard in the pandemic.

Applications are up, and enrollment is up, Carole J. Everett, executive director of the New Jersey Association of Independent Schools, told The Times last month. This is largely due to people fleeing the city and public school parents disappointed that their schools havent opened in person. It really picked up over the summer and has continued into the fall.

Some unenrolled students may return to the public school system next year, when in-person teaching resumes, Mr. Kooker said. But if they dont, school budgets are likely to suffer, because state aid to schools is distributed on a per-pupil basis. That matters more in poorer neighborhoods, since wealthy school districts augment state funding using local property taxes.

You still have to have the teachers, he said. You dont lose money in school expenses, but you lose state aid.

New York City deputy sheriffs shut down what they described as an illegal nightclub early Saturday morning in the Garment District, where nearly 400 people were partying inside. Four people were charged with various offenses including violation of city and state coronavirus emergency orders.

Deputies responded at 2:45 a.m. to a complaint of an illegal party at a commercial space on West 36th Street and found at least 393 people inside as well as a large quantity of alcohol, according to the Sheriffs Office. Photographs posted to the sheriffs Twitter account show dozens of confiscated bottles of liquor, including Johnnie Walker Blue, the brands most expensive label.

In a statement, Joseph Fucito, the New York City sheriff, said those inside the club were not social distancing and were not wearing proper face covering in addition to not adhering to city and state emergency orders related to Covid-19.

Liquor was present and sold at the location, and the location does not have a liquor license, Sheriff Fucito said, adding that the partygoers did not have a necessary special permit from the New York State Liquor Authority.

Since Nov. 13, bars and restaurants in New York have not been allowed to stay open later than 10 p.m. for indoor patrons or to serve alcohol to go afterward.

According to the authorities, three of the four men who threw the party were issued tickets to appear in court and then released; a fourth was arrested because of an outstanding warrant and was released from custody as of Saturday night; and none of the partygoers were cited.

Because of coronavirus restrictions in Italy, thousands of people have not been able to visit loved ones in hospitals, regardless of their ailment.

That didnt stop Stefano Bozzini.

Earlier this month, Mr. Bozzini, 81, plunked himself in the courtyard of a hospital in Castel San Giovanni, a town in the central region of Reggio Emilia, and began playing his accordion under the second-story window of his wife of 47 years, Carla Sacchi, who was hospitalized for an illness unrelated to Covid-19. He played a few of her favorite songs, including Spanish Eyes, the 1965 Bert Kaempfert classic made popular by the crooners Al Martino, Engelbert Humperdinck and Elvis Presley.

The couples son, Maurizio Bozzini, recorded the serenade and sent it to a friend who posted it on Facebook. Local and international media picked up the video, a soulful testament of profound love.

Mrs. Sacchi died at home on Thursday at 74, and was buried on Saturday.

We all recognized love, in the simplicity and immediacy of its universal language, wrote Patrizia Barbieri, the mayor of the nearby town of Piacenza, on her Facebook page on Thursday. She thanked Mr. Bozzini for a tender gesture that reminded us what truly caring for each other means. To do everything so that the other person does not feel alone, overcoming any barrier.

In the video, Mr. Bozzini is wearing the distinctive hat of the Alpini, the Italian armys mountain infantry, and he often provided entertainment to local Alpini gatherings as well as nursing homes. Alessandro Stragliati, the group leader for the local branch of the Alpini said that Mr. Bozzini had brought his wife with him as she became ill, to distract her.

After she died, Stefano told me, I have lost my Stella Alpina, a term of endearment as well as the Italian name for the edelweiss flower, Mr. Stragliati said, adding, He is a humble and simple man, but he has touched the heart of millions.

Coronavirus cases are surging in South Africas impoverished Eastern Cape and in the neighboring Western Cape, a province whose fabled wine routes and beaches usually draw millions of local and international visitors around this time of year.

Premier Alan Winde issued a hot spot alert on Thursday for the metropolitan area that includes Cape Town, the Western Capes capital. Cases in the province increased by 52 percent over the last week, reaching 126,362 on Wednesday, according to government figures.

Wastewater treatment testing showed that cases were rising in all districts, Mr. Winde said in a news conference. Some areas now have more active cases than during previous spikes in May and June, he added. Along with some of South Africas wealthiest neighborhoods, the province is also home to some of its largest and poorest townships.

Also on Thursday, Zweli Mkhize, the health minister, said that about half of South Africas new daily cases were coming from the Eastern Cape, a largely rural province that has been the hardest-hit region in the country.

Officials throughout South Africa have warned that the coming holiday season, when many citizens travel to their villages or to holiday homes, could lead to more cases with devastating economic consequences.

We also cannot afford a lockdown again, as is being witnessed in many European countries right now, Mr. Winde said. Our economy simply cannot afford it.

Sub-Saharan Africas most developed economy has recorded more than 781,900 cases and more than 21,370 deaths, according to a New York Times database. New daily cases had dropped from around 12,000 new daily cases in June to less than 2,000 per day, but a slow uptick in recent weeks has pushed numbers to around 3,000 a day.

Still, on Nov. 15 South Africa lifted all international travel restrictions ahead of what would normally be its peak tourist season, when as many as 10 million foreigners head to the countrys pristine beaches and game safaris.

Nearly a year into a pandemic that has ravaged the global economy like no time since the Great Depression, the only clear pathway toward improved fortunes is containing the virus itself.

With the United States suffering its most rampant transmission yet, and with major nations in Europe again under lockdown, prospects remain grim for a meaningful worldwide recovery before the middle of next year, and far longer in some economies.

What has been challenged is the popular notion that the world economy could simply endure a deep freeze to contain the pandemic and then revive. The idea was that public largess could support workers and keep businesses alive during the short, sharp downturn required to choke off the virus, before commercial life recovered.

This sort of thinking was the basis for forecasts of a so-called V-shaped recovery: The astonishing collapse of major economies in the first half of the year was supposed to be followed by an equally astonishing revival.

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The U.S. Passes 4 Million Cases in November Alone, Doubling Octobers Tally - The New York Times