More than three months after vaccination in the US, many of the numbers paint an increasingly encouraging picture, with 70% of Americans 65 and older receiving at least one dose of the vaccine and the number of COVID-19 deaths below 1,000 per day on average for the first time since November.
Also, dozens of states have opened up all adults to vaccinations or plan to do so within weeks. And the White House said 27 million doses of both the single and dual vaccines will be distributed next week, more than three times the number when President Joe Biden took office two months ago.
Still, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said on Wednesday that he is not ready to declare victory.
“I’m often asked, are we going around the corner?” Fauci said during a White House briefing. “My reaction is really more like we are on the corner. Whether we will turn that corner remains to be seen. ”
What gives Fauci a break, he said, is that new cases remain at stubbornly high levels, with more than 50,000 per day. According to data, the US surpassed 30 million confirmed cases on Wednesday collected by Johns Hopkins University. The number of dead now stands at more than 545,000.
Nonetheless, the outlook in the US is in stark contrast to the worsening situation in places like Brazil, which first reported more than 3,000 COVID-19 deaths in one day on Tuesday, and across Europe, where a new wave of infections leads. to new lockdowns.
The gloom in Europe is exacerbated by the delay in vaccine roll-out across the continent due to production delays and questions about the safety and effectiveness of AstraZeneca’s injection.
Public health experts in the US are taking every opportunity to warn that relaxing social detachment and other preventive measures could easily spark another wave.
Dr. Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, sees red flags in states lifting mask mandates, air travel roaring and spring break crowds spiraling out of control in Florida.
“We’re getting closer to the exit,” Topol said. “All we do by reopening is our chance to finally contain the virus for the first time in the US pandemic.”
There are undeniable signs of progress all over the country.
According to the CDC, more than 43% of Americans 65 and older – the most vulnerable age group, responsible for an outsized share of the more than 540,000 deaths from coronavirus in the country – are fully vaccinated. The number of older adults showing up in the emergency room with COVID-19 has dropped significantly. In total, a total of 2.5 million to 3 million shots per day are vaccinated.
Deaths per day in the US from COVID-19 have fallen to an average of 940, down from its all-time high of more than 3,400 in mid-January.
Health officials in Minnesota reported no new deaths from COVID-19 for the first time in nearly a year on Monday. And in New Orleans, Touro Infirmary’s hospital has not treated a single case for the first time since March 2020.
And Fauci cited two recent studies showing negligible levels of coronavirus infections among fully vaccinated health workers in Texas and California.
“I emphasize how we should hang there for a while,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Wednesday. That’s because “the early data is really encouraging.”
Nationwide, new cases and the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 have fallen sharply in the past two months, although Walensky remains concerned that such progress seemed to have stagnated in recent weeks. The number of new cases averages over 53,000 per day, down from a peak of a quarter of a million in early January.
That’s uncomfortably close to the level seen during last summer’s COVID-19 wave.
Biden has urged states to make all adults eligible for vaccination by May 1. At least half a dozen states, including Texas, Arizona and Georgia, open vaccinations to anyone over the age of 16. At least 20 other states have committed to do so. so in the coming weeks.
Microsoft, which employs more than 50,000 people at its global headquarters in suburban Seattle, has said it will begin recalling employees on March 29 and reopen facilities that have been closed for nearly a year.
The 80,000 New York City municipal employees who worked remotely during the pandemic will return to their offices from May 3.
Still, experts see reason to worry as more Americans return to travel and socialize.
Daily travelers at U.S. airports have consistently risen above 1 million over the past week and a half during spring break at many colleges.
States such as Michigan and New Jersey are also seeing increasing cases.
National figures are an imperfect indicator. The favorable downward trend in some states may mask an increase in the number of cases in others, especially smaller ones, said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metric sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle.
And the more contagious variant that has emerged in Britain has now been identified in almost every state, he said.
AP journalists Terry Tang and Suman Naishadham contributed from Phoenix. Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed from Washington.