WASHINGTON (CNN) – As the US prepares to grapple with possible holiday COVID-19 spikes, hospitals across the country have reported more than 100,000 patients for the 26th day in a row.
December was a devastating month for the spread of the coronavirus in the US. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, more than 63,000 Americans have died so far this month – the highest number since the start of the pandemic – bringing the total to more than 333,000 people lost to the virus in the US. With a total of 19.1 million infected people, 118,720 people are now hospitalized, the COVID Tracking project reported.
One Southern California hospital is facing the possibility of rationing the limited number of intensive care beds and treatment equipment due to the increase in the number of cases, meaning health care providers may need to decide who is and isn’t treated, according to infectious disease specialist Dr. Kimberly Shriner told CNN on Sunday.
Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena is gearing up for “ultimate triage” as the number of cases continues to increase in the coming weeks, Shriner said.
And with waves of vacation travel, health experts predict that cases will only increase. More than 1.1 million people were screened at airports on Saturday, according to the TSA. On Christmas Day alone, more than 616,000 were screened, and hundreds of thousands more traveled in the days leading up to the holiday.
Dr. Anthony Fauci described the possible fallout of the holidays as a “wave upon a wave”.
“When you look at the slope, the rise in cases that we’ve seen in late fall and early winter, it’s really, really disturbing,” Fauci said.
“As we move into the next few weeks,” he added, “it could get even worse.”
Complexity at every step of vaccine distribution
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 2 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in the US and more than 9.5 million doses have been distributed.
Those numbers now include both the Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. And while there are delays in data reporting, federal officials had previously said they were on the job to distribute 20 million doses by the end of the year.
Asked about the seemingly slow rollout of vaccines, Fauci told CNN on Sunday that large, comprehensive vaccine programs with a new vaccine start slow before they gain momentum.
“I’m pretty sure as we get more and more momentum, if we move from December to January and then February to March, I think we’ll catch up with the projection,” he said.
Dr. Esther Choo, a professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health & Science University, explained that the distribution of vaccines is “just really complicated.”
“At every step, there is complexity and the potential for delay, whether it be individual state planning, allocation, training, vaccine delivery, storage … there (are) so many factors at this stage,” Choo said.
“We need to be prepared that it will be a slow rollout in many places and that it will not change our behavior or necessarily the trajectory of the pandemic in this country in the short term,” Choo said.
Because vaccines likely won’t be widely available until the summer, experts have warned Americans not to be wary if vaccinations start and continue wearing masks, social distances, avoiding crowds and gatherings, and regular wash hands.
Move the goalposts for herd immunity
For vaccines to really work and achieve herd immunity to the virus, 70% to 85% of the population would need to achieve immunity, Fauci said Sunday.
Fauci acknowledged that the statement shifted the goal posts, which he had previously set from 70% to 75%.
“We have to realize that we have to be humble and realize what we don’t know,” he said. “These are pure estimates and the calculations I made, 70 (percent) to 75%, it’s a range.”
“The range will be somewhere between 70 (percent) and 85%,” Fauci said, adding that the reason he started saying 70% to 75% first and then bought it up to 85%, which he says isn’t great. jump, “was actually based on calculations and pure extrapolations from measles.”
The measles vaccine is about 98% effective, Fauci said, and when less than 90% of the population is vaccinated against measles, there is a breakthrough against herd immunity and people start to get infected.
“So I made a calculation that COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, is not nearly as transmissible as measles, measles is the most transmissible infection imaginable,” he said. “So I imagine you need a little less than the 90%, I got to the 85.”
‘We think the vaccine will be effective against the variant’
While there is a risk of a variant of the coronavirus making its way from the UK to the US, a US official said Americans can still protect themselves with the same mitigating measures.
“We believe the vaccine will be effective against this variant,” Admiral Brett Giroir, assistant secretary of the US Health and Human Services, told Fox News Sunday.
Giroir said the US has an extra layer of protection against the CDC’s announcement last week of new testing requirements for travelers arriving from the UK, which will take effect Monday.
Passengers must have undergone a negative PCR or antigen test along with documentation of their laboratory results within 72 hours of boarding a flight from the UK to the US. Airlines must confirm the pre-flight test.
“I think we’re going to be pretty safe with this as we’re rolling out again vaccines that will be very effective against all the strains out there,” Giroir told Fox.
Although Fauci said it could be argued that the decision should have been made earlier, he called the testing requirement “cautious.”
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