Registered nurse Shelly Girardin checks data as Dr. Shane Wilson examines a patient with Coronavirus (Jeff Roberson/AP)

UPDATE, DEC 11:

The US death toll is 292,179, after 2,748 fatalities on Thursday.

Confirmed cases are 15,616,381, an increase of 224,681. Hospitalizations are a record 107,258, with 21,023 patients in intensive care.

The Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee meeting has approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for distribution. The FDA is expected to follow the rrecommendations with emergency authorization, raising the prospect of inoculation of healthcare workers and nursing home residents within days.

ORIGINAL ENTRY, DEC 10: The US records more than 3,000 daily Coronavirus deaths for the first time.

The death toll reached 289,431 on Wednesday, with 3,102 fatalities. The previous record was 2,885, set last week — that in turn shattered the mark of 2,752, set on April 15.

Confirmed cases are 15,391,700, an increase of 226,814. Hospitalizations, setting daily records almost each day for six weeks, are 106,688 with 20,922 patients in intensive care units. Thirteen states have less than 20% ICU capacity; New Mexico is already at 104% capacity, and North Dakota has reached 94%.

All states except Hawaii are in “Uncontrollable Spread” status. Before yesterday’s record, the US had already reached a record seven-day average of 2,249 deaths.

While pledging to distribute 100 million vaccine doses in the first 100 days of his Administration, Joe Biden warned on Tuesday, ““We’re in a very dark winter. Things may well get worse before they get better.”

See also Biden’s Pledges v. Trump’s Ego on Coronavirus Vaccine

“When You Don’t Have Hospital Capacity, People Will Die”

More than 100 million Americans are now in areas with less than 15% ICU capacity.

In Carrollton, Georgia, where two ICUs are at capacity with 30 patients, chief nursing office Deborah Matthews says:

The worry is what are you going to do with the 31st ICU patient? What are you going to do with the next patient who needs to be on a ventilator? You have contingency plans for all of that, but you are just constantly thinking about those things.

In El Paso, just 13 of 400 intensive care beds were available last week. In Fargo, North Dakota there were three. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, there were none.

Beth Blauer, director of the Centers for Civic Impact at Johns Hopkins University, summarizes how smaller hospitals are being overwhelmed: “This disease progresses very quickly and can get very ugly very fast. When you don’t have that capacity, that means people will die.”

Donald Trump, who has said nothing about the “surge upon a surge” predicted by Government experts, again ignored the deaths on Wednesday. Instead, he tweeted all day about “RIGGED ELECTION!”