One hospital in Southern California is facing the possibility of rationing the limited number of ICU beds and treatment equipment due to the increase in cases, which means healthcare providers may have to make decisions about who gets treatment and who does not, Drs. . Kimberly, Specialist in Infectious Diseases. Shriner told CNN Sunday.
The Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena is preparing for the ‘final triage’ if things continue to climb in the coming weeks, Shriner said.
And with waves of holiday travel, health experts expect cases to only grow. According to the TSA, more than 1.1 million people were screened at airports on Saturday. More than 616,000 were selected on Christmas Day alone, and hundreds of thousands of people traveled in the days leading up to the holiday.
Dr Anthony Fauci described the potential consequences of the holiday season as a ‘boom on a boom’.
“If you look at the slope, the slope of cases we’ve experienced in late fall and soon early winter, it’s really quite worrying,” Fauci said.
“If we come in the next few weeks,” he added, “it could actually get worse.”
Complexity in each step of vaccine distribution
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 2 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered, and more than 9.5 million doses have been distributed.
Asked about the seemingly slow deployment of vaccines, Fauci told CNN on Sunday that large, comprehensive vaccination programs with a new vaccine are starting slowly before gaining momentum.
“I’m pretty confident that as we gain more and more momentum, from December to January and then February to March, I believe we will catch up with the projection,” he said.
Dr Esther Choo, a professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health & Science University, explained that the distribution of vaccines ‘is just a very complicated thing’.
“In every step, there is complexity and there is potential for delay, whether it is individual state planning, allocation, training, vaccine supply, storage … there are still so many factors at this stage,” Choo said.
“We need to be prepared for the fact that in many places it will be a slow rollout and that it will not change our behavior or necessarily the trajectory of the pandemic in this country in the short term,” Choo said.
Since vaccines are unlikely to be widely available until the summer, a number of experts have warned Americans not to be disappointed when vaccinations begin and to continue wearing masks, doing social distances, avoiding crowds and gatherings. and regularly wash their hands.
Move the goal posts for herd immunity
For vaccines to really take hold and bring about herd immunity to the virus, 70 to 85% of the population will have to obtain immunity against it, Fauci said Sunday.
Fauci acknowledges that the statement shifts the goalposts, which he previously set at 70 to 75%.
“We need to realize that we need to be humble and realize what we do not know,” he said. “These are pure estimates and the calculations I made, 70 to 75%, are a series.”
“The range is going to be between 70 and 85%,” Fauci said, adding that the reason he first started saying 70 to 75% and then bought it up to 85%, which according to him is not a big jump. really based on calculations and pure extrapolations of measles. ‘
The measles vaccination is about 98% effective, Fauci said. If less than 90% of the population is vaccinated against measles, a breakthrough in herd immunity begins and people become infected.
“So, I made a calculation that Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2, is not nearly as contagious as measles, but measles is the most contagious infection you can think of,” he said. “I would therefore imagine that you need something less than the 90%, this is where I reached the 85.”
“We believe the vaccine will be effective against the variant”
Although there is a risk that a variant of the coronavirus will move from the UK to the US, a US official said that Americans can still protect themselves with the same mitigation measures.
“We believe the vaccine will be effective against this variant,” U.S. Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Admiral Brett Giroir told Fox News on Sunday.
Giorir said the US has an extra layer of protection over the CDC’s announcement last week of new test requirements for travelers arriving from the UK, which goes into effect on Monday.
Passengers had to have a negative PCR or antigen test within 72 hours of boarding a UK flight to the US, along with documentation of their laboratory results. Airline must confirm the test before the flight.
“I think we’re going to be pretty safe with this because we’re going to roll out vaccines again that will be very effective against all the strains out there,” Giroir told Fox.
Although Fauci said it could be argued that the decision should have been made earlier, he called the test requirement ‘reasonable’.
CNN’s Christina Maxouris, Hollie Silverman, Naomi Thomas, Virginia Langmaid and Pete Muntean contributed to this report.