The F.D.A.’s emergency use authorization of Moderna vaccine allows for the shipment of millions more doses across the country.
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Here’s what you need to know:
- The U.S. has recorded over 250,000 cases in a day for the first time.
- Congressional leaders work feverishly to finalize a $900 billion stimulus deal before midnight Sunday.
- The F.D.A. approves Moderna’s Covid vaccine, adding millions more doses to the U.S. supply.
- @TwoShotsInTheArm celebrates the vaccinations of health care workers.
- Emmanuel Macron’s health condition is stable ‘compared to Friday,’ according to his doctor.
- Coronavirus cases in Syria go uncounted amid shortages of critical supplies and medical personnel.
- Restaurant chains are struggling to reach a unified approach, with varied rules across the U.S.
- The pandemic pushes the start of a major 9/11 trial past the 20th anniversary of the attacks.
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The U.S. has recorded over 250,000 cases in a day for the first time.
Lining up for coronavirus testing in San Bernardino, Calif., on Friday.Credit…Alex Welsh for The New York Times
As the United States welcomed the news Friday that a second vaccine, by Moderna, had been authorized by the federal government for emergency use, the country confronted another stark reminder of how desperately vaccines are needed: a single-day caseload of over 251,000 new coronavirus cases, a once-unthinkable record.
It’s been only a week since the Food and Drug Administration first approved a Covid-19 vaccine, the one created by Pfizer and BioNTech. As trucks have carried vials across the country and Americans began pulling up their sleeves for inoculations, more ominous numbers have piled up:
- Monday: 300,000 total dead in the United States.
- Wednesday: 3,611 deaths in a single day, shattering the previous record of 3,157 on Dec. 9.
- Thursday: Over 1 million new cases in just five days, pushing the country’s total of confirmed cases past 17 million.
Three months ago, new cases were trending downward and death reports were flat, but those gains have been lost. Now there are nearly six times as many cases being reported each day, and three times as many deaths, according to a New York Times database.
The South is on a particularly worrisome trajectory. Georgia, Arkansas and South Carolina have all set weekly case records. Tennessee is confirming new cases at the highest per capita rate in the country.
As cases continue to spike, officials are warning that hospitals, which now hold a record of nearly 115,000 Covid-19 patients, could soon be overwhelmed. More than a third of Americans live in areas where hospitals are running critically short of intensive care beds, federal data show. A recent New York Times analysis found that 10 percent of Americans — across a large swath of the Midwest, South and Southwest — live in areas where I.C.U.s are either completely full or have less than 5 percent of beds available.
In California, hospitals are especially stretched. The state reported just 2.1 percent availability of I.C.U. beds on Friday, after the number of available beds fell by 37 percent over the past month. In Los Angeles County, officials say, an average of two people are dying of Covid-19 every hour, and I.CU. capacity could be exceeded within the month.
There has been rapid improvement in much of the Midwest and Mountain West. Iowa is adding fewer than half the cases it was at its November peak. South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, Colorado and Wyoming are all seeing sustained declines in cases.
But because deaths are a lagging indicator, North Dakota still has the nation’s highest daily death rate for its size, despite progress in slowing new cases after the governor reversed months of resistance and announced a mask mandate and restrictions on businesses in mid-November.
As Christmas approaches, American families will be tempted again to gather indoors, as many did for the Thanksgiving holiday, despite a torrent of warnings from public health officials and elected leaders. And whatever progress is being made now in some places could, once again, be negated.
“There’s no need for that many to have died,” David Hayes-Bautista, a professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, said after the country’s pandemic death toll hit 300,000 on Monday. “We chose, as a country, to take our foot off the gas pedal. We chose to, and that’s the tragedy.’’
Mitch Smith, Julie Shaver, John Eligon, Amy Harmon, Remy Tumin and Jill Cowan
