While the US is getting closer 400,000 deaths from the corona virusthe new director of the Centers for Disease Control said officials expect the death toll to be huge in mid-February.
“We expect half a million deaths in this country by mid-February,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
The grim news comes as Los Angeles battles one more contagious variant of the virus. California leads the world in coronavirus cases, by more than 3 million inhabitants infected.
UCLA epidemiologist Dr. Anne Rimoin told CBS News she “certainly” suspects more variants are active in the population. She compared the search for the variants to “shining a flashlight in the dark,” adding, “You’ll see something when you start looking, and we just didn’t look.”
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But nationwide, the chaotic roll-out of the vaccine continues, leading to more than a few frayed nerves in Florida.
‘You can’t get an appointment, you can’t buy an appointment. So what are we going to do? ‘ said Elizabeth Johnson, a Palm Beach resident.
Florida’s Health Ministry has said more than 40,000 are already late for their second dose as the country braces for the worst.
The darkest weeks have already hit Southern California. Data shows the dramatic increase in COVID-19 deaths in LA County, where one person now dies every six minutes.
The coroner has one backlog of bodies, so much so that LA County has just relaxed air quality regulations to allow for more cremations.
And yet, as bad as things may seem, there is at least one uplifting update.
CBS News met Dennis Zayas and his wife Jessica just before Christmas, after a diagnosis of COVID-19 led to a double lung transplant. He told CBS News that his recovery was a daily struggle and he almost had to learn to walk again.
Now, he’s not just walking, he’s working out – and over the weekend, he got his first dose of the Modern vaccine.
CBS News confirmed on Monday that President Trump will lift travel restrictions from Europe and Brazil, where the virus is on the rise, before leaving office. The restrictions were to be lifted on Jan. 26, but President-elect Biden’s team later said on Monday that he would block the changes.