December is the deadliest month for coronavirus since the pandemic began, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.
The United States has reported more than 63,000 deaths so far this month. April was once the deadliest month of the pandemic, with more than 55,000 dead. According to the COVID Monitoring Project, deaths topped that figure just three weeks in December as temperatures dropped, people gathered for the holidays and cases increased.
According to the latest data from Johns Hopkins, the United States has seen more than 19 million cases of coronavirus and more than 330,000 deaths due to COVID-19.
President-elect Joe Biden
Joe Biden: Biden councilor Ricchetti’s brother, hired as a lobbyist on Amazon, shows preview: COVID-19 replacement awaits Trump’s signing; the government continues to deploy vaccines Global cases of COVID-19 exceed 80 million MORE warned last week that the pandemic would get worse before it improved, even with the arrival of vaccines, and warned Americans to be alert.
“I’m going to tell you the truth. And here’s the simple truth: our darkest days in the battle against COVID are ahead, not behind us,” Biden told a news conference Tuesday.
“As frustrating as it may be to listen, it will take patience, persistence and determination to beat this virus. There will be no time to waste in taking the steps we need to turn this crisis around,” he added.
Anthony Fauci
Anthony Fauci Sunday shows preview: relay of COVID-19 awaiting Trump’s signing; the government continues the implementation of the vaccine Fauci serenade with the first aid activists of AIDS recruits Barbra Streisand for Fauci’s surprise birthday party in Zoom MORE, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, accepted the assessment on Sunday and warned the United States could see the worst of the pandemic in the coming weeks.
“Since we’ve gone from late fall to early winter, the numbers are really worrisome,” Fauci said.
“With over 120,000 hospitalizations, we are truly a critical stage,” he added.
Two vaccines, manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna, have been approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with just over a million people vaccinated to date. More than 9 million doses of vaccine have been reported.
The federal government had planned to vaccinate about 20 million by the end of the year, but that goal seems out of reach now.
In late November, when news of the approval of the coronavirus vaccine was on the horizon, former NATO commander James Stavridis wrote in a Fortune publication that changes needed to be made to the government for the distribution of vaccines.
Stavridis argued that only one company, McKesson, had been commissioned to distribute COVID-19 vaccines. He said the government needed more companies to protect itself from the possibility of failing in its distribution plan.
But even with promising developments like the vaccine, new challenges continue to emerge. A new, more contagious strain of coronavirus has been detected in the United Kingdom and South Africa, leading many nations to limit or ban travel to and from these countries. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued a requirement for UK air travelers to provide a negative coronavirus test when traveling to the United States.
On Sunday, former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the new strain is likely to already exist in the U.S. He suspected that more people had been vaccinated than reported due to a delay in data collection.
“But the idea that we will reach 20 million vaccines, vaccinations, by the end of the year is probably not realistic at this time,” Gottlieb said.
However, Gottlieb predicted that once the vaccine was available through pharmacy chains such as Walgreens and CVS, there would be a significant amount in the distribution of the vaccine.
The order in which people receive the vaccine has been left to state governments to decide. Many state governments still face how they will determine order. Governor of Ohio Mike DeWine
Mike DeWineDiumenge shows preview: COVID-19 relief awaiting Trump’s signing; government continues vaccine deployment DeWine says Ohio teachers and school staff will be the next group to receive the COVID-19 vaccine Progressives will gather around Turner House MORE (R) recently announced that teachers and school staff members would be the next to receive the vaccine.