By comparison, the entire month of November saw approximately 36,964 deaths, CNN reported.
The serious death toll comes in the heels of a few brutal months for the US, with COVID-19 destroying communities from coast to coast, paralyzing hospital systems and causing new widespread restrictions.
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The authorization of two COVID-19 vaccines earlier in December offered some hope for a light at the end of the tunnel. But experts are still warning that the end of the pandemic is not over yet, and that a new upsurge of the Christmas holidays is on the way.
“We can quite possibly see a post-seasonal – in the sense of Christmas, New Year’s – revival,” said dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday morning on CNN’s “State of the Union” and pointed to vacation trips and private gatherings taking place. despite the advice of health experts.
The country’s leading expert on infectious diseases described the possible increase in cases as a ‘boom in a boom’, and told CNN’s Dana Bash: ‘If you look at the slope, the slope of cases we experience is when we have late fall and soon early winter, it’s really quite worrying. ‘
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According to the TSA, more than 1.1 million people were screened at airports on Saturday, which was the third busiest day for U.S. air travel since March. 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.
The COVID-19 hospitalization numbers in the US are already at a record high level. On Saturday, the country recorded its fifth highest number of hospitalizations – with more than 117,300 COVID-19 patients nationwide, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
Another increase in cases and hospitalizations will inevitably mean more deaths – in addition to an already fatal death toll.
“If you’re dealing with a baseline of 200,000 new cases a day and about 2,000 deaths a day, with hospitalizations of more than 120,000, we’re really at a very critical point,” Fauci said.
“If we come in the next few weeks,” he added, “it could actually get worse.”
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Fauci’s remarks Sunday came as the U.S. surpassed 19 million cases of coronavirus, another milestone for the pandemic, which just over 11 months after the first case was recorded in the U.S. in late January.
Nearly 332,000 Americans died from COVID-19. According to predictions from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, another 193,000 could lose their lives over the next two months.
“The projections are just nightmares,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, a specialist in infectious diseases at Baylor College of Medicine, said. “People can still save the lives of their loved ones by giving up social distance and giving masks. And remember, vaccines are around the corner.”
In some places, vaccination of vaccines is slow, says expert
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 2 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the United States, and more than 9.5 million doses have been distributed.
These numbers now include both the Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. And while there is weakening in reporting, federal officials said earlier that they would vaccinate 20 million people by the end of the year.
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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’.
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“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.
Choo’s words reflect a number of other experts who have warned the American public not to watch when vaccinations begin and to continue with public health measures, including wearing masks, taking social distances, avoiding crowds and gatherings and washing their hands regularly. .
It will probably only be in the summer that vaccines become widely available and begin to make a significant impact on the course of the pandemic, officials said. Fauci estimates that approximately 70% to 85% of the population needs to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to secure the country’s immunity.
Expert: Test requirements do not help control the distribution of COVID-19 variants
The CDC also last week announced new test requirements for travelers arriving from the UK, which take 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.
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This comes after the emergence of a new COVID-19 variant that was first detected in the UK, which according to health officials “is predicted to be more quickly transmissible.” Since the discovery of the variant, more than 40 countries have restricted travel from the UK, and in some cases also travel from other countries that have documented cases with the variant.
The third case of the variant first identified in the UK has been detected in Ottawa, Canada, a press release from the Ontario government said Sunday.
The case is according to the release a person who recently traveled from the UK. That individual is now in self-isolation.
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It has since been found that the two previous cases reported on Saturday had contact with a recent UK traveler.
According to an expert, the new test requirements for travelers to the US were not implemented quickly enough to be effective against a report.
“It is logical that for every place that experiences a local increase in cases where we introduce new measures,” said dr. Richina Bicette, medical doctor, told CNN. “But if they try to make sure the virus is not imported into the United States, these measures will not affect any of this.”
(The-CNN-Wire & 2020 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.)
The video appears from a previous report