US: Over 23.6M Cases - 394K Dead - 14M Recovered
Worldwide: Over 93M Cases - 1.9M Dead - 66.5M Recovered

Private Industry Security Guard Deaths: 260 
Law Enforcement Officer Deaths: 200
*Red indicates change in total deaths

'It's Getting Worse' - 'A Brutal Period To Get Through'
Post-holiday COVID-19 surge hits new deadly records

The anticipated surge following holiday gatherings has now arrived, leading to a stunning number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths rising every day

On Tuesday alone, a record 4,327 people in the U.S. died from the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University. In just the past week, a New York Times tracker showed the seven-day average for deaths rose from about 2,600 per day to about 3,300. And the numbers keep climbing.

“We went from a very high baseline level of infections to even higher,” Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said at a forum hosted by Schmidt Futures on Tuesday. “And as we've seen over the past week and a half or so since the ending of the holiday season, everything seems to be a record.”

“We're in a very difficult situation and it is getting worse,” he added. “I hope that as we get towards the end of January, that we'll see a peaking and a turning around, particularly if people hang in there and don't get discouraged by COVID-19 fatigue and let down on their public health measures.”

But now, an even greater threat is looming in the form of new virus variants. One strain that was first detected in the United Kingdom is thought to be significantly more contagious, and it’s already been identified in multiple U.S. states.

Given the increased infectiousness, the new variant is expected to become more common in the U.S., prompting public health officials to ramp up their calls for Americans to take precautions.

There are already more than 200,000 new cases every day in the U.S. The record number of COVID-19 hospitalizations, at more than 130,000, is putting a tremendous strain on hospitals and threatening care for people without the coronavirus.

While vaccines provide a light at the end of the tunnel, they will not be widely available for several months, meaning there is still a brutal period to get through before they have widespread effect. thehill.com

Should Employers Administer COVID-19 Vaccines?
Employers that want to administer COVID-19 vaccines onsite have many challenges, not least of which includes the availability of vaccines, having trained staff and limiting liability.

"Employers are taking various approaches to vaccines in the workplace," said Michael Oliver Eckard, an attorney with Ogletree Deakins in Charleston, S.C., and Atlanta. Some businesses, he noted, including organizations that employ critical infrastructure workers, are considering entering into agreements with state and local health departments to be closed point-of-dispensing sites to administer state-provided vaccines, which means only employees and sometimes their family members are eligible.

Dollar General is an example of an employer taking a different approach. With more than 150,000 employees, the retailer is incentivizing staff to be vaccinated by providing a one-time payment equal to four hours of pay if they become vaccinated at a location outside of the worksite. shrm.org

Walmart Remains Vigilant Nationwide
Walmart temporary closings for deep cleaning are more common in winter COVID-19 surge

Walmart isn’t providing a lot of details behind the closings, but there have been several around the country, including one last week in Rockwall County’s Royse City, east of Dallas.

The retailer is making local announcements in each market. In the past few days, Walmart stores have temporarily closed in Laredo, Gulfport, Miss.; Checotah, Okla.; Manassas, Va.; Fayetteville, Tenn.; and Paramount, Calif.

Walmart has stopped disclosing details of a store outbreak of COVID-19 when it announces these temporary closings. But it did say in an email Sunday that “everything we’re doing is for the well-being of our associates and customers and in consideration of guidance by the Centers for Disease Control and health experts.”

Walmart said it will continue to conduct COVID-19 employee health screenings and temperature checks. The retailer also said its emergency leave policy remains in effect for employees who are “unable or uncomfortable coming to work” due to COVID-19 issues.

Walmart continues to require that customers wear face masks in the store and has designated entrances and exits for social distancing and to monitor local capacity limits. dallasnews.com

L.A. wants to impose tougher enforcement for mask violators
Under Mayor Eric Garcetti’s “Safer at Home” order, individuals who don’t wear masks can face up to a $1,000 fine or six months in jail. But there’s been little enforcement of the rule.

Now, the Los Angeles City Council wants to crack down on mask scofflaws. Following local demonstrations by anti-mask groups at shopping malls, grocery stores and homeless encampments, the council moved Wednesday to bolster restrictions and subject more violators to financial penalties.

The council unanimously voted to order city attorneys to draft a law that would impose fines and penalties on those who refuse to wear a mask at indoor businesses when requested to do so by management, and on individuals who refuse to wear a mask when “invading someone’s personal space.”

“Maskless protesters are going up to people, getting into people’s faces and deliberately using the fact that they are not wearing a mask as an act of aggression,” Bonin said. latimes.com

Prisons Abruptly Closing as Many Guards Fall Ill
Arrests Increasing & Jail Population Issues Returning

States Are Shutting Down Prisons as Guards are Crippled By Covid-19
Battered by a wave of coronavirus infections and deaths, local jails and state prison systems around the United States have resorted to a drastic strategy to keep the virus at bay: Shutting down completely and transferring their inmates elsewhere. From California to Missouri to Pennsylvania, state and local officials say that so many guards have fallen ill with the virus and are unable to work that abruptly closing some correctional facilities is the only way to maintain community security and prisoner safety.

Experts say the fallout is easy to predict: The jails and prisons that stay open will probably become even more crowded, unsanitary and disease-ridden, and the transfers are likely to help the virus proliferate both inside and outside the walls.

There have been more than 480,000 confirmed coronavirus infections and at least 2,100 deaths among inmates and guards in prisons, jails and detention centers across the nation, according to a New York Times database. Among those grim statistics are the nearly 100,000 correctional officers who have tested positive and 170 who have died.

Early in the pandemic, some states tried to ward off virus outbreaks by releasing some offenders early and detaining fewer people awaiting trial in order to reduce their populations, but those efforts often met with resistance from politicians and the public.

More recently, as arrests in many areas have increased, jail populations have returned to pre-pandemic levels, according to data collected by the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit research and policy group based in New York. nytimes.com