Federal officials express concern that the decline in daily cases of new coronavirus is beginning to flatten nationwide as one of the variants, from the United Kingdom, increases.
They warned states against easing COVID-19 restrictions, saying the country remains at a tight spot that could lead to a fourth boom before more people are vaccinated.
“We are in that very precarious position that we were right before the storm – where anything that could disturb us can give us another boost,” said dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to President Biden, said. . “We do not want to be people who are always looking at the dark side of things, but you want to be realistic. So we need to look closely at what happens to the figures next week before you start making the understandable need to relax about certain limitations. . ‘
Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House COVID-19 response team, said: ‘We can not say it louder: we think it’s a mistake to take our foot off the gas too early, especially if we we are accelerating vaccination efforts at the moment. “
Since early January, the daily incidence of new coronavirus and COVID-19 hospitalizations has declined, but ‘the latest data suggest that these declines may decrease, which may still be a very high number,’ says Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We at CDC see this as a very worrying shift in the trajectory.”
The alarming numbers come a day before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Saturday issued emergency use approval for a third COVID-19 vaccine, manufactured by Johnson & Johnson.
The country had an average of about 66,350 new cases of coronavirus per day in the past week, Walensky said Friday. This is higher than the figure announced on Wednesday, which was 64,000 new cases per day.
The number of daily deaths from COVID-19 per day – about 2000 per day – is slightly higher than a few days ago.
“We’re keeping a close eye on data information to see where it’s going in the next few days. But it’s important to remember where we are in the pandemic: Things are tough. This is not the time to relax restrictions. , “Walensky said. “Cases, hospital admissions and deaths remain very high, and the recent shift in the pandemic must be taken extremely seriously.”
The recent increase in cases comes as federal officials sounded the alarm about the continuing increase in variants nationwide. The increase in cases may be due to the increasing transmission of a variant first identified in Britain, B.1.1.7, which is thought to be 50% more transmissible than the conventional strain of the virus, Walensky said.
The British variant now represents about 10% of cases of coronavirus nationwide, Walensky said, a few weeks ago between 1% and 4%. Walensky also expressed concern about an emerging variant in New York, B.1.526, and the California variant, B.1.427 / B.1.429, which “apparently also spread more easily and contributed to a large fraction of the current infections in that areas. which urgently adds to the situation. ‘
“The virus is not finished with us. We can not get comfortable or give a false sense of security that the worst pandemic is behind us. Not now, not even when the mass vaccination is so close,” said Walensky. “I know people are tired. They want to get back to normal, but we are not there yet. Give us time. We need to get more vaccines in our communities and get more people vaccinated.”
Walensky and other federal officials have repeatedly warned state and local governments to loosen COVID-19 restrictions too quickly. Walensky said earlier that it was too early for states like Iowa and Montana to lift state-wide masked suits. The city of New York began eating a restaurant within 25 hours of its capacity on February 12, and Massachusetts will lift its capacity limit on restaurants on Monday and reopen indoor concert halls and theaters by 50%, with no more than 500 people within not. .
“Given the trends we’ve seen over the last few days, I would say we can not currently be in a place where restrictions are lifted,” Walensky said.
In California, five counties – San Mateo and Marin, in the Bay Area; Yolo County, west of Sacramento; and Shasta and Humboldt counties further north – were allowed by government officials to reopen indoor restaurant and indoor gyms to limited capacity. Seven provinces could be eligible next week: Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, El Dorado, Napa, Lassen and Modoc.
One of the variants that affects scientists the most is the strain that was first identified in South Africa, B.1.351, in which the effect of vaccination is significantly reduced, but not destroyed. Fauci said that this week the pharmaceutical company Moderna started a clinical trial to test a booster shot specifically designed to be effective against the South African variant.
Another way to deal with other versions, such as the New York and California variants, Fauci said, could be to simply give a second boost to existing vaccines, which will elicit an even more robust immune response that will help deal with the problems. created by the variants.
Fauci said the emergence of the variant is all the more reason to be vaccinated as quickly as possible with the currently available chips. Even among the more varied variants, the vaccines still offer decent protection.
“Get vaccinated. The vaccine at your disposal gets the vaccine. It’s important to get as many people vaccinated as quickly and as quickly as possible,” Fauci said.
Los Angeles County officials have begun to detect a slowdown in the daily incidence of coronavirus, Drs. Paul Simon, chief scientific officer for the department of public health, said.
LA County averaged approximately 1871 cases of coronavirus per day during the past seven-day period, a decrease of 16% from the comparative figure a week earlier, which was 2,236 cases per day. This was a smaller decline than the previous week-over-week decline, in which the average daily incidence fell by 35% according to a Times analysis.
A rate of 1,500 to 2,000 new cases of coronavirus per day “still indicates a fairly significant degree of continued spread of the virus throughout the community,” Simon said.
LA County will open vaccinations Monday for education and child care workers, food and agriculture workers, and law enforcement and other emergency service workers who were not eligible earlier. Together, the groups consist of more than 1 million adults in LA County.
The province expects 269,000 doses to be distributed across vaccination sites in LA County next week, compared to 211,000 doses distributed this week. Of the 269,000 doses, 103,000 will be set aside for the first doses.
“It will therefore take a lot of time to vaccinate these groups unless the vaccine supply increases significantly,” Simon said. “We appeal to the public’s patience as we work through this process as quickly as possible.”
People seeking vaccinations in these sectors must provide proof that they live or work in LA County and proof that they work in a suitable sector and a type of photo ID – this does not have to be issued by the government, said officials.
LA County officials released a new map Friday showing the differences in vaccination rates per city and community among seniors 65 and older. Elderly people living in South LA, Southeast LA and the Antelope Valley had the lowest vaccination rates, while the richest areas had the highest vaccination rates.
For example, Simon said more than 70% of seniors in Beverly Hills, Manhattan Beach and Calabasas received at least one dose of vaccine as of Feb. 20, while less than 35% of seniors were vaccinated in Compton, Cudahy, Lancaster and Palmdale.
“We are implementing a number of measures to increase access to vaccination services among the elderly and others in underserved communities,” Simon said.
California has administered 8.2 million doses of vaccines, Gavin Newsom said at a news conference in Fresno on Friday, averaging about 1.4 million doses a week in the state. Soon, the goal will be to administer 2.7 million doses per week and eventually 4 million doses per week.
This week, California received 1.46 million doses; next week 1.58 million doses are expected, and the week after that 1.63 million doses, Newsom said. The governor offers an optimistic outlook for the coming weeks, given how dire the situation was in California two months ago, when the state ordered thousands of body bags. He also thanked Californians for complying with rules for wearing masks, physically giving up and canceling social gatherings.
Newsom on Friday sought to pay more attention to state efforts to increase vaccinations in the Central Valley, including sending an additional 34,000 doses to vaccinate food and agricultural workers. Low-income workers in the Central Valley were particularly hard hit by the pandemic.
“We are doing better every day – a little better – with the issue of equity, and we realize we still have a long way to go, so much more work to do to really be accounted for at a higher level of performance, especially for our Latino community and our African-American community, ” Newsom said.
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.