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The United States reached its last heartbreaking pandemic milestone on Friday, eclipsing 700,000 COVID-19 deaths just as the Delta variant surge begins to slow down and relieve overwhelmed hospitals.
It took the United States 3.5 months to go from 600,000 to 700,000 deaths, due to the rampant spread of the variant among unvaccinated Americans. The death toll is greater than the population of Boston.
This step is particularly frustrating for public health leaders and frontline health professionals, as vaccines have been available to all eligible Americans for nearly six months and injections protect overwhelmingly against hospitalizations and death. An estimated 70 million eligible Americans remain unvaccinated, providing ignition for the variant.
“You are losing patients to COVID and it shouldn’t happen,” said Debi Delapaz, nurse manager at UF Health Jacksonville, who recalled how the hospital was losing eight patients a day to COVID at one point. 19 during the summer wave. “This is something that shouldn’t happen.”
Despite the increase in the death toll, there are signs of improvement.
Nationally, the number of people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 has fallen to around 75,000, from more than 93,000 in early September. New cases are down to about 112,000 a day on average, down about a third over the past two and a half weeks.
Deaths also appear to be declining, averaging around 1,900 per day compared to over 2,000 about a week ago.
The easing of the summer wave has been attributed to more masks being worn and more people getting vaccinated. The decrease in the number of cases could also be due to the fact that the virus burned susceptible people and ran out of fuel in some places.
In another development, Merck said on Friday his experimental pill for people with COVID-19 halved hospitalizations and deaths. If cleared by regulators, it will be the first pill to treat COVID-19 – and an important and easy-to-use new weapon in the pandemic arsenal.
All treatments now authorized in the United States for the coronavirus require an IV or an injection.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease specialist, warned on Friday that some might see the encouraging trends as a reason not to get the vaccine.
“It is good news that we are starting to see the curves” go down, “he said. “This is no excuse to move away from the problem of needing to be vaccinated.”
The unknowns include how the flu season can strain already exhausted hospital staff and whether those who have refused to be vaccinated will change their minds.
“If you are not vaccinated or if you are not protected against natural infections, this virus will find you,” warned Mike Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
Like many other health professionals, Natalie Dean, professor of biostatistics at Emory University, takes a cautious view of winter.
It’s unclear whether the coronavirus will adopt the seasonal flu pattern, with peaks predictable in winter as people congregate indoors for the holidays. Simply because of the size and diversity of the country, there will be places that will experience epidemics and flare-ups, she said.
In addition, the uncertainties of human behavior complicate the picture. People respond to the risk by taking precautions, which slows down viral transmission. Then, feeling more secure, people mingled more freely, triggering a new wave of contagion.
“Models of infectious diseases are different from weather models,” Dean said. “A hurricane doesn’t change course because of what the model said.”
An influential model, from the University of Washington, predicts that new cases will rise again this fall, but vaccine protection and infection-induced immunity will prevent the virus from killing as many people as it did last winter.
Still, the model predicts that about 90,000 more Americans will die by January 1 for a total death toll of 788,000 by that date. The model calculates that about half of these deaths could be avoided if almost everyone wore masks in public.
“Wearing a mask is already going in the wrong direction,” said Ali Mokdad, professor of health metrics at the university. “We have to make sure that we are prepared for the winter because our hospitals are exhausted.”
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