US coronavirus: Incoming CDC director: Expect 500,000 Covid-19 deaths by mid-February

And in the next month alone, another 100,000 lives could be lost to the disease, the new director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

By mid-February, we expect half a million deaths in this country, Dr. Rochelle Walenski told CBS Face the Nation on Sunday.

That doesn’t speak to the tens of thousands of people still living with this unusual syndrome after their recovery, said Walenski, who was head of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital before President-elect Joe Biden chose him to lead the CDC.

And we still haven’t seen the consequences of what happened in terms of high rates of hospitalization and subsequent deaths, Valensky said.

I think we have a few dark weeks ahead of us.

What to expect next month

Last week, the CDC released a composite forecast that within six years, the number of people in the area will be six. In February, between 440,000 and 477,000 deaths are reported by Covid 19 in the United States.

While the outlook for Covid-19 control is improving in some states, things look bleak in others.

At least 126,139 patients were admitted to the U.S. Saturday – up from a record 132,447 on the 6th. January.

In North Dakota, the number of active Covid-19 cases has dropped 80 percent since mid-November, Governor Doug Burgum said Friday.

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The deadline on the mask expires Monday.

North Dakota has seen a dramatic increase in patients and hospital capacity over the past two months. With three new tools we didn’t have last fall – vaccines, rapid testing and effective treatments – we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, Mr. Burgum said.

However, this battle is not over and we need all North Dakotans to remain personally responsible, to follow protocols and to wear masks when physical aloofness is not possible. The day will come when we can take off our masks and remove them with confidence, but only if we do what we need to do now to protect ourselves, our families and our communities.

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In Illinois, three areas of the state are taking less restrictive measures.

I’m happy to report today that most areas of Illinois are doing well, J.B. Pritzker said Friday.

The governor said the state will soon return to group fitness, youth and low-risk recreational sports, and reopen museums.

But much of the country is still in trouble. According to Johns Hopkins University, 46 states had test positivity rates above 5 percent as of Sunday.

For the future, the World Health Organization has recommended that governments should not retest until a positive response of 5% or less has been achieved for at least 14 days.

A recent University of Washington coronavirus prediction shows that with 1… More than 566,000 people died in the United States in May. The university’s Institute of Metrology and Health Evaluation has stated that this number could be reduced by several thousand with the requirement to wear a universal mask.

100 million doses in 100 days

Dr. Walenski said Sunday that the Biden administration will eliminate bottlenecks in the distribution of the Covid 19 vaccine and achieve its goal of delivering 100 million doses within 100 days.

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I think there are bottlenecks at various points in the system, Valensky told the Nation.

She said there are different issues from state to state – how much vaccine each state has, whether those states have enough staff, whether those states get the vaccine from pharmacies. Our job, with the full support of the federal government, is to remove all of these bottlenecks, wherever we are, so that we can get the vaccine into the hands of the public.

President-elect Biden says his goal is to distribute 100 million doses of the vaccine in the first 100 days.

We have looked closely and are confident that we have enough vaccine for 100 million doses in the next 100 days, Walenski said. It will be a difficult task, but we have planned everything.

Fauci clarifies misconceptions about spare boxes.

The general confusion arose after outgoing Health Minister Alex Azar discovered that there was no federal vaccine stockpile.

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The Trump administration has previously stated that it includes cans to help Americans get the second dose they need weeks after their first dose.

Last week, a senior government official said the second reserved buses would be released, perhaps within two weeks.

But on Friday, Azar told NBC that Lester Holt has no reservations.

We are now confident enough in the quality of our current production and its price to give people a second dose, so we are no longer sitting on the sidelines, said Azar, who resigned.

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Like many Americans, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, wanted answers.

I tried, and I think I succeeded, Fauci said Sunday at a press briefing with NBC.

He said he spoke to General Gustav Perna, the chief of operations for Operation Warp Speed, and I think it was just a misunderstanding.

M. Fauci said the Trump administration initially approached vaccine distribution with caution, delaying the release of the second dose in the event of a vaccine stockpile disruption.

After a few cycles, when it became clear that the rate of dose flow would be really consistent and reliable, the decision was made not to just give enough doses for the first one and wait to give the second one, so that as soon as they had the available doses, they would give them, Fauci said.

About 3% of US residents have received at least one dose of.

According to the CDC, more than 12.2 million doses of the vaccine have been administered in the United States.

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More than 10.5 million people received the first injection and 1.6 million people completed the vaccination cycle with a second dose.

These numbers fall short of the goals of Operation Warp Speed, which promised that 20 million Americans would be vaccinated this year.

Azar stated that the timing of the vaccine approval was influential.

We said we would provide doses to the 20 million people that might be available and, of course, that was a projection based on an estimate if the FDA approved, Lester Holt, an NBC spokesman for Azar, said Friday.

Eventually the FDA approved it later… just before Christmas. They have a natural scale.

The United States is facing a brutal strike

Meanwhile, Fauci told Meet the Press that the United States is closely examining new variants of Covid-19, including one identified in the United Kingdom and a more sinister one in South Africa and Brazil. Health experts are investigating whether new strains could reduce the effectiveness of Covid 19 vaccines, leading to some adjustments to the vaccine.

The CDC recently warned that variants of Covid-19 could accelerate the spread of the virus in the United States.

More infectious variants of Covid-19, which are not necessarily more deadly, could still lead to more deaths, Fauci said.

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While it’s not more virulent on an individual basis, meaning it doesn’t make you sicker or more likely to die, just by the numbers, the more cases you have, the more hospitalizations you’ll have, and the more hospitalizations you have, the more deaths you’ll have, he said.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said Sunday that the release of the British version in the United States means the nation faces a reckless blow as spring approaches.

In about five weeks it will be up and running, Gottlieb told Face the Nation.

The only thing against this new option is that by then we will have a lot of infections, so the population will have a lot of immunity, and we will vaccinate more people, but that changes the equation, he said.

Gottlieb said data from the United States and other countries show that the number of people infected with the new variant is likely to double every week.

Los Angeles County Businesses

On Saturday, Los Angeles County became the first county in the United States to have one million cases of coronavirus. He also announced that he had confirmed the first case of the British variant of the virus.

In Sunday’s press release, health officials reported 11,366 new cases and 108 deaths. The numbers are last week’s lows, but the Los Angeles Department of Health says they represent undercoverage due to a delay in weekend reporting.

Currently, 7,498 Angelenos are hospitalized for this disease and 23% of them are in intensive care, according to the department.

Christina McSuris, Melissa Alonso, Paul Vercammen, Sheri Mossburg, Stella Chan, Jessica Fierger, Sarah Mucha, Alta Spellings, Lauren Mascarenas, Suzanne Cullinan, and Holly Silverman contributed to this report.

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