US to see ‘darkest days in modern medical history’ warn doctors as millions travel every day for Thanksgiving
The US will soon see the worst spike of Covid-19 cases as millions of people are ignoring stay-at-home orders to celebrate Thanksgiving, doctors warned, who have also predicted that the country will witness the “darkest days in modern American medical history” as the daily coronavirus death toll hit the highest since May.
According to a report by The Daily Mail, millions of people in the US have taken flights and the highways in the last few days as they went to celebrate Thanksgiving. Cases are already high across the nation and with these huge numbers of people going outside, health officials are worried the worst is yet to come. On Wednesday, November 25, the country recorded 2,297 deaths due to the pandemic and 181,490 new cases. Due to the high number of cases, people getting admitted into the hospitals have also increased since about 90,000 patients were provided with medical assistance as of Wednesday.
Dr Joseph Varon, chief of staff at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, Texas, said there are no empty beds in his hospital already. “My concerns for the next six to 12 weeks is that if we don't do things right, America is going to see the darkest days in modern American medical history. My hospital is full. I just opened two new wings so that I can accommodate for the next few days because I know that a lot of people are going to get sick after Thanksgiving,” he said. “My nurses in the middle of the day, they will start crying, because they are getting so many patients, and it's a never-ending story. When they finish finally getting a patient in, they get a phone call from the ER that there is another patient getting admitted."
Reports said, despite the CDC and state and local authorities' requests, people pay no heed to them and around six million traveled by air in the last six days, while more than one million people crossed US airport checkpoints on November 25 only. As per a data map compiled by spatial analytics company Esri, 95 percent of American counties are now witnessing the worst spike of the deadly virus with 3,005 counties experiencing an epidemic.
It has been said that North Dakota is the worst hit with 158 cases per 100,000 people in the last week. Wyoming is in the second position recording 154 cases while New Mexico and South Dakota had 127 and 122 cases respectively. In terms of Covid-19 deaths, South Dakota is the worst affected, which is followed by North Dakota and Wyoming. Dr Anthony Fauci has also sent a plea to the people of America that stated: “The final message is to do what we've been saying for some time... keep the indoor gatherings as small as you possibly can. By making that sacrifice you're going to prevent people from getting infected. The sacrifice now could save lives and illness and make the future much brighter as we get through this...we're going to get through this. Vaccines are right on the horizon. If we can just hang in there a bit longer and continue to do the simple mitigation - masks, distancing, avoiding crowds. That's my final plea before the holiday.”