When will Covid-19 end? Experts are unsure, but more vaccines are cause for optimism.

The Covid-19 epidemic in America is still a disaster. The country has an average of more than 130,000 new cases per day and the number of deaths is still above 3,000 per day. The roll-out of the vaccine isn’t going as smoothly as someone would like, and most people still don’t know when they can get a vaccine.

But for the first time when I dealt with the pandemic, I feel just a little more optimistic this week – for two main reasons.

First, the number of daily new Covid-19 cases in the US has dropped dramatically over the past month by an astounding 45 percent since the beginning of January.

Second, the rate of vaccinations has continued to rise steadily in recent weeks, quadrupling the number of injections per day in a month. The current pace is still not great or even good, but it is a big step in the right direction.

Everywhere are reservations. The number of Covid-19 cases and deaths in the US is still far too high; when controlled for population, rates of both are still higher than those in most developed countries. Vaccine roll-out is still too slow for the pandemic to end in the summer, as many of us want; the current pace puts us on track to achieve adequate population protection by 2022. New virus variants from the UK, South Africa and Brazil could spike infections in the US and warn of possible future mutations.

“The decline after the holidays is good, as is the rising vaccination rate,” said Saskia Popescu, infectious disease epidemiologist at George Mason University. “The concerning part, however, is that we are still seeing significant community transfer and feeling a bit in the dark about how truly the new variants appear.”

So it’s not going great, but they are getting better. In times filled with so much despair, it’s worth highlighting some of that progress.

1) Daily new Covid-19 cases have plummeted in the US

Here’s the first good news: The spate of Covid-19 cases over the holiday season seems – finally – to be waning. According to Our World in Data, the US peaked at nearly 250,000 cases per day, based on a weekly moving average, on January 8. Less than a month later, there are fewer than 140,000 cases per day every day.

That equates to a drop of about 45 percent in just a few weeks.

Our world in data

This is likely a result of the country being collectively responding to the holiday season spike, be it new restrictions imposed in recent months by the state and local governments or the general public enforcing compliance with precautions such as masking and encourage social detachment (especially now that Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve are over). Increasing immunity to the virus, either through illness or vaccination, may also play a role.

Without any imagination, the drop in the number of cases should be understood that the wave is completely over and the US can now relax. America’s reported caseload is still higher than it was at any point during the pre-fall pandemic. The death toll hasn’t dropped much yet, probably because there is a delay between infection, serious illness, and death.

Any relaxation now, be it government restrictions or public compliance, would likely trigger another wave. There is still a lot of virus, ready to jump from person to person if you get the chance. That’s especially true as new, more contagious variants of coronavirus await – putting us at risk of an even bigger rise than the ones we saw over the holiday season as we slow down.

So you may not be hosting that big Super Bowl party this year.

2) The vaccination campaign is improving

The other good news is that the US vaccination campaign is gaining momentum and is likely to continue to do so in the coming weeks and months.

In early January, the US was delivering about 300,000 shots per day. The country has more than quadrupled that since then – with the US now taking more than 1.3 million shots a day.

Our world in data

There is good reason to think this will accelerate in the coming weeks. President Joe Biden’s government, state and local governments, and various parts of the medical system are working to ramp up the production and distribution of vaccines. Prospective vaccine candidates could also make vaccine delivery and administration easier and faster; For example, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which data suggests to be effective, requires only one injection to administer, while the currently approved Moderna and Pfizer vaccines each require two injections at intervals of weeks.

Still, there are some reasons to temper optimism.

Perhaps most importantly, the current rate of vaccination means that the country will not achieve adequate population protection or herd immunity until fall, winter, or even 2022 – estimated at 70 to 80 percent – and even that depends on a vaccine being approved for children, which is not yet certain. If vaccinations don’t deliver up to 2 million or 3 million shots a day, the US won’t get that summer end of Covid-19, which many government officials have promised.

There is also the question of whether vaccines stop transmission. At present, the evidence shows that vaccines prevent serious illness and death, but whether that translates into preventing the spread of the coronavirus is unknown. That doesn’t mean the vaccines do not protect against transmission, it means that it is unclear whether they do or not. This could dictate how well the vaccines work in protecting the wider community above and beyond the person getting the vaccine.

And we still don’t know how long the protection of the vaccines will last. It can be months, years or permanent. The situation is complicated by the emergence of variants, which could eventually evolve to overcome a vaccine (although that doesn’t seem to be true for current variants). Depending on the answer, the US may require regular vaccination campaigns against the coronavirus in the future, similar to the flu.

All of which is to say that there is still a lot of work to be done, both in administering injections and learning how effective the vaccines are, before the country can really get back to normal.

In other words, the fact that we can now see some sort of finish line, between the drop in cases and vaccinations, makes it all the more important that the country adheres to masking, social aloofness and all the other recommended precautions against Covid. -19 – to help more people make it through the finish line alive and well.

But if nothing else, at least the finish line now seems a little closer.

Sign up for the Weeds newsletter. Every Friday, you get an explanation of a major policy story of the week, a look at important research recently published, and answers to questions from readers – to guide you through the first 100 days of President Joe Biden’s administration.