Health and Healthcare

COVID-19: New York Deaths Reach 40,000--Highest of Any State

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: January 16, 2021 12:06 pm

COVID-19 has ravaged the United States at a quickened rate during the last two months. Current fatal cases have reached 395,685, up 4,947 yesterday. The CDC forecast another 90,000 people could perish of the disease in the next three weeks. Global deaths have just moved above 2 million. The U.S. count sits at an astonishing 20% of that number.

The early spread of the disease was most serious in the Northeast, Michigan, and Illinois in March and April. The pandemic then spread quickly south and west. Most recently, the most deadly areas have been in North and South Dakota. In the last two weeks, the situation has worsened in California (again), Arizona, and Rhode Island.

Because of the early devastation of New York State, and particularly New York City, the death toll mounted into the ten of thousands by the end of May. Because of those terrible, early totals, despite high deaths in other states later, New York State still has the most fatal cases among all states. The figure reached 40,203 yesterday, up 206. Of those, 25,909 have been in New York City.

New York State ranks only fourth among states based on total confirmed cases so far at 1,213,179. That puts it well behind California at 2,937,197 confirmed cases, Texas at 2,096,526, and Florida at 1,548,067. The death tolls of those three states lag New York’s considerably. California’s stands at 32,947, Texas at 32,212, and Florida at 24,165.

New York may not be able to dodge another wave of confirmed cases and fatal ones. Cases have picked up sharply in the last few days. Yesterday, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office reported: “…324,671 COVID-19 test results were reported to New York State yesterday—a new record high. An additional case of the UK variant was identified in Nassau County. To date, there are 16 known cases of the variant in New York State.”