The United States’ daily new cases of COVID-19 rocketed from 147,100 (measured as a 7-day average) on December 20 to 239,100 on the 27th; while the United Kingdom’s rose from 82,800 to 108,100 (an equivalent in “U.S.” terms of about 540,000 cases/day!). Taken together, they represent more than 40% of the world’s official new cases/day, and 65% of the world’s increase over the last week. Even so, the five worst countries in the world, in terms of the density of the virus’s current activity (measured in terms of new cases per capita) are all to be found in Europe. Denmark leads the world with 1,612 known infections per 100,000 population. In comparison, Russia continues their six weeks of a slow decline in cases (counting from the period of their imposed a lockdown of 1-2 weeks), falling from more than 40,000/day to around 23,000/day now.
Hospitalizations in the U.S., at this point, are up only 2% from December 17 to December 24. There were about 69,000 Covid patients in hospitals on Christmas eve. However, pediatric Covid hospitalizations were up 35% in that week. Further, U.S. deaths climbed about 14%, and are now close to 1,500/day. Flight crews continue to call in sick, with the U.S. averaging around 1,000 flight cancellations each day since December 24.
