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.
