- As of Tuesday afternoon, the latest coronavirus update for the US shows that more than 27.1 million COVID-19 cases have been identified here since the start of the pandemic.
- While the rate of new infections has slowed, experts such as White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, that this could soon change.
- The reason is the much more communicable and contagious COVID-19 variant strains from places like South Africa.
The latest coronavirus update from the team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University that followed the pandemic shows that there have been more than 27.1 million cases of coronavirus in the US to date, along with more than 465,000 deaths. As we’ve noted on a number of occasions, some of what is now largely driving the numbers, which have fallen promisingly in recent days, are the more transferable new COVID-19 variant strains – which experts like the CDC’s as well as the Chief Medical Advisor of the White House, Dr. Anthony Fauci, think they are well on their way to becoming the dominant species in the US very soon.
That shift is happening right at the worst, with state and local governments finally starting to ease restrictions on places like restaurants – which tended to be limited to a limited maximum capacity when COVID business was set up – just like a lot stronger wave of new COVID infections may be about to happen. This kind of decision can be seen in Iowa, where the Republican governor of the state is lifting the partial mask mandate late last week. The editors of the newspaper of The Des Moines Register also condemned Gov. Kim Reynolds’ companion decision to lift the limits on public meetings, as well as the number of customers allowed in a company. In an interview with NBC News, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health infectious disease epidemiologist Dr. Justin Lessler admitted that “I have some concern that it is premature” to begin lifting these kinds of restrictions, Dr. Fauci provided some additional context in this sense.
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The bottom line is that Dr. Fauci is concerned that we are about to be hit by a scary wave of the COVID variants that are much more contagious – causing the cases to skyrocket again. And you know what follows. More cases = more hospital admissions = more deaths from the coronavirus.
“What we see now in our country is still a dominant, original wild-type virus (against which) the vaccines are very effective, 94 to 95%,” said Dr. Fauci at the White House’s COVID-19 Response Team Briefing on Monday, which you can watch below. “The immediate concern we have is that the fact that we have the 117 (variant) in certainly a significant number of states reported to a number of people that modeling would tell us it could become dominant in late March. That is the sobering news. “
Dr. Fauci continued: “A virus is transmissible and virulent, and the degree of transmittance and the degree of virulence can even overlap … A virus with a higher degree of transmittance will make more people sick. The more people get sick, the more people are hospitalized. And the more people are hospitalized, the more likely you are to have deaths. “
The good news is that this negative turnaround is not necessarily a foregone conclusion. According to Dr. Fauci, the COVID vaccines we now have are effective against the British COVID variant (but “less so against the South African” strain). This is why the current game plan is basically a race against time – vaccinating people as soon as possible and encouraging everyone, vaccinated or not, to continue to adhere to current public safety protocols.
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Andy is a Memphis reporter who also contributes to outlets like Fast Company and The Guardian. When not writing about technology, he can be found protective of his burgeoning vinyl collection, as well as his whovianism and binges on a variety of TV shows you probably don’t like.