US reported 10K new COVID-19 deaths, 1.1M new cases last week

The US reported 10,000 new COVID-19 deaths and more than 1.1 million new cases last week — and the actual total may be higher due to underreporting on Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

A Reuters analysis of state and county reports found that new cases fell 3.8 percent in the week ending Nov. 29, while deaths fell 3.9 percent.

But many testing centers were closed on Thanksgiving — and on Friday, some private labs either had reduced staffing or were also closed, according to state and health officials.

As a result, reported cases and deaths may be abnormally high this week due to last week’s backlog, the officials said.

Meanwhile, data from hospitals, which were not closed for the holidays, show that hospitalized coronavirus patients reached a record high of nearly 93,000 on Sunday — up 11 percent from last week and double last month’s figure, according to the Reuters analysis.

Illinois saw the highest number of new deaths last week at 831, followed by Texas with 806.

Washington state saw the largest increase in the nation last week, with cases rising by 91 percent, followed by California at 31 percent and New York at 25 percent.

Nationwide, 9.8 percent of tests came back positive for the third consecutive week, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project.

Twenty-nine states had positive test rates above 10 percent — with the highest in Iowa at 50 percent, Idaho at 44 percent and South Dakota at 41 percent.

The World Health Organization considers any rate above 5 percent a cause for concern, because it indicates that additional cases in the community may not have been uncovered.

By Tuesday afternoon, more than 13.5 million coronavirus cases and 268,000 deaths had been reported in the US since the start of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

With Post wires