Catherine Troisi, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston, said she had cried watching the faces of coronavirus victims on “PBS NewsHour” and expected the death toll to accelerate, in part because current numbers likely do not reflect infections from Thanksgiving gatherings.
“The worst is yet to come in the next week or two or three,” she said. “What happens after that is going to depend on our behavior today.”
The United States recorded a new weekly death record for the seven-day period ending Thursday, and is reporting more new cases and hospitalizations than ever before. More than 290,000 people have died nationwide during the pandemic.
With a current average of more than 2,200 deaths per day, Covid-19 is, for at least this moment, surpassing heart disease and cancer as the leading killer in the United States. About 1,800 people on average die from heart disease each day, and 1,640 from cancer, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2018, the latest full data available.
