US Coronavirus: Here’s how close the US is to a possible Covid-19 boom, warns expert

US Coronavirus: Here’s how close the US is to a possible Covid-19 boom, warns expert

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“Four weeks ago, the B.1.1.7 variant accounted for about 1 to 4% of the virus we saw in communities across the country. Today it is up to 30 to 40%,” said Osterholm, director of the Center. for Research and Policy on Infectious Diseases at the University of Minnesota, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

“What we saw in Europe when we reached the 50% mark, you see cases rising,” he said.

People gather on a beach in Miami on March 5, 2021

Here’s what we know about the B.1.1.7 variant

Although there are different variants of coronavirus in the US, experts are particularly concerned about the dangerous potential of the highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant.

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In mid-January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that cases of the variant were likely to see rapid growth in early 2021, adding that it was likely to become the predominant variant in the US this month.

To date, the agency has reported more than 2,600 known cases of the variant in 46 states, Puerto Rico and Washington DC. Nearly a quarter of cases are in Florida. But the CDC said it probably does not represent the total number of such cases in the U.S., but only the cases found by analyzing positive samples, using genomic sequencing.

The specialist and epidemiologist, dr. Celine Gounder, told CNN on Sunday she was at an emergency meeting held by a group of experts on Christmas Eve to discuss the variant.

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“We have been watching it very closely ever since,” she said. “Where it hit in the UK and now elsewhere in Europe, it was really catastrophic. It has increased the number of hospitalizations and deaths and it is very difficult to control.”

New research shows that the variant in the US is 59% to 74% more transmissible than the original new coronavirus. Gounder says business in the U.S. is increasing “exponentially.”
Therefore, it is very important for the country to continue to lower Covid-19 infections. Experts have warned that the vaccination numbers are still not high enough and that in a few weeks it will not be high enough to suppress the predicted upswing.

“It looks like we ran this very long marathon, and we are 100 meters from the finish line and we sit down, and we give up,” Gounder said on Sunday. “We are almost there, we just need to give a little more time to cover a larger part of the population with vaccinations.”

‘It’s not just about personal choice’

But just in the first week of March, several governors announced that they should reduce the restrictions imposed to limit the spread of the virus.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has announced that he has lifted the mandate for the entire mask and that he may reopen the business at 100% from Wednesday. The Government of Mississippi, Tate Reeves, has a similar announcementand said he was removing the mandates of the provincial mask and capacity constraints for businesses.
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On Sunday, Reeves defended his decision, saying it would be an unrealistic goal to free the state of Covid-19 cases altogether, and that Covid-19 numbers officials were concerned.

“We take a closer look at hospitalizations from a given point of view, the number of Mississippians in the ICU, the number of Mississippians on fans … all those numbers have dropped in our state over the past two months,” he told CNN.

Reeves said the state tried to protect lives, but also to protect livelihoods. ‘

“We need to get our economy going so that individuals can get back to work, and I think that’s critical,” he said.

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And even without mask mandates, the governor said he recommended residents and ‘strongly’ encouraged wearing masks.

Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told ABC that the state is responsible for keeping mask mandates in place.

‘It’s not just about personal choice, it’s like I would drink and get behind the wheel of a car, it’s not just a personal choice that I would risk my life, but that I’m people’s lives are in danger, ”Jha said.

“Wearing a mask not only protects you, but you protect people around you,” he added.

Less than 10% of Americans are fully vaccinated

Health officials say a more appropriate time for states to begin easing restrictions is when the daily incidence of Covid-19 is lower – according to Drs. Anthony Fauci – “significantly less” than 10,000 – and the vaccination rates are much higher.
To date, more than 58.8 million Americans have received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine, according to CDC vaccination data.
About 50 people have been vaccinated on a Florida property, although they are not eligible

More than 30.6 million received two doses, the data show. That’s about 9.2% of the U.S. population.

But officials are hopeful that vaccinations will increase in the coming months through increased supply.

Andy Slavitt, a senior adviser to the White House Covid-19 response team, told MSNBC on Sunday that more than enough vaccines would be produced for each adult by the end of May. The president also said last week that by the end of May, the US would have enough vaccines for every adult American, which would accelerate the government’s previous goal by two months.

“We will have enough vaccines, I think we have told 300 million Americans,” Slavitt said Sunday. “There are currently 250 million adults in the country, and as we know, most teenagers are not eligible, and younger children are not eligible, so that’s more than enough for every adult.”

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Slavitt added that vaccines are now going “very, very fast” from factories to weapons, and that the country is becoming more efficient at administering the doses.

And the country’s high school students, according to Fauci, could be vaccinated by the fall, while younger students will likely have to wait a little longer.

“At the moment, tests are being done to determine safety and comparable immunogenicity in high school students,” Fauci told CBS ‘Face the Nation on Sunday. “We plan that high school students can most likely be vaccinated by the fall period, perhaps not the very first day, but certainly in the early part of the fall for the fall period.”

CNN’s Nadia Kounang, Naomi Thomas and Artemis Moshtaghian contributed to this report.

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