American coronavirus: America is at a crossroads in this pandemic as Covid-19 deaths are close to 500,000

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“I am concerned about this variant – the B.1.1.7 variant (first found in the UK),” said Dr. Peter Hotez, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

“If that takes over, the numbers will start to rise again. There is no end to what the death toll will look like unless we can vaccinate for it.”

Where we stand with vaccinations

More than 43.6 million Americans have received at least one dose of their two-dose vaccines, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 18.8 million people have been fully vaccinated. That’s about 5.7% of the US population – far less than the estimated 70% to 85% of Americans who should be immune to attain immunity to the herd.
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Some states are still grappling with vaccine delays after severe weather engulfed much of the country last week.

But the US is likely to be caught up by mid-week, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“Obviously, it’s a setback because you’d like to see the steady stream of vaccines get people into their arms, but we can catch up quite well,” Fauci told NBC on Sunday.

To speed up vaccinations, some experts have suggested delaying second vaccine doses to get more first doses into people’s arms.

Both vaccines in the US market – developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna – require two doses, the second of which is intended to be administered 21 days and 28 days after the first, respectively.

Fauci told CNN Sunday that the US is currently sticking to the vaccination schedule supported by data from clinical trials.

“Science points directly to going ahead with what we know … about the clinical trial,” he said.

Good news (for now) about cases and hospital admissions

Across the country, the number of new Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths are declining.

According to the COVID Tracking Project, the number of patients hospitalized with Covid-19 has dropped for the 40th day in a row.

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According to data from Johns Hopkins University, daily deaths have decreased by 24% in the past week compared to the week before.

And according to Johns Hopkins, new cases are down 23% daily over the same period. (But testing is also down 17%, according to the COVID Tracking Project.)

“I’m hopeful about where we are,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. “Now we have a few speed bumps ahead of us.”

Those speed bumps include several worrisome coronavirus variants.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1,700 cases of variant strains first spotted in the UK, South Africa and Brazil have been reported in the US.

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But that figure probably isn’t close to the true number of variant cases in the US, as the US lags behind dozens of other countries in genome sequencing per 1,000 Covid-19 cases.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the US has stepped up sequencing to find variants and will continue to do so.

The vast majority of variant cases so far are highly contagious variant B.1.1.7 first discovered in the UK.

Experts from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation said last weekend that while the B.1.1.7 strain likely represents less than 20% of current infections in the U.S., that number is likely to rise to 80%. .

‘This is not the time to let your guard down’

What happens next largely depends on personal responsibility and how many people get vaccinated, the IHME team said.
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“ Controlling the epidemic over the next four months depends to a great extent on increasing vaccination, trying to increase the percentage of adults willing to be vaccinated above three-quarters, and strongly encouraging the use of a vaccine. mask and avoid situations where transmission is likely, such as eating indoors. , to bars or indoor gatherings with people outside the household, ”the team wrote.

The American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, and the American Nurses Association also argued that Americans should help stop the pandemic.

With new, more contagious variants of the virus circulating across the US, now is not the time to let your guard down and roll back on the measures we know will work to prevent further illness and death – carry it on of masks, exercising physical distance. , and wash hands, “said a joint statement.

Why we could also wear masks next winter

Some Americans have discovered an unexpected benefit to wearing masks in the winter – they protect against brutal cold air, not just the coronavirus.

And Americans could wear them next winter, when some health experts say Covid-19 could flare up again.

Fauci: It's
Fauci hopes this doesn’t happen, he said, adding that it is “possible” for people to wear masks by 2022.

There may be other ways in which daily life will be different from the past, said infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist Dr. Celine Gounder.

“I think we’re looking at a few new normals. I think, for example, the handshake will probably disappear,” she said.

“I really think masks in the cough / cold / flu season in the winter months would make a lot of sense. That has clearly isolated the Southeast Asian countries from some of the worst of these, given the importance of wearing masks.”

For those already vaccinated, health experts say you should keep wearing a mask. That’s because vaccines take weeks to fully activate and because vaccines don’t guarantee that you won’t pass the coronavirus to others.
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“It is estimated that about 70% of Americans must be vaccinated before we get immunity through vaccination,” said medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen from CNN. “That’s the point where enough people have the immune defense that the virus will stop spreading.”

And slowing the transmission of coronavirus also hinders the chance that the virus will mutate further.

“The evidence was quite compelling in March or April last year that wearing masks uniformly would reduce the transmission of this disease,” said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, on HBO at Axios Sunday.

The politicization of face masks has likely led to many unnecessary deaths, he said.

“A mask is nothing more than a life-saving medical device, and yet it was categorized in many other ways that were not factual, not scientific and frankly dangerous,” he added. “And I think you could argue that tens of thousands of people were killed as a result.”

CNN’s Amanda Watts, Keith Allen, Jessica Firger, Naomi Thomas, Michael Nedelman and Paul Vercammen contributed to this report.

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