Nearly half of new coronavirus cases in the United States are being registered in just five states, a situation that puts pressure on the federal government to reconsider how it distributes vaccines and send more doses to foci of infection.
New York, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey reported 44% of new cases of COVID-19 in the country, or about 197,500 infections, in the last seven-day period available, according to agency data state health records compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The total number of infections recorded in the United States in the same week was more than 452,000.
Increasing the number of vaccines in places where cases are on the rise makes sense, said Dr. Elvin H. Geng, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Washington. But it is also complicated.
“They wouldn’t want to make people wait because it’s getting better for them,” Geng said. “On the other hand, it makes sense to send vaccines to places where cases are on the rise.”
So far, the government of President Joe Biden has given no signs that it will change its policy of distributing vaccines among states based on its population.
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The rise in cases has been particularly significant in Michigan, where the seven-day average of new daily cases reached 6,719 on Sunday, more than double what it recorded two weeks earlier.
While Michigan has had the highest rate of new cases in the past two weeks, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has said she has no plans to tighten restrictions. He noted that the rise was due to fatigue caused by the pandemic, which has caused people to move more, and to more contagious virus variants.
Meanwhile, the number of daily infections in the United States has fallen sharply since the rise in January after the Christmas season. However, the average of seven days of new cases has been rising slowly since mid-March.
White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said Tuesday that states will receive more than 28 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine this week. With that, the United States will have distributed more than 90 million doses in the last three weeks.
On the other hand, Biden announced that 150 million vaccines have been administered since he took office, and that all adults will be able to be inoculated as of April 19th.