Health experts and officials in the US are calling for more supplies of Covid-19 vaccines as the deaths surpass 400,000.
The alarming number of Covid-19 deaths in the US has prompted health experts and officials to focus on mitigating the possible impact of the new variant and calling for increased supplies of vaccines across the country.
Surge in Covid-19 infections
The US has added a whopping 3.9 million new Covid-19 cases and over 51,000 coronavirus-related deaths just past the midway of January.
According to an expert, the number of new Covid-19 cases in the US represent a "screaming level" of transmission in the country. The number of deaths goes beyond the combined number of Americans who died in World War I, Vietnam War and the Korean War and is almost as many as those who died in World War II.
Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said: “The numbers are quite dire. This is a screaming level of transmission across the United States and people are scared, people are upset.”
"There is an enormous amount of work that’s going to have to happen starting January 20," Dr. Hotez added.
The COVID Tracking Project reported that over 123,800 Americans are currently hospitalized with Covid-19. Although this may be lower than its January 6 peak of 132,476, hospitals and health care workers are still under extreme pressure to accommodate patients.
In the city of Laredo in Texas, residents are being urged to stay home because hospitals have run out of ICU beds. City spokeswoman Noraida Negron mentioned that they had to send multiple patients to hospitals in other areas to accommodate them.
Calls for more vaccines
Michael Osterholm, a coronavirus adviser to President-elect Joe Biden and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said: "I worry desperately in the next six to 12 weeks we're going to see a situation with this pandemic unlike anything we've seen yet to date."
Osterholm admitted that while Biden's administration will do everything to increase vaccine distribution, he said, "we can't make the vaccine go much faster than it is right now." He mentioned the need to plan for critical action to keep the new variant under control.
He argued: "The difference is going to be, 'Are we going to react now or later?' Do we put the brakes on after the car's wrapped around the tree, or we try to put the brakes on before we leave the intersection?"
Meanwhile, infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci explained: "In the beginning, when we wanted to make sure that everyone who got one dose would get a second dose. Because of the uncertainty in the smoothness of the rollout of the doses that would be available, half of the doses would be held back so that people would be guaranteed to get their second dose."
Dr. Fauci added that now that there is increased confidence in the consistent distribution, those doses that were previously held back have been made available to others.
In San Francisco, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the Department of Public Health's supply will be exhausted by Thursday if no additional allotment will be made. He said: "If we don't get more vaccine quickly, we will have to cancel appointments."
