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At the current rate of daily fatalities, the US death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic may surpass 400,000 before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in on Wednesday. Another 14,400 Americans are projected to die from the virus over the next six days, according to an ensemble forecast published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Caldwell, 1/15)

Newly reported coronavirus cases in the U.S. remained above 200,000 for the ninth day in a row, while hospitals continued to see large numbers of Covid-19 patients. The U.S. reported more than 224,000 new coronavirus cases for Wednesday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The nation’s death toll grew by more than 3,800 Wednesday, lower than the record of more than 4,000 fatalities the previous day, but still higher than daily levels recorded last year. Overall, the U.S. Covid-19 death toll exceeded 387,000. (Hall, 1/14)

Since March, at least 400,000 more Americans have died than would have in a normal year, a sign of the broad devastation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic. An analysis of mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows how the pandemic is bringing with it unusual patterns of death, even higher than the official totals of deaths that have been directly linked to the virus. (Katz, Lu and Sanger-Katz, 1/14)

The recorded death count from the Covid-19 pandemic as of Thursday is nearing 2 million. The true extent is far worse. More than 2.8 million people have lost their lives due to the pandemic, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from 59 countries and jurisdictions. This tally offers the most comprehensive view yet of the pandemic’s global impact. Deaths in these places last year surged more than 12% above average levels. Less than two-thirds of that surge has been attributed directly to Covid-19. Public-health experts believe that many, if not most, of the additional deaths were directly linked to the disease, particularly early in the pandemic when testing was sparse. Some of those excess deaths came from indirect fallout, from health-care disruptions, people avoiding the hospital and other issues. (Overberg, Kamp and Michaels, 1/14)

For 16 weeks, throughout the fall and then straight through the data disruptions around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day, the number of people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 has risen. On October 13, there were 36,000 people with COVID-19 in U.S. hospitals. Yesterday, on January 13, there were 130,000. This week, after two weeks of holiday-muddled death data, the inevitable consequence of these rising hospitalizations arrived. States reported 23,259 COVID-19 deaths this week, 25 percent more than in any other week since the pandemic began. For scale, the COVID-19 deaths reported this week exceed the CDC's current estimate for flu-related deaths during the entire 2019–20 season. (1/14)

Led by the U.S., the world is about to hit a frightening Covid-19 benchmark, with 2 million people dead and few expectations for the numbers to start dropping any time soon. “You want to get to the point first where the virus can’t outrace you,” said Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health and co-director of the Global Health Justice Partnership. “It’s very hard to project out in any fine level of resolution how many people will be dead from this, in even 6 months to a year.” (Fay Cortez, 1/15)