American coronavirus: this is how close the United States is to a possible outbreak of Covid-19, warns an expert

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

“What we’ve seen in Europe, when we hit the 50% mark, you see an increase in cases,” he said.

People gather on a Miami beach on Saturday.

This is what we know about the B.1.1.7 variant

Although there are multiple variants of the coronavirus circulating in the United States, experts were particularly concerned about the dangerous potential of the highly contagious variant B.1.1.7.

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In mid-January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that cases of the variant are expected to “grow rapidly in early 2021,” adding that it would likely become the predominant variant in the United States by that time. this month.

So far, the agency has reported more than 2,600 known cases of the variant in 46 states, Puerto Rico and Washington DC. Almost a quarter of these cases are in Florida. But the CDC said that probably did not represent the total number of such cases in the United States – but rather those that were found by analyzing positive samples, using genomic sequencing.

Infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist Dr Céline Gounder told CNN on Sunday that she was attending an emergency panel meeting held on Christmas Eve to discuss the variant.

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“We have been following him very closely since then,” she said. “Where it hit the UK and now elsewhere in Europe, it has been really catastrophic. It has driven up hospitalization and death rates and it’s very difficult to control.”

New research shows that in the United States, the variant is 59% to 74% more transmissible than the original new coronavirus. Gounder says cases in the United States “are increasing exponentially.”
This is why it is crucial for the country to continue to push to reduce Covid-19 infections. Vaccination figures are still not high enough – and will not be in several weeks – to help suppress the predicted outbreak, experts have warned.

“It’s kind of like we’re running this really long marathon, and we’re 100 yards from the finish line and we sit down and give up,” Gounder said on Sunday. “We’re almost there, we just need to give ourselves a little more time so that a larger proportion of the population is covered with vaccines.”

“ It’s not just a matter of personal choice ”

But just in the first week of March, several governors announced they were easing restrictions put in place to help curb the spread of the virus.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced he was lifting the statewide mask mandate and would allow businesses to reopen at 100 percent capacity, starting Wednesday. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves made a similar ad, saying it was removing county mask mandates and corporate capacity limits.
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On Sunday, Reeves defended his decision, saying attempting to rid the state entirely of Covid-19 cases would be an unrealistic goal and that the Covid-19 numbers officials were concerned about had all declined.

“We’re looking a lot more data-wise at hospitalizations, the number of Mississippians in intensive care, the number of Mississippians on ventilators … all of those numbers have plummeted in our state over the past two months,” he said. he told CNN.

Reeves said the state has tried to protect lives “but also to protect livelihoods.”

“We need to revive our economy so that individuals can return to work, and I think this is of critical importance,” he said.

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And even without a mask warrant, the governor said he recommends and “strongly” encourages residents to wear masks.

Dr Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, told ABC the responsible thing for states is to keep mask mandates in place.

“It’s not just a question of personal choice, no, it’s like I drink and get behind the wheel of a car, it’s not just a personal choice that I would put my life in danger, I would put others people’s lives are in danger, ”Jha said.

“When you wear a mask, you are not only protecting yourself, you are protecting the people around you,” he added.

Less than 10% of Americans fully immunized

Health officials say the most appropriate time for states to start easing restrictions would be when daily Covid-19 cases are down – “considerably less” than 10,000, according to Dr Anthony Fauci – and that numbers of vaccinations are much higher.
So far, more than 58.8 million Americans have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to immunization data from the CDC.
About 50 people were vaccinated at a Florida site when they were not eligible

More than 30.6 million people have received two doses, according to the data. This represents about 9.2% of the American population.

This means more people in the United States have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 than the 29 million confirmed coronavirus infections the country has experienced so far during the pandemic, according to the latest CDC data.

But officials hope vaccinations will continue to rise in the coming months thanks to an increase in supply.

Andy Slavitt, senior advisor to the White House Covid-19 response team, said on MSNBC on Sunday that there would be more than enough vaccines produced for every adult by the end of May. The president also said last week that the United States will have enough vaccines for every American adult by the end of May, which would accelerate the administration’s previous target by two months.

“We’ll have enough vaccines, I think we’ve said that for 300 million Americans,” Slavitt said Sunday. “There are 250 million adults in the country right now, and right now, as we know, most teenagers are not eligible, and young children are not eligible, so c is more than enough for every adult.

White House coronavirus task force coordinator did not say when Americans should expect to be vaccinated

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

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

“Right now, testing is being done to determine both safety and comparable immunogenicity in high school students,” Fauci told CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday. “We anticipate that high school students will most likely be able to be vaccinated by the fall term, maybe not on the very first day, but certainly in early fall for this fall school term.

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



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