Coronavirus Virus becomes leading cause of death in US

Coronavirus updates: San Francisco Bay Area issues stay-at-home order; vaccine doesn't mean virus is over, WHO warns The U.S. just saw its deadliest day, again. President-elect Biden plans to ask Americans to wear masks for 100 days. Latest COVID-19 news. YahooNews

The coronavirus is quickly becoming one of the leading causes of death in the United States, experts say.

Thursday was the deadliest day of the pandemic in the U.S., with 2,897 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins data. While the more than 277,000 COVID-19 deaths may not seem like a lot in a nation of nearly 330 million people, COVID-19 has replaced accidents as the third leading cause of death.

According to the CDC, heart disease caused more than 650,000 deaths in the U.S. in 2018 followed by cancer, which caused nearly 600,000 deaths. The third leading cause of death in the U.S. for that year were accidents or unintentional injuries, which killed about 167,000 people in 2018.

“Last year at this time, (COVID-19) wasn’t a cause of death. Now it’s around the number three cause of death,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “The numbers of deaths that are occurring right now is an aberration, it’s not normal.”

For those who equate the impacts of coronavirus to the flu, only about 60,000 people died from influenza and pneumonia in 2018, according to the CDC. Experts say that’s on par with a typical flu season, putting it at eighth place for deaths in the U.S. under chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes.

Other developments today include:

• The island kingdom of Bahrain said Friday it has become the second nation in the world to grant an emergency-use authorization for the coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech. Britain was the first..

• California warned that the rise of cases can overwhelm the state's health care system within weeks. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday announced a regional stay-at-home order that would go into effect when a region hits the ICU capacity threshold. Four regions — all but the San Francisco Bay area — could meet that threshold “within a day or two," he said.

• The Navajo Nation requested a major disaster declaration from the federal government. Health officials serving the Navajo Nation have warned of supplies and hospital bed shortages. ...