A memorial to Covid-19 victims in Atlanta. Credit…Audra Melton for The New York Times For anyone tracking the daily number of deaths from the coronavirus as a metric of the pandemic’s devastation, Tuesday was a particularly bad day. The number of virus-related deaths reported in the United States reached 2,216 — the equivalent of one death every 39 seconds, and the highest single-day death count since June 26. The figure has been climbing relentlessly, and health experts expect it to soon approach or exceed the single-day peak from early in the pandemic: 2,752 on April 15. With the number of new virus cases skyrocketing, it was inevitable that deaths would rise as well, lagging a few weeks behind. But the numbers may obscure a more hopeful trend: A far smaller proportion of people who catch the virus are dying from it than were in the spring. Data from the […]