News 9

The United States set another record for the most coronavirus deaths in a day on Wednesday, with 3,865, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker.

The death toll is only mounting as cases and hospitalizations also rise. Over 132,000 Americans are in the hospital with COVID-19, also a record, as the number keeps climbing, according to the COVID Tracking Project. The country is averaging more than 200,000 new cases every day.

A staggering total of more than 361,000 Americans have died from the virus, according to Johns Hopkins.

Many Americans are fatigued with pandemic restrictions, despite the urgings of public health officials to maintain them. President Trump has been largely silent on the crisis as he focuses on reversing the election outcome and as a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Wednesday.

Many governors also have been reluctant to impose new restrictions.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel with vaccines, but the distribution effort is off to a slow start as Trump administration officials say they are working to speed it up.

But with months until the vaccine becomes widely available, a new strain of the coronavirus is posing an even greater threat, given that it is thought to be more contagious, though not more lethal.

That strain has already been found in multiple states, and experts say it will clearly become much more prominent given that it is easier to spread.

Even without the new strain being dominant yet in the U.S., hospitals in some areas are already overwhelmed, particularly in Los Angeles. Ambulance crews there were recently instructed not to transport some patients with a low chance of survival to hospitals because of capacity problems.

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday slammed Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s plan to fine hospitals as a means of speeding up the state’s highly criticized slow vaccine rollout.

“That’s just arrogance,” de Blasio said in an interview with NY1’s Errol Louis of Cuomo’s claims that the monetary penalties could speed up the process.

Hizzoner went on to defend the city’s healthcare workers and told Cuomo to lay off the threats.

“Does he think that our healthcare professionals are uninterested in vaccinating people? How about trusting the people who have been our heroes?” de Blasio said.

“Help them, support them, don’t fine them, don’t threaten them, respect them and help them.”

Cuomo earlier Monday deflected blame on the state’s sluggish inoculation effort — which has seen large quantities of the vaccine supply unused — to local leaders, including de Blasio.

The governor also specifically argued the Big Apple’s city-run Health and Hospitals system have not carried their weight.

De Blasio said on Monday night that instead of issuing threats, the state should implement new rules to foster faster vaccine delivery.

“We need rules that maximize the pace, that help us speed up and reach the people who are available, who are a priority and who are ready, willing and able, it’s common sense,” the mayor said.

“So, the state can help us here. Stop threatening people.”

The state Department of Health on Sunday sent a letter establishing a use-it-or-lose-it position, Cuomo said, requiring providers to use the supplies they’ve thus far been allocated by week’s end or face fines of up to $100,000.

Moving forward, they must use all vaccines within seven days of receipt or face fines — and risk being cut off from future shipments of the vaccine.

Public and private hospitals statewide have used only about 46 percent of the coronavirus vaccines they have been provided, according to stats Cuomo cited Monday.

While the New York-Presbyterian Healthcare System has led the way, with about 99 percent of its allotted shots administered, by contrast, the city’s Health and Hospitals network has used just 31 percent.

But De Blasio Monday night called Cuomo’s analysis of the city-run hospitals “blatantly inaccurate, arguing their vaccine supply was inflated since much of the inventory was merely a day old.

“What he said about Health and Hospitals was just blatantly inaccurate. A lot of that delivery to Health and Hospitals came in in the last 24 hours, they weren’t even in the position to turn around and use it. It’d just got there,” the mayor said.

The FBI are investigating whether the suspect at the center of the Nashville Christmas Day bombing was connected to 5G conspiracy theories, according to reports.

Steve Fridrich, a real estate agent based in Nashville, contacted the FBI to tell them that he previously worked with a man named Tony Warner. Investigators think a man named Anthony Quinn Warner to be a person of interest in the camper van explosion outside an AT&T building that injured three people on the morning of December 25.

Fridrich said agents asked him if the man he worked with had paranoia about 5G technology and conspiracy theories about it being used to spy on Americans.

Fridrich told the man he worked with doing information technology was a “nice guy”, but they did not have a relationship beyond him contacting Warner to work on internet issues.

“You know, he was a techie guy—don’t mean anything negative about that. He would do this thing and leave. He didn’t bother anybody. He did his thing and leave,” Fridrich said.

FBI said they could not comment because of the pending investigation.

Earlier this year, conspiracy theories about the implementation of 5G, including that the technology somehow helps spread or is even the cause of coronavirus, were widely shared and believed by some.

The baseless theories resulted in people attacking 5G mobile phone masts in the U.K as misinformation spread on social media.