This past Monday marked the four-year anniversary of the declaration by the World Health Organization that the Covid-19 outbreak was a pandemic. It was also the day that headlines carried the story of a Broadway usher who worked front-of-house at two Broadway theaters who had tested positive for Covid. That usher, who was not identified, had worked at both the Booth Theatre, where “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe” was being performed, and at the Brooks Atkinson, where the hit musical “Six” was about to open.
The following day, New York City, which would see its first two deaths from the virus later in the week, announced a restriction on gatherings of 500 people or more, a figure chosen to allow the closure of Broadway theaters, a move that also put off the opening night of “Six” for more than a year.
As the fourth anniversary was marked, there had been 15,141 weekly new hospital admissions for Covid according to the CDC, a figure far lower than the peak of 150,650 weekly hospitalizations that had been recorded in the week of January 22, 2022, at the height of the omicron wave.
Since the virus first emerged, over six million Americans have been hospitalized from it.
A staggering 1.18 million people in the United States have died from Covid, and 17.6% of the population has had Long Covid in one form or another.
On March 13, 2020, then President Trump declared a national emergency. By then, there had been 118,000 cases in 114 countries reported as well as 4,291 deaths, and this includes several thousand confirmed cases in the United States as well as at least one dozen deaths.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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