In less than a year, Covid-19 has killed nearly 400,000 Americans.
And the following month alone, 100,000 more lives could be lost to the disease, said the new director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“By mid-February, we expect half a million deaths in this country,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“That doesn’t speak to the tens of thousands of people living with a syndrome not yet characterized after recovering,” said Walensky, who was head of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital before President-elect Joe Biden choose her to lead the CDC.
Some people who have had Covid-19 have suffered symptoms months after giving positive.
“And we still haven’t seen the ramifications of what happened from the vacation trip, the vacation reunion, in terms of high hospitalization rates and subsequent deaths,” Walensky said.
“I think we still have dark weeks ahead of us.”
100 million doses in 100 days: Walensky said Sunday that the Biden administration will address “bottlenecks” in the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines and meet its goal of delivering 100 million doses in 100 days.
“I think there are bottlenecks in different places all over the system,” Walensky told Face the Nation.
“Different states have different challenges: how many are being deployed in each state, whether those states have adequate staff, whether those states are vacant in pharmacies,” he said. “Our job is to make sure that, with all the support of the federal government, we address all of these bottlenecks wherever we are, so that we can take the vaccine in people’s arms.”
President-elect Joe Biden says his goal is to distribute 100 million doses of vaccine in his first 100 days in office.
“We’ve looked closely and we’re sure we have enough vaccines for the 100 million doses over the next 100 days,” Walensky said. “It’s going to be a strong lift, but we have it in us to do it.”
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