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CHICAGO – Officials from at least 20 states have pledged in recent days to open appointments for the coronavirus vaccine to all adults in March or April, as part of rapid expansion as states move forward. rush to meet President Biden’s goal of universal eligibility by May 1.
In Ohio, all adults will be allowed to get the vaccine starting March 29. In Connecticut, April 5. In Alaska and Mississippi, all adults are already able to make appointments.
And Thursday and Friday officials from Illinois, Kentucky, Rhode Island, Maryland, Missouri, Maine and Vermont said all adults would be allowed in April to register for a shooting, while governors of Utah and North Dakota set universal eligibility to start this month.
But even as the pace of vaccinations has accelerated to around 2.5 million vaccines per day nationwide, the country is at a precarious stage in the pandemic. Cases, deaths and hospitalizations have all fallen sharply from January’s peaks, but infection levels have peaked this month, at around 55,000 new cases per day. As governors ease restrictions on businesses such as bars, indoor gyms and casinos, highly contagious variants are spreading and some states, especially on the East Coast, have struggled for weeks to make progress in the reduction. cases.
“I think it’s a race against time,” said Dr Stephen J. Thomas, head of infectious diseases at SUNY Upstate Medical University. “Every person we can get vaccinated or every person we can wear a mask on is one less opportunity than a variant a.”
As parts of the country continue to see progress, many Americans are booking spring break trips, dining at recently reopened restaurants, and rescheduling summer weddings that were abruptly called off in 2020. Federal health officials on Friday relaxed a six-foot distance rule for elementary school. students, saying they should only stay three feet apart in classrooms as long as everyone is wearing a mask. The move was to encourage more schools to open face-to-face classes.
All the while, the path ahead – and the public’s advice on how people should behave right now – seems uncertain, if not contradictory.
Although deaths have declined dramatically in New York City, progress in reducing cases has stalled. The state has more recent cases per capita than anywhere except New Jersey, and the New York metro area has the second highest rate of new infections in the country, behind only Idaho Falls, Idaho.
“People will be reckless, I don’t know how to put it another way,” said Carol Greenberg, a pet sitter in Jersey City, NJ, who said she was concerned that people would start to act in a way that does not accurately reflect the number of new cases of the virus in that state, where more than 26,000 new infections were reported in the seven-day period ending Thursday.
Ms Greenberg, 61, was fully vaccinated, but her adult children were not, and she said she wondered if all the reopening announcements at the end were wise. In recent days, Gov. Phil Murphy has urged a back to in-person teaching in New Jersey schools and announced an easing of restrictions on restaurants, bars, lounges and other businesses.
No vaccine has yet been authorized in people under the age of 16, although trials are underway to see if they are safe and effective in children.
Epidemiologists have said they view the current moment of the pandemic as a sprint between vaccinations and newly confirmed cases of the virus, especially infections that spread due to variants that may be more contagious. Dr Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease specialist, warned on Friday “that it is really very risky to declare victory before you have the level of infection in the community at a much, a lot level. lower than 53,000 cases per day. “
“So it’s unfortunate, but not surprising, to me that you’re seeing an increase in the number of cases per day in areas – cities, states or regions – even though vaccines are being distributed at a pretty good rate of 2-3 million per day. day. Said Dr Fauci.
In Chicago, where students in the nation’s third-largest public school system have returned to classrooms and parks, bars and cinemas are reopened, city officials have announced that restaurant workers, laborers building and people with pre-existing health conditions would be newly eligible for vaccination by the end of March. Cook County, which includes Chicago, averaged between 600 and 700 cases per day for almost a month, up from about 4,500 cases per day at its November peak.
“We’ve weathered a lot of storms this past year,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said after visiting a vaccination site this week. “We must remain diligent. We must continue to work hard. But we are going exactly in the right direction. “
Still, the city’s usual overwhelming enthusiasm for observing a spring ritual – going out on St. Patrick’s Day – was muted at best. Few pedestrians wandered the downtown streets on Wednesday, usually filled with holiday revelers. The Chicago River had been dyed its traditional shade of bright green, but the popular Riverwalk along it was nearly empty.
Jacob Roberts, 29, was downtown on Wednesday, taking a vacation from his home in Washington state. The trip to Chicago was a must visit that he had always wanted to make.
“I was locked up in Washington and I was getting sick from everyone looking kinda down in the dumps,” he said. “But it’s honestly the same everywhere you look right now.”
While tourism has yet to make a strong comeback in places like New York and Chicago, the country’s outlook for tackling the virus looks much better than at the start of winter.
No state is reporting case numbers near record highs, and the kind of explosive growth in cases seen in hard-hit areas through 2020 has almost completely subsided. Kansas averages 215 new cases of coronavirus per day, up from more than 2,000 in early January. In California, about 2,900 cases are reported almost daily, up from about 40,000 in mid-January. And North Dakota, which has the nation’s best-known cases per capita, now regularly adds less than 100 cases per day, in a state of 762,000 people.
A projection from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation suggests that coronavirus cases will continue to slowly decline in the United States in the coming months.
But with most Americans still unvaccinated and the variants continuing to spread, there are warning signs in the data. Vermont, which escaped the worst of the pandemic in 2020, has struggled all year to stem an outbreak. Michigan, which appeared to have the virus under control in January, has seen the number of cases rise by more than 80% in the past two weeks, although it remains well below its December peak. In South Florida, infection levels have remained consistently high, with around 1,000 cases reported each day in just one county, Miami-Dade.
Even in states where the virus appeared far from under control, authorities have moved to lift restrictions on businesses and companies have pushed for reopening. New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Wednesday that indoor fitness classes could resume on March 22. In Southern California, where cases peaked in early winter, Disneyland officials said after more than a year of closure, the theme park would open on April 30 with rules in place limiting the capacity.
Across the country, some people have said they are reluctant to go back to old routines, even though their elected officials have indicated that it is permissible to do so.
“I used to be regular in a gym about twice a week, and I haven’t been at all since last February,” said Paul Eustice, 64, who lives in downtown Montreal. Chicago. “I won’t go there where people breathe heavily.”
Air travel to the United States reached its highest level since the pandemic last week, and airline executives said bookings in the coming months indicate a willingness by Americans to resume travel in the United States. large number.
Some of them are among the newly vaccinated.
Since the vaccinations began in December, the federal government has issued more than 154 million doses of the vaccine, and about 77% have been administered, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As of Friday, 67 percent of the country’s elderly population had received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to CDC data, with 40 percent fully vaccinated.
A majority of states have said they will expand vaccine eligibility to their general population no later than May 1, a deadline Mr Biden set last week, and officials have spoken more openly about what could be life at the end of the pandemic.
“As more and more Montanais receive the vaccine,” Gov. Greg Gianforte said as he announced that all adults in Montana would be eligible on April 1, “we will begin to approach the time when we are no longer. in a state of emergency and we can remove our masks and throw them in the trash.
Contributory reports were Brandon Dupre from Chicago, Will wright from Jersey City, NJ, Danielle Ivory, Alex Lemonides and Isabella Grullón Paz from New York, Alyssa burr from Muskegon, Michigan, and Zach Montague and Sheryl Gay Stolberg from Washington.
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