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Despite encouraging national trends in hospitalizations and coronavirus-related cases, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) fears that ‘pandemic fatigue’ in the spring could significantly hamper the country’s trajectory towards immunity collective vaccination induced.
Dr Rochelle Walensky’s comments also come as other states continue to detect highly transmissible coronavirus variants first identified in the UK (B.1.1.7) and South Africa (B.1.351). A distinct variant first found in Brazil (P.1) has also been identified in two states. CDC models projected that the B.1.1.7 strain could become dominant in the United States by March.
“I’m afraid it’s spring and we’ll all have had enough,” Walensky told Dr. Howard Bauchner, editor-in-chief of JAMA in an interview Wednesday. “Around this time, I’m worried that life will feel a little better and that the motivation of those who are reluctant to get vaccinated will be diminished.
COVID-19 VACCINE LINES MAY BE WAYS AROUND A VARIING PROBLEM, EXPERT SAYS
As states currently grapple with vaccine supply issues, an inflection point will come where supply exceeds demand, Walensky said, noting that continued scaling up will remain critical at this point to progress towards collective immunity.
“While I really hope what could happen in March and April, I really know it could go wrong so quickly and we saw it in November, we saw it in December, we saw what could happen. . “
Reports from health officials worrying about so-called ‘pandemic fatigue’ arose last summer and into the fall, as some grew tired of lockdowns and lax precautions to venture out and socialize with others.
Nonetheless, experts urge the public to remain diligent in taking precautions to protect against the contraction of the new virus and the spread of the transmission chain.
The seven-day average for COVID-19 hospital patients continues to decline after a record peak in mid-January, dropping from around 130,000 to some 67,000 patients more recently, according to data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project. A seven-day average for new cases is also down, from around 260,000 daily infections at the end of December to fewer than 100,000 new cases in recent days, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The drop below 100,000 new daily cases in recent days marked a milestone for the first time in months.
Public health experts, including Walensky, attributed the decrease in cases and hospitalizations to the gradual retreat of the holiday season with its travels and gatherings indoors.
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The United States currently administers an average of 1.7 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine per day, the White House said on Wednesday, compared to an average of 900,000 injections per day a month ago. The latest seven-day daily average data reflects an increase of 200,000 doses from the previous week. More than 15 million people, or about 5% of the population, have received two doses as of February 17, the full cycle of immunization.
Alexandria Hein of Fox News contributed to this report.
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