Expert sees ‘a ray of sunshine’ in Covid-19 battle, but deaths and variant cases are growing in the US
Despite a steady growth in coronavirus deaths, a medical expert says the United States now has an opportunity to “get a hold of the pandemic.”
“We’re going to see a lot of deaths in the next two months but there is a ray of sunshine,” Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a George Washington University medical professor and CNN medical analyst, said Monday on “New Day.”
“Over the last four days for the first time in months, we’ve seen a steady decline … a thousand per day fewer hospitalizations in the United States,” he said. “We’ve seen the same trend in new cases.”
Nationally, hospitalizations are now around 124,000 per day, down from 132,000 a few weeks ago. Reiner also said testing has increased in recent weeks, but test positivity has dropped to around 11% from a peak of 14% a few weeks ago.
“All of those metrics point to the conclusion that we may have passed the peak,” he said. “If we stay put now and we mask up and we get vaccines into arms as quickly as possible, we can start to get a hold of this pandemic.”
Still, Covid-related deaths are nearing 400,000 in the United States, and the country passed the 24 million mark in total cases, according to Johns Hopkins University data. More than half — 60% — of all Covid-19 cases in the United states have been reported since Election Day, according to a CNN analysis of Johns Hopkins University data.
California, the current epicenter of the pandemic in the US, became the first state on Monday to record more than 3 million Covid-19 cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins and the Covid Tracking Project. The number of Covid-19 cases in California has tripled in just the past two months.
And multiple US states have now reported cases of a new Covid-19 variant first detected in the UK. The number of cases of this variant are likely to “double every week,” according to Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner.
“In about five weeks, this is going to start to take over,” Gottlieb said during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“The only backstop against this new variant is the fact that we will have a lot of infection by then so there’ll be a lot of immunity in the population, and we will be vaccinating more people,” he added. “But this really changes the equation and I think what we’re looking at is a relentless strike from this virus, heading into the spring.”
A new Covid-19 variant is now “increasingly being found in multiple counties throughout California,” state health officials announced Sunday in a news release.
The variant, known as 452R, is different from the B.1.1.7 variant first detected in the United Kingdom, health officials say. As testing for variants has ramped up in California, the 452R version has been identified more frequently since November and has been identified in large outbreaks in Santa Clara County.
At least 122 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant have been identified in 20 US states, according to data posted Monday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This includes at least 46 cases in Florida, 40 in California, six in Colorado, five in Minnesota, four in Indiana, four in New York, two in Connecticut, two in Maryland, two in Texas, and one case each in Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
US approaching 400,000 Covid-19 deaths
Just a little more than halfway into January, the US has added a staggering 3.9 million new Covid-19 cases and more than 51,000 virus-related deaths.
The country’s total Covid-19 death toll is now rapidly approaching 400,000 — that’s more than the number of Americans who died in World War I, the Vietnam War and the Korean War combined and nearly as many Americans who died in World War II.
And it’s far higher than any other country’s Covid-19 death toll.
“The numbers are quite dire,” Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN Sunday night.
The US has added more than 200,000 daily cases on all but three days this month. And the true number of infections may actually be several times higher than what’s recorded, a recent study suggested.
Hotez estimates it’s closer to a million new infections daily.
“This is a screaming level of transmission across the United States and people are scared, people are upset,” Hotez added. “There is an enormous amount of work that’s going to have to happen starting January 20.”
Hospitals under ‘severe stress’ in next month
More than 124,300 Americans are currently hospitalized with the virus nationwide, according to the Covid Tracking Project. To put that into perspective, that’s more than double the country’s Covid-19 hospitalization peak in spring, according to data from the project.
In their latest briefing, the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projected hospitals in many states “will be under severe stress in the next four weeks.”
That’s already been the case in different parts across the country.
Los Angeles County — the epicenter of California’s Covid-19 crisis — has battled a brutal surge of infections, hospitalizations and deaths for weeks now. County health officials reported Sunday more than 7,400 people remained hospitalized with the virus — 23% of whom were in intensive care units.
In another sign of the spread of the virus in Los Angeles County, an air pollution control agency says it has temporarily suspended limits on cremations to assist crematoriums in the county with a “backlog” caused by the pandemic.
Permits for crematoriums usually contain limits on the number of human remains that can be cremated each month based on the potential impact they will have on air quality, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
But after requests from both the county coroner and health department, the agency issued an emergency order Sunday suspending permit conditions that limit the number of cremations.
Pennsylvania officials said late last week there were more than 4,900 people hospitalized with Covid-19 — nearly double spring’s peak.
In Georgia, one hospital told CNN affiliate WSB they were so full they had to treat patients in hallways and ambulances.
“We truly are in the darkest days,” Dr. Deepak Aggarwal, with Northeast Georgia Medical Center, told the news station.
States worried about vaccine supply
Meanwhile, more than 12.2 million Americans have received their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine and more than 31 million doses have been distributed across the country, according to the latest data from the CDC.
That’s as the country is just days away from President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Biden has outlined a plan for vaccinations that includes opening up eligibility to more people, creating more vaccination sites and taking measures to increase vaccine supply and distribution.
Washington state is now allowing anyone age 65 and older to receive a Covid-19 vaccine, part of a major change in plans to distribute shots. The announcement from Gov. Jay Inslee makes nearly 400,000 more people eligible to be vaccinated.
The governor also announced a goal of increasing the number of people vaccinated every day to 45,000, which is greater than the current amount of vaccine they have available.
“We can’t reach that goal unless we get more doses, obviously, from the federal government,” said Inslee, but he said that he wants the state to be prepared for deliveries to be ramped up.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Monday called for the federal government to release more doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, saying that his state currently had “a very limited supply.”
“The federal government has been giving mixed messages on vaccine availability and guidance, and we need them to step up and get more vaccine to the state,” Walz said
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers said Monday he believes the incoming Biden administration will come through.
“I believe the Biden administration understands the importance of this,” Evers said while speaking at a vaccination clinic in Green Bay. “We will get the vaccine that we need.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Monday demanding an explanation for what Cuomo said was a false claim that vaccine doses held in reserve would be shipped to states. “The federal government is in control of the supply, they must increase the supply,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo said he also sent a letter to the president of Pfizer asking if New York can buy vaccine doses directly from the drug company, which Cuomo believes would be a first.
In a statement provided to CNN, Pfizer responded to Cuomo’s comments, saying, the company is open to collaborating with HHS to increase access to the vaccine.
“However, before we can sell directly to State governments, HHS would need to approve that proposal based on the EUA granted to Pfizer by the FDA,” the statement said.
In Florida, more than 40,000 people who received their first Covid-19 vaccine dose are overdue for their second dose, according to the state’s health department. Those people overdue for their second shot account for about 5% of the nearly 916,000 who have received their first Covid-19 vaccine shot.
In Los Angeles, county officials are struggling to keep up with vaccination demand. While people 65 and older are eligible for the vaccine, the county is still inoculating health care workers. Dodger Stadium has opened as a mass-vaccination site and the county is scheduled to open similar sites at other locations this week.
Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest public school district, has requested authorization from state and local officials to administer the Covid-19 vaccine, Superintendent Austin Beutner said Monday morning.
Beutner said the district, which has 1,413 schools spread over 710 square miles, has 12 health clinics in high-needs areas already licensed to provide vaccinations and can pivot to vaccination sites.
“In a typical community we serve, there are about three drugstores, 2 fire stations, and 25 schools,” he said. “No organization has the infrastructure to provide easier access to vaccinations than schools.”
