United States See Record Of 81,000 New COVID-19 Infections While Claims Are Made That NHS Underreporting Cases In Missouri, Kansas, Wisconsin, Etc
Source: United States-COVID-19 Oct 24, 2020 4 years, 4 weeks, 1 day, 14 hours, 13 minutes ago
United States-COVID-19: America reported a record of more than 81,000 new COVID-19 infections over the last 24 hours according to figures from Worldometer.
It was reported that between 8:30 pm Thursday and the same time Friday, 81,210 infections were recorded, bringing the total number since the start of the pandemic to nearly 8.5 million COVID-19 infected cases in the country with almost 224,000 Americans dead from COVID-19.
America had already approached the bar of 80,000 daily cases in July, largely due to new infections in southern states such as Texas and Florida, where the virus was then spreading out of control.
Presently the worst COVID-19 outbreaks are in the north and midwest, and some 35 of the 50 states are seeing an increase in case numbers.
The total number of deaths in America over the last 24 hours was 903.
The United States has suffered the most deaths of any country, though not in relative terms.
Sadly mask-wearing, which a study has shown could prevent an additional 130,000 deaths if followed widely, has become embroiled in US politics in the run up to the November 3 presidential election.
Meanwhile there are growing concerns that the NHS could be deliberately tampering with official hospitalization and COVID-19 figures due to interference from the White House.
The number of COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalization is rising at alarming levels and Missouri and perhaps a handful of other states are unable to post accurate data on COVID-19 dashboards because of a flaw in the federal reporting system.
It was reported that since Tuesday, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Service's coronavirus dashboard has posted a message that the total number of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 has been underreported since Oct. 17. The note blamed "challenges entering data" to the portal used by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for collecting daily hospitalizations around the country.
So far It was not immediately clear on Friday how many states are impacted since some states rely on their own hospitalization counts, not HHS data collection. HHS did not immediately respond to phone and email messages seeking comment.
However the COVID Tracking Project said in a blog post that it has "identified five other states with anomalies in their hospitalization figures" that could be tied to the HHS reporting problem.
The COVID Tracking Project noted that the number of reported intensive care unit patients in Kansas had decreased from 80 to one without explanation. It said Wisconsin's hospitalization figures stayed unexpectedly flat while other indicators worsened. And it said Georgia, Alabama, and Florida reported only partial updates to hospitalization data.
Kristi Zears, Kansas Department of Health and Environment spokeswoman confirmed that the "ICU admission data displayed on our website is not current. We did post a notice on our dashboard today to convey that as well. We anticipate the issue will be resolved for our Monday update."
Sadly in Missouri, the loss
of accurate hospitalization data comes as confirmed cases continue to rise. On Friday, Missouri reported 1,811 new cases of COVID-19, and 31 additional deaths. Since the onset of the pandemic, Missouri has cited 164,534 confirmed cases and 2,688 deaths.
The state also has seen a steady rise in COVID-19 hospitalizations since September. The state reached record levels of hospitalizations several times earlier this month, with every region except St. Louis seeing record or near-record spikes. Since July 7, when 375 people were hospitalized statewide, that number has nearly quadrupled to a peak of 1,465 hospitalizations on Oct. 14.
The problem is especially worrisome in rural areas, where some hospitals are nearing capacity. Others are using makeshift buildings or previously vacant hospital wings to serve overflow patients. Some are simply redirecting people to larger hospitals.
Lisa Cox, the state health department spokeswoman said the federal hospital reporting system, known as TeleTracking, went down. She said, "As a result they experienced underreporting, so hospitalization numbers were lower than they should've been.”
The Missouri Hospital Association Senior Vice President Mary Becker said HHS recently implemented changes; some measures were removed from the portal, others were added or renamed. Some reporting hospitals were able to report using the new measures, but others were not, and as a result, the system crashed, she said.
Becker said, "This change is impacting hospitals across the country. Some states collect the data directly and may not yet be introducing the new measures to their processes. Missouri hospitals use TeleTracking and did not have control over the introduction of the changes to the template."
The last day with accurate data, Oct. 16, showed 1,439 people hospitalized in Missouri, down slightly from the record of 1,465 set two days earlier.
Many are saying that the White house is deliberately influencing various reporting platforms to make figures look lower till the elections are over.
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