December 29 coronavirus news

Los Angeles County’s Covid-19 hospitalizations are at an all-time high, with 10 times the number of people in hospital from just two months ago.

According to the Los Angeles Department of Public Health (LADPH), 7,181 patients were in the hospital Tuesday -- 267 more than Monday. Around 20% of those in hospital are in the intensive care unit (ICU). 

On October 29, there were 750 people hospitalized with the disease. 

LADPH is reporting 227 new deaths, which is a record for the highest number of fatalities reported in a day, although authorities attributed the high number in part to a reporting delay from last week’s Spectrum power outage and the holidays. 

The county also announced 12,979 newly confirmed cases Tuesday.  

In context: LA County is home to nearly 10 million people, making it the most populous county in the US.

The county alone has reported more coronavirus cases than many countries, including Belgium and Canada. Since the beginning of the pandemic, LA County has seen 746,089 cases of Covid-19 and is inching toward 10,000 deaths, with 9,782 lives lost.

Incoming congressman-elect Luke Letlow has died aged 41 after being diagnosed with Covid-19, CNN has confirmed.

Two Republican sources also confirmed Letlow's death to CNN. 

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The United States reported a record-high number of new Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University (JHU). 

So far on Tuesday, 3,708 additional Covid-19 deaths have been reported, according to JHU. 

The US is currently averaging 2,210 additional deaths per day and has reported 338,544 total deaths, JHU data shows. 

The days with the highest number of new deaths according to JHU data are: 

Note: This is an ongoing tally. The final numbers will not be available until overnight tonight. 

A lack of resources and little advanced planning has delayed vaccine distribution and administration in the United States, a member of the Biden-Harris Transition Covid Advisory Board said in an interview Tuesday. 

“I'd say we're still not at the bottom of why all of the problems are there,” Gawande said.

Gawande said there had not been the advanced planning and resources to stand up the vaccination sites and capabilities required.

Gawande said he expects President-elect Joe Biden to be “upfront about what the challenges are” and “transparent about where the bottlenecks are.”

Operation Warp Speed had promised that 20 million doses of vaccine would be administered before January 1. The latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that just over 11 million doses have been distributed and only 2.1 million have been administered to people.

The United States will likely see “homegrown variants” of Covid-19 similar to the United Kingdom variant identified in Colorado on Tuesday, said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

While the variant seems to be more transmissible than previously identified Covid-19 strains, health authorities from around the world have said it does not appear to be more deadly. 

Hotez said that if the US starts performing more virus genomic surveillance, it will likely identify additional strains of the virus in the country.

“We're going to see homegrown variants that are similar in character in terms of transmissibility, I can almost promise you that,” he said.

The first known case of the new Covid-19 variant in the United States was discovered in Colorado Tuesday, according to state health officials. 

The variant, called B.1.1.7, has been linked to the United Kingdom. The Colorado man who was infected is in his 20s, is isolating in Elbert County and appears to have no travel history, according to Gov. Jared Polis.

No close contacts of the man have been identified yet, but health officials are working on contact tracing, Polis said.

Here's what we know about the new Covid-19 variant:

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The UK Covid-19 variant is “almost certainly in multiple states, a member of the Biden-Harris Transition COVID Advisory Board said Tuesday.

“It is almost certainly in multiple states and I think we will be seeing evidence of that in the days to come,” Dr. Atul Gawande, who is also a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital, told CNN’s Brianna Golodryga.

On Tuesday, a Colorado man in his 20s with no known travel history became the first confirmed case of the variant in the United States.

“An unknown travel history mean that this person picked it up the community,” Gawande said.

“Exactly how prevalent it is, is the real question,” he said. “If it's been spreading, how, how dominant is it?”

The UK Covid-19 strain appears to be more transmissible. Gawande said that’s a big part of his concern because he expects the surge underway in the United States to get worse before it gets better.

Most experts have suggested the UK variant is not necessarily associated with more severe illness, or increased risk for hospitalization and death. 

The United States reported 124,686 current Covid-19 hospitalizations on Tuesday, setting a record high since the pandemic began, according to the Covid Tracking Project (CTP).

This is the 28th consecutive day that the US has remained above 100,000 current hospitalizations.  

The highest hospitalization numbers, according to CTP data, are: 

Texas reported Tuesday a record number of coronavirus patient hospitalizations; 11,775 people across the state, according to the state's coronavirus dashboard. 

The state's last record number of Covid-19 hospitalizations was Monday with 11,351 people.

According to the Texas Covid-19 dashboard, there are 653 available intensive care unit beds; 7,601 ventilators available, and 12,320 available hospital beds. 

Note: These numbers were released by the Texas Department of Health Services and may not line up exactly in real-time with CNN's database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.