WASHINGTON (CNN) – As the United States prepares to face possible rises in COVID-19 over the holidays, hospitals across the country have reported more than 100,000 patients for the 26th day in a row.
December has been a devastating month for the spread of coronavirus in the US. More than 63,000 Americans have died so far this month, the highest since the pandemic began, and more than 333,000 people lost to the virus in the United States, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. With a total of 19.1 million people infected, there are now 118,720 people currently hospitalized The COVID monitoring project has been reported.
A Southern California hospital faces the possibility of rationing the limited number of beds and treatment equipment for the ICU due to the increase in cases, which means healthcare providers would have to make decisions. on who receives the treatment and who does not, according to Dr. specialist in infectious diseases. Kimberly Shriner told CNN on Sunday.
Pasadena’s Huntington Memorial Hospital is preparing for “final triage” if cases continue to rise in the coming weeks, Shriner said.
And with the waves of holiday travel, health experts predict that cases will only grow. On Saturday, more than 1.1 million people were examined at airports on Saturday, according to the TSA. On Christmas Day alone more than 616,000 were projected and hundreds of thousands more traveled the days before the holidays.
Dr. Anthony Fauci described the possible impacts of the holiday season as an “increase on the rise.”
“If we look at the slope, the slope of the cases we’ve experienced as we’ve entered late fall and early early winter is really very worrying,” Fauci said.
“As we get into the next few weeks,” he added, “it may get worse.”
Complexity at each step for vaccine distribution
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 2 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in the United States, and more than 9.5 million doses have been distributed.
These numbers now include the Pfizer / BioNTech and Modern COVID-19 vaccines. And while there are delays in data reporting, federal officials had previously said they were working to distribute 20 million doses by the end of the year.
Asked about the seemingly slow deployment of vaccines, Fauci told CNN Sunday that large, complete vaccine programs with a new vaccine begin slowly before the momentum increases.
“I’m pretty sure that as we gain more momentum, as we move from December to January and then from February to March, I think we’ll keep up with the projection,” he said.
Dr. Esther Choo, a professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health & Science University, explained that vaccine distribution “is just a very complicated thing.”
“At every step, there is complexity and there is a possibility of delay, whether it is individual state planning, allocation, training, vaccine supply, storage … there are (are) so many factors at this stage,” Choo said.
“We need to be prepared for the fact that it will be a slow deployment in many places and that it will not change our behaviors or necessarily the trajectory of the pandemic in this country in the short term,” Choo said.
With the chances of vaccines not being widely available until the summer, experts have warned Americans not to lower their guard when vaccinations begin and to continue wearing masks, distancing themselves socially, avoiding crowds and gatherings, and washing up. get your hands regularly.
Move the poles to achieve the herd’s immunity
For vaccines to actually be vaccinated and get the herd immunity against the virus, 70% to 85% of the population would have to get immunity against that virus, Fauci said Sunday.
Fauci acknowledged that the statement moved the goals, which he had previously set between 70% and 75%.
“We have to realize that we have to be humble and realize what we don’t know,” he said. “They’re pure estimates and the calculations I’ve made, from 70 to 75%, is a scope.”
“The range will range from 70 (percent) to 85%,” Fauci said, adding that the reason he first started saying 70% to 75% and then bought it up to 85 %, which he said is no big leap, “was really based on pure measles calculations and extrapolations.”
Fauci said the measles vaccine is about 98% effective, and when the measles vaccine is given to less than 90 percent of the population, there is a breakthrough in herd immunity and people are starting to get infected -se.
“So I made a calculation that COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, is not as communicable as measles, because measles is the most transmissible infection you can imagine,” he said. “So I imagine you would need a little less than 90%. Here I came to 85.”
“We believe the vaccine will be effective against the variant”
While there is a risk that a variant of the coronavirus will pass from the UK to the US, a US official said Americans can still protect themselves with the same mitigation measures.
“We believe the vaccine will be effective against this variant,” Deputy Admiral Brett Giroir, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services, told Fox News on Sunday.
Giroir said the United States has an additional layer of protection against CDC’s announcement last week of new testing requirements for travelers arriving from the United Kingdom, which will take effect Monday.
Passengers must have performed a negative PCR or antigen test within 72 hours after embarking on a UK flight to the United States, along with documentation of their lab results. Airlines will need to confirm the test before the flight.
“I think we’ll be pretty safe with these, as we’re releasing vaccines that will be highly 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 evidence requirement “prudent.”
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