American Coronavirus: January was deadliest month for Covid-19 with nearly 80,000 lives lost so far in the United States

With those extra doses, Biden said there would be enough to fully immunize 300 million Americans – almost the entire American population – by late summer or early fall.

Vaccine supply does not meet demand

Struggling from the stress of nearly a year of responding to the pandemic, states are eager to administer vaccines quickly and attempt to return to normal life.

“We have to defeat him because the Mississippians are done. We have finished burying loved ones who have been lost to this virus. We are done with stressed hospitals. for the community again, ”said Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, who announced that the state has celebrated the delivery of approximately 200,000 vaccines.

The director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention said he was “very encouraged” by the new presidential administration’s approach to vaccinations, but that the state is still grappling with the shortage of vaccines.

“We know that at present the number of people who want to be vaccinated far exceeds the supply of vaccines we have,” said Dr Nirav Shah.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said his conversations with the Biden administration had given him hope for the future of vaccine distribution, but that “we can’t count on an additional supply just yet” .

Even if the administration respects the promised 16% increase in allowances, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace that it would not be enough.

“We are functionally absent, we are starting to get a new allocation over the next few days,” Cuomo said.

Variants fuel demand and fears

The spread of variants of the coronavirus adds to public fears.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear announced on Tuesday that two cases of the variant first identified in the UK have been confirmed in the state.

The threat of variants has made the reopening of the state of greater concern in California, a recent epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, said Los Angeles County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer.

“Now would not be the time to think just because we reopen things looking rosy,” she said, stressing that asymptomatic spread is a problem. “We have to spend the next few weeks with caution. At many other times that we have reopened our areas we have actually seen an increase in our cases, we can’t really afford that.

For his part, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla tried to allay fears around the variants by ensuring the ground was already underway to combat them.

“We don’t have to be afraid, but I think we need to be prepared,” Bourla said at Bloomberg The Year Ahead on Tuesday. “Once we find something that is not as effective, we will very, very quickly produce a booster dose which will be a little variation of the current dose.”

School reopening security

Meanwhile, there was a glimmer of good news Tuesday for parents hoping to get their kids back to school.

A CDC report said that with the right mitigation strategies, it is possible to open K-12 schools for in-person learning with minimal transmission of Covid-19.

These mitigation strategies include wearing masks, social distancing, and limiting time in shared outdoor spaces, according to the CDC’s Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report study.

In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine said he wanted anyone working in a school to receive at least their first dose of vaccine in February in hopes of sending all students back to school by the 1st. March.

Currently, people over the age of 75 and those with certain medical conditions can receive vaccines. On February 1, those 70 and over and employees of K-12 schools will be eligible for the vaccine, he said at a press conference on Tuesday.

Reopening schools has been a priority for many officials, as students across the country have spent months learning from a distance. But local leaders approached the return in different ways.

Of the 20 largest school districts in the country, nine are currently all online, eight offer a full choice in person or online, two have a hybrid plan and one in Hawaii varies the plans based on the infection rates of the different islands. .