More Americans have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine that has not tested positive for the virus, an early but hopeful milestone in the race to end the pandemic.
As of Monday afternoon, 26.5 million Americans had received one or both doses of the current vaccines, according to data collected by the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker. Since the first American patient tested positive outside of Seattle a year ago, 26.2 million people in the country have tested positive for the disease and 441,000 have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The United States has administered shots at a faster rate than any other country in the world, giving about 1.35 million doses a day, according to data collected by Bloomberg. Although the launch stumbled in its early days, in the six weeks since the first shots, nearly 7.8% of Americans have received one or more doses and 1.8% are completely vaccinated.
“It’s worth noting that today, for the first time, the data said more people were being vaccinated than were reported as newly diagnosed cases,” said Paula Cannon, a professor of microbiology at the University of Keck’s School of Medicine. Southern California. “It’s worth celebrating. I’m all for this victory.”
Only a few other countries have surpassed this milestone: Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates beat the United States on the vaccination line more than cases days or weeks ago.
Following an increase in vacations in U.S. cases, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are calling for the most, though behavioral changes are likely to occur and not yet have a widespread impact on the U.S. vaccine. New cases of COVID-19, hospitalizations and visits to emergency services are beginning to dwindle, said Jay Butler, deputy director of the infectious disease agency.
“While these trends are encouraging, I want to stress that the figures at the national level remain high and are as high as at any time since the pandemic so far,” he said at a briefing on Friday organized by the Infectious Diseases Society of America. “If this pandemic were a stock, we might want to sell.”
It is still possible for the virus to recede, especially if variants that are emerging in South Africa and elsewhere remain. Studies suggest that vaccines, especially new photos from Johnson & Johnson and Novavax Inc., are less potent against this strain and at least one other.
The goal is to finally reach the herd’s immunity, when so many Americans have protection from a vaccine or a natural infection, the virus struggles to spread and eventually fades away. Public health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease doctor, estimate that between 70% and 85% of the 330 million Americans must be exposed to the pathogen through the virus or vaccine to reach this level.
While past infection can create immunity, it is unclear how long it lasts. And it comes at a cost: not just deaths, but also hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations, and some people reporting a persistent illness and a bewildering variety of symptoms, such as fatigue, depression, and respiratory problems.
“There is a price to pay for the suffering and cost of the health care system,” said Alessandro Sette, a professor at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology. “It’s prolonged and serious.”
Meanwhile, no deaths have been conclusively related to receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s voluntary system for monitoring adverse events includes reports of some 290 deaths following the administration of a coronavirus vaccine on January 22nd. vaccines.
The questions persist. It is not yet clear exactly how many people have been vaccinated or infected, and it may never be. The virus has had many more people who have tested positive, particularly those with mild or asymptomatic cases.
Reported vaccines are also lower than the amount actually given because people are more focused on injecting them into their arms than recording the data into tracking systems, Cannon said. It takes two shots to get total immunity, which only 5.82 million Americans have received.
It is still early in the vaccination effort, which has been plagued by a lack of coordination, confusion about who should have access to it and a lack of supply that reduced the number of people who were able to receive the shot. the first weeks of release.
It’s also important to make sure the right people are immunized for maximum benefit, said Bill Moss, executive director of the Johns Hopkins University International Vaccine Access Center.
“There are a lot of people who get vaccinated and who don’t belong in high-risk categories,” he said. “If that’s the case, it will take longer to see a reduction in serious illness and death. Everyone needs a vaccine at some point, but I’m concerned about the inequalities in how the system has developed.”
Emerging variants have created a new urgency to increase the pace of vaccinations, said Daniela Weiskopf, an assistant research professor at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology. Each time the virus reproduces, there is a possibility that a variant will appear.
“The faster we interrupt it, the more likely we are not to see more variants appear,” he said.
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