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November saw frightening spikes in the daily number of coronavirus cases – reaching 100,000 for the first time, along with spikes in hospitalizations and deaths. On the second day of December, more than 200,000 new cases were reported in the past 24 hours.
As the impacts of Thanksgiving trips and gatherings begin to unfold and hospitals fill to capacity, experts say it will likely only get worse.
“Every day thousands more people get this virus, and we know that means in a few days, in a week, hundreds of people will be going to hospital and hundreds of people will die,” Dr Shirlee Xie, associate director of hospital medicine for Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis, told CNN, her voice breaking with emotion.
“I think sometimes when you hear statistics like these, you become oblivious to the significance of these numbers,” she said. “But for us, the people who take care of these patients, every issue is someone we have to look at and say, ‘I’m sorry, there’s nothing more I can do for you.'”
Millions of Californians must stay at home
Over the past week, hospitalizations in Los Angeles County have tripled and the number of available hospital beds in the area could drop to zero in two to four weeks if cases continue to climb, the mayor said on Friday. from Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti.
In response to the growing threat, the Southern California area will be under a new stay-at-home order starting at 11:59 p.m. Sunday. The order will apply to Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
The San Joaquin Valley will also be under stay-at-home orders at that time, local officials said on Saturday, after the area’s intensive care unit capacity fell below 15%. More than 4 million people live in the region.
Although the Bay Area did not hit the below 15% capacity threshold, officials warn they are seeing evidence of transmission over Thanksgiving weekend that could fuel a surge.
“I don’t think we can wait for the new state restrictions to take effect later this month,” Chris Farnitano, director of health at Contra Costa said on Friday. “We need to act quickly to save as many lives as possible. It’s an emergency.”
“It is really time for us to quit the activity and see if we can turn the tide before hospitals are overwhelmed,” Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the University of California’s Department of Medicine, said at San Francisco, stressing that California has had an “above average performance” throughout the pandemic.
“I see other parts of the country that are still open, even though the case rates and hospitalization rates are much worse than here,” he said. “So I think we are doing the right thing.”
Adults need to be vaccinated for students to return to school
It will likely be months before all adults in the United States can be vaccinated against the virus, and the wait will be even longer for children – but they can still be protected by the distribution of vaccines, Wachter said.
“I think it’s reasonable to expect the kids to go back to school in the fall, not so much because they’ve all been vaccinated – although I hope they will – but everyone around them has been vaccinated, and the rate of the virus in their communities has dropped to a point that is perfectly safe for them to be in school, ”Wachter said.
Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser for the public-private vaccination program known as Operation Warp Speed, said he hoped to see a “fairly significant” drop in coronavirus disease and deaths among the elderly population. ‘by the end of January.
Noting that 40% to 50% of deaths in the United States are due to elderly Americans residing in nursing homes or long-term care facilities, Slaoui told CNN: “We should be able to get this vaccinated. entire population and the health workers attending to them in late December or mid January. “
By mid-March, he added, the United States is expected to have vaccinated its highly sensitive population, which is around 100 million people, while the rest of the country “will not all have the vaccine in. our arms before May or June “.
The vaccine, which will come in two doses – a challenge to produce and distribute in the quantities needed – will likely reach healthy, non-elderly Americans with no known underlying health issues from late March through early April, the vaccine said. Dr Anthony Fauci. , director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases.
Children will likely be vaccinated relatively late in the game, as Covid-19 vaccines are largely untested on children. The National Vaccine Advisory Committee voted on Friday not to recommend emergency use of a Covid-19 vaccine in children, noting that children typically suffer from a milder version of the disease.
Wachter says if adults get vaccinated, children could reap the benefits.
“If we can get everyone immunized – we can immunize all adults and kill the virus because we are getting closer to herd immunity – children may be less important.”
Dakin Andone, Christina Maxouris, Eliott C. McLaughlin, Tina Burnside, Andrea Diaz, Maggie Fox, Anastasia Graham-Yooll, Jacqueline Howard, Jon Passantino, Paul Vercammen, Naomi Thomas, Ana Cabrera, Fredricka Whitfield and Jake Tapper contributed to this report . .
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