Six hundred and seventy-five thousand lives lost, and counting.
And the COVID-19 U.S. death toll this week passed the estimated toll of the 1918 influenza pandemic, according to the count kept by Johns Hopkins University, making this the deadliest pandemic in the nation’s history.
COVID-19 has killed at least 28,932 people in Pennsylvania since March 2020, according to the Tuesday’s data from the state health department.
That figure includes at least 1,645 deaths in the Lehigh Valley — where the state’s first pandemic death was reported on March 18, 2020, 12 days after the first cases appeared.
(Can’t see the map of Pa. COVID deaths? Click here.)
COVID-19 deaths have been reported in all 67 Pennsylvania counties, ranging from dozens in the rural areas of the state to thousands in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh’s Allegeheny County. The state’s southeastern corner has seen the greatest loss of life.
Similarly, few Lehigh Valley municipalities have escaped loss during this pandemic.
Figures reported Sept. 10 by Lehigh and Northampton counties show high-population areas like Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton and their surrounding suburban townships to be the hardest hit.
(Can’t see the map of Lehigh Valley COVID deaths? Click here.)
According to the counties, no COVID-19 deaths have been reported in just seven small and scattered Lehigh Valley municipalities: Alburtis, Hanover Township in Lehigh County, Lower Milford Township, Chapman Borough, East Bangor, Glendon, North Catasauqua, Portland and West Easton.
In the midst of a new wave of cases, the statewide rate of deaths has also risen. As of Tuesday, Pennsylvania has reported 40 deaths a day on average over the last seven days, up 62% from two weeks ago.
That’s still well below the first two waves, when death report rates soared above 100 a day — more than 240 people died on Dec. 22, Pennsylvania’s single deadliest day of the pandemic.
The real number of nationwide COVID-19 deaths is believed to be higher. And winter may bring a new surge, with the University of Washington’s influential model projecting an additional 100,000 or so Americans will die of COVID-19 by Jan. 1, which would bring the overall U.S. toll to 776,000.
The 1918-19 influenza pandemic — which was wrongly named Spanish flu because it first received widespread news coverage in Spain — killed 50 million victims globally at a time when the world had one-quarter the population it does now. Global deaths from COVID-19 now stand at more than 4.6 million.
Like the Spanish flu, the coronavirus may never entirely disappear from our midst. Instead, scientists hope it becomes a mild seasonal bug as human immunity strengthens through vaccination and repeated infection. That could take time.
“We hope it will be like getting a cold, but there’s no guarantee,” said Emory University biologist Rustom Antia, who suggests an optimistic scenario in which this could happen over a few years.
Something similar happened with the H1N1 flu virus, the culprit in the 1918-19 pandemic. It encountered too many people who were immune, and it also eventually weakened through mutation. H1N1 still circulates today, but immunity acquired through infection and vaccination has triumphed.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com.