Viral spread: Americans paying the price for Thanksgiving
Source: Associated Press
Viral spread: Americans paying the price for Thanksgiving
By CARLA K. JOHNSON and AMY FORLITI
December 12, 2020
With some Americans now paying the price for what they did over Thanksgiving and falling sick with COVID-19, health officials are warning people begging them, even not to make the same mistake during the Christmas and New Years season.
Its a surge above the existing surge, said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. Quite honestly, its a warning sign for all of us.
Across the country, contact tracers and emergency room doctors are hearing repeatedly from new coronavirus patients that they socialized over Thanksgiving with people outside their households, despite emphatic public-health warnings to stay home and keep their distance from others.
The virus was raging across the nation even before Thanksgiving but was showing some signs of flattening out. It has picked up steam since, with new cases per day regularly climbing well over 200,000.
The dire outlook comes as the U.S. stands on the brink of a major vaccination campaign against COVID-19, with the Food and Drug Administration giving the final go-ahead Friday to use Pfizers formula against the scourge that has killed over 290,000 Americans and infected more than 15.8 million.
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https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-thanksgiving-f4d7db2ec316819bb8d5d6ec28047502