Despite encouraging national trends in hospitalizations and coronavirus-related cases, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is concerned that “pandemic fatigue” in the spring could significantly reduce the country’s trajectory to vaccination-induced herd immunity. obstruct.
The remarks of dr. Rochelle Walensky also comes because additional states still detect many transmissible coronavirus variants that were first identified in the United Kingdom (B.1.1.7) and South Africa (B.1.351). A separate variant first found in Brazil (P.1) has also been identified in two states. CDC models predicted that the B.1.1.7 strain could dominate in the US by March.
“I am concerned that it will be spring and that we will all have enough,” Walensky said Wednesday in an interview with Dr Howard Bauchner, editor-in-chief of JAMA. “Around that time, I was worried that life would feel and look a little better and that the motivation for those who were hesitant against vaccine would be reduced.”
VACCINE ROLLO’S COVID-19 CAN BE AWAY FOR SEVERAL EDITION, S EX KNOWLEDGE
While states are now grappling with vaccine issues, there will be a turning point where supply will exceed demand, Walensky said, pointing out that a continued scale of vaccination at that point would be crucial to progress to herd immunity.
“While I’m really hopeful about what could happen in March and April, I really know it can go bad so fast and we saw it in November, we saw it in December and saw what could happen.”
Reports of health officials worrying about so-called ‘pandemic fatigue’ surfaced this past summer and fall as some grew tired of barriers and unpredictable precautions to take risks with others.
Nevertheless, experts urge the public to be diligent in taking precautions to prevent the new virus and spread the distribution chain.
The seven-day average for hospital-admitted COVID-19 patients continues to fall after a record high in mid-January, which recently dropped from about 130,000 to about 67,000 patients, according to data released by The COVID Tracking Project has been set up. A seven-day average for new cases is also declining from about 260,000 daily infections at the end of December to below 100,000 new cases in recent days, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The drop in 100,000 daily new cases in recent days was a milestone for the first time in months.
Public health experts, including Walensky, attributed the decline in cases and hospitalizations to the gradual distance of the holiday season with his travel and close indoor meetings.
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The U.S. now means an average of 1.7 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine administered daily, the White House said Wednesday, compared to an average of 900,000 shots a day a month ago. The latest daily average of seven days reflects an increase of 200,000 doses compared to the previous week. More than 15 million people, or about 5% of the population, received two doses, or the full vaccination, as of February 17th.
Fox News’ Alexandria Hein contributed to this report.