As of Tuesday night, 663,913 people in the U.S. had died from COVID-19, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. According to the United States Census Bureau, the U.S. population as of April 2020 was 331.4 million.
It’s a worrying toll that occurs as U.S. hospitals are struggling to keep up with the volume of patients and more children are facing the virus. Hoping to manage the spread and prevent more unnecessary deaths, officials are implementing mandates for vaccination in the workplace and masking in schools.
They are fighting a strong upward trend in cases and deaths: the United States reports an increase of more than 30% in the daily average of cases and almost a triple of the average daily death over the last month, according to data of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. and Prevention.
But with only 54% of the population fully vaccinated, the rate of people starting vaccines every day has declined over the past month.
Health experts have hailed vaccines as the best source of protection against the virus, noting that most people hospitalized and killed by COVID-19 are not vaccinated. In Pennsylvania, from Jan. 1 to Sept. 7, 97 percent of the state’s COVID-19 deaths were among unvaccinated people, the acting health secretary of Pennsylvania said Tuesday.
Another strong layer of protection, according to experts, is masking.
The CDC recommends that people, even those completely vaccinated, wear masks indoors in areas with substantial or elevated community transmission. More than 99% of the population lives in a county with one of these designations.
In Ohio, where children’s hospitals are overflowing with respiratory cases and COVID-19, Gov. Mike DeWine encourages schools to issue mask warrants as the state legislature has told him it would cancel any warrants it issues.
“Reasonable people may disagree with a lot of things, but we can all agree that we need to keep our kids in the classroom so they don’t fall behind and so that their parents can go to work and not take time off. to see their kids at home, “DeWine said.
The combination of masks and vaccines is the way to keep children in school, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN on Tuesday.
“If you surround kids with vaccinated people and have everyone with a mask on, you can get a situation where kids will be relatively safe in school,” Fauci told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Fight brewing for vaccine mandates
In an effort to manage the spread of the virus, many officials and experts have promoted vaccination warrants, but others oppose such measures.
New York issued an order in August requiring all health care workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 before September 27th. But on Monday, 17 Catholic and Baptist medical professionals filed a federal complaint to prevent the state from fulfilling the mandate, saying they were opposed to getting the vaccine for religious reasons.
On Tuesday, a federal judge issued a restraining order temporarily suspending New York State from executing its vaccine warrant if health care workers claim a religious exemption.
Because the warrant does not require health care workers to receive the first dose of the vaccine until Sept. 27, the judge’s order states that the temporary restraining order “is virtually ineffective to date.”
A hearing is scheduled for Sept. 28.
Following the sentencing, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s press secretary, Hazel Crampton-Hays, said in a statement that the governor is considering all legal options.
“Governor Hochul is doing everything in her power to protect New Yorkers and combat the Delta variant by increasing vaccine rates across the state,” Crampton-Hays said.
In Los Angeles, despite a warrant to inoculate all city employees against the virus, nearly a quarter of police are asking for an exemption, according to Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office. Those who are not vaccinated will need to show weekly test results and a negative COVID result if they show up regularly at work.
On Nov. 1, Nevada workers serving “vulnerable populations” will have to prove vaccination testing under a new emergency regulation passed Tuesday.
New hires must have at least one dose before the start date and must follow the required vaccination schedule to continue working. Workers are allowed to apply for a medical or religious exemption.
The reinforcement meeting will never be a blow
On Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will meet to discuss whether most Americans need a COVID-19 vaccine booster.
Unlike other meetings to discuss the vaccine, this one, with Pfizer’s requests to authorize a third dose for most people, will be no problem.
“This will be much more messy than in December,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University. The FDA committee was quick to recommend authorization for vaccines developed by Pfizer and its rival Modern last December.
When the FDA Advisory Committee on Vaccines and Related Biological Products meets Friday, duel data will be presented, some of which suggest the need for enhancers, but other data suggest that there is no such need.
Three separate articles published last week in the CDC’s weekly morbidity and mortality report suggest we don’t need boosters.
On the other hand, an Israeli study found that over time the power of vaccines to prevent people from getting very sick with COVID-19 decreased. Analyzing diseases in the second half of July, this study found that those who had received the second dose of Pfizer vaccine in March had 70% more protection against serious illness than those who received the second vaccine in January.
President Joe Biden last month announced plans to begin administering booster doses next week. Although she would not say directly whether that date would be met, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday that she has hope on the schedule to administer the doses.
If reinforcement is approved, experts will have to wait and see how much protection is added with the third dose.
“I hope this keeps us going for a long period of time, but I don’t know now,” Fauci said. “We just have to make the push and then follow people long enough to determine what the durability of this protection is.”