January Saw Most COVID-19 Deaths, Hospitalizations Amid Pandemic

Clinicians care for a COVID-19 patient at Providence St. Mary Medical Center in Apple Valley, Calif., on Jan. 27, 2021. Mario Tama/Getty Images

The year 2021 appears to have started on a grim note as more people died in January after contracting COVID-19 in the United States than in any other month since the start of the pandemic, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

“January saw the most deaths of any month so far at 95,211, nearly 20k more than in December,” read a post on the Twitter account for the project, which says it is “housed at” The Atlantic.

The previous highest was recorded in December, with more than 77,000 people reported to have died from the CCP virus nationwide, while a total of 6.4 million people tested positive for the virus, more than doubling the previous month, during which about 37,000 people died.

The project also provided additional information on the number of patients hospitalized, showing that on average more people were admitted to hospitals with the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus in January than in any other month.

Officials with the project noted, however, that toward the end of the month, the seven-day average numbers showed a decline, compared to a peak in the middle of January.

About 127,000 people on a seven-day average were admitted to hospitals nationwide in January. Currently, there are 95,013 people hospitalized with COVID-19 nationwide, according to the project.

A seven-day average helps trackers to “understand trends around inconsistencies in the reported data,” adding that during the second half of January, the total number of cases and hospitalizations declined compared to the first half of the month, they said.

This rise and fall of cases are likely influenced by friend and family gatherings over the holiday season. A seven-day average of new CCP virus cases shows over 40,000 fewer people tested positive at the end of the month than at the beginning of January. The numbers peaked in mid-January, on Jan. 12, the effort said.

“The 7-day average number of new cases is more than 40k fewer than at the beginning of the month and more than 100k fewer than at their peak on January 12,” the COVID tracking project said on Twitter, adding that “the number of people currently hospitalized is more than 37k fewer than at its mid-month peak.”

As of Feb. 1, over 26.1 million people have tested positive for COVID-19 nationwide and at least 441,367 people have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The Biden administration at one of its new health briefings last week said it’s projecting about 90,000 more deaths in the next four weeks.

“I know this is not news we all want to hear, but this is something we must say so we are all aware,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “If we are united in action we can turn things around.”

The CDC’s latest projection is that the country will have a cumulative 479,000 to 514,000 deaths by Feb. 20, Walensky said.

Mimi Nguyen Ly contributed to this report.

From NTD News