Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the leading expert on infectious diseases in the United States, predicted on Thursday that the daily death toll from the coronavirus would continue to rise for weeks, and advocated patience with the vaccination program operating across the country.
Health officials in the United States on Wednesday reported nearly 4,000 virus-related deaths, a record and the total for the pandemic exceeded 360,000. In an interview with NPR, dr. Fauci said the continued high toll is likely to be a reflection of the larger travel and events during the holiday.
“We believe things will get worse when we come in January,” he said.
He stressed that it is still possible to “blunt” the acceleration by adhering to social health measures such as social distance and mask wear.
“This is not the time to return to this,” he warned.
The virus has taken a heavy toll in the United States. Over the past few days, Wyoming and Arizona have been among states that have recorded high death rates per capita, according to a New York Times database. On Thursday, Florida reported more than 19,800 cases, the highest total of a single day in the state.
Dr. Fauci advised Americans to be patient with the brackets and delays that delayed the vaccination effort and provoked widespread frustration.
To date, at least 5.9 million people in the United States have received a dose of one of the two Covid-19 vaccines approved by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. That is far less than the target that would give federal officials at least 20 million people their first shots by the end of December.
Dr Francis S. Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, said on Wednesday he was “not entirely surprised” that the distribution of vaccines had started a “rocky” one.
“We had this remarkable plan that Warp Speed was set to have doses ready the next day after FDA approval, but that’s a lot of logistics,” he told The Washington Post, referring to Operation Warp Speed, the government’s vaccine development program. “Maybe we should not be too shocked because it was not like a clockwork.”
He also heeded the warning from dr. Fauci agrees, saying “the next few weeks are going to be really critical.”
But the deployment is starting to accelerate. It was reported that more people received their first shots in the third week of vaccinations than in the first two weeks combined. The CDC’s score rose by 470,000 between Tuesday and Wednesday. and then with another 612,000 between Wednesday and Thursday.
In a letter Thursday to Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, the American Hospital Association called on the federal government to do more to coordinate what is being done in various states and municipalities.
“Hospitals are committed to being a central part of the vaccination effort, but hospitals alone cannot do that, especially as we care for the growing number of critically ill Covid-19 patients, and we are struggling to maintain adequate staffing to to have enough personal protective equipment and other resources, ”Richard J. Pollack, the association’s chief executive, wrote in the letter.
Mr. Azar urged the states on Wednesday not to adhere too strictly to the CDC’s guidelines on who to take in what order.
“There is no reason why states should vaccinate all health care providers before opening vaccinations to older Americans or other particularly vulnerable populations,” he said. Azar said at a news conference. He added: “It would be much better to move fast and end up vaccinating people with less priority than to have vaccines put in place.”
In the NPR interview, dr. Fauci said that any program on such a large scale should overcome obstacles, and that the timing of the implementation, which began around the December holidays, could potentially contribute to the delays.
“I think it would be fair to just observe what happens in the next few weeks,” he said. “If we are not achieving the original goal, we really need to make changes in what we do.”