Reuters
A person rests on a bench in the shade at a park during a summer heat wave in New York City, New York, US, July 11.
Extreme heat has blanketed much of the United States this summer, with large parts of California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah under excessive heat warnings, according to official data and media reports.
On Thursday, over 60 million Americans were under heat alerts from the National Weather Service. Temperatures have at times this summer run between 10 and 30 degrees above average in Western states, said The New York Times on Friday.
"The consequences are increasingly playing out in the nation's emergency rooms, where medical workers are confronted with heat-stricken patients whose soaring body temperatures can be fatal if not addressed quickly," it said.
Around 2,300 people died from heat-related illnesses in the United States in 2023, triple the annual average between 2004 and 2018. Nearly 120,000 heat-related emergency room visits were recorded across the United States last year, reported the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.