More than three months after the US vaccination, many of the figures show an increasingly encouraging picture, with 70% of Americans over the age of 65 receiving at least one dose of vaccine and COVID-19 deaths falling on average. less than 1,000 a day for the first time since November.
Dozens of states have also released vaccines open to all adults or plan to do so in a few weeks. The White House also said 27 million doses of both single and two-shot vaccines would be distributed next week, more than three times the number when President Joe Biden took office two months ago.
However, Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said on Wednesday he was not ready to declare victory.
“I’m often asked, do we turn the corner?” Fauci said at a White House briefing. “My answer is more like being in a corner. It remains to be seen whether we will turn that corner or not. ”
What makes Fauci take a break, he said, is that new cases remain at a stubbornly high level, at over 50,000 a day.
However, the outlook for the United States contrasts sharply with the deteriorating situation in places like Brazil, which reported more than 3,000 COVID-19 deaths in a single day for the first time on Tuesday and across Europe, where another wave of infections leads to new blockages.
The darkness in Europe is getting worse as the launch of the vaccine on the mainland has been slowed by production delays and questions about the safety and effectiveness of AstraZeneca photography.
Public health experts in the US take every opportunity to warn that relaxing social distancing and other preventative measures could easily lead to another wave.
Dr. Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Institute, sees red flags in states lifting masked mandates, air travel roaring back and crowds of spring break spending uncontrollably in Florida.
“We are approaching the exit ramp,” Topol said. “All we’re doing by reopening is endangering our shot to finally get the virus caught in the US pandemic for the first time.”
There are unmistakable signs of progress across the country.
More than 43 percent of Americans age 65 and older – the most vulnerable age group, accounting for an excessive share of the more than 540,000 coronavirus deaths – have been completely vaccinated, according to the CDC. The number of elderly adults attending COVID-19 emergency rooms has decreased significantly. In general, vaccinations have increased to 2.5 million to 3 million photos per day.
US daily deaths from COVID-19 fell to an average of 940, down from an all-time high of more than 3,400 in mid-January.
Minnesota health officials reported Monday that there were no new deaths from COVID-19 for the first time in nearly a year. And in New Orleans, Touro Infirmary did not treat a single case for the first time since March 2020.
Fauci also cited two recent studies showing negligible levels of coronavirus infections among fully vaccinated health care workers in Texas and California.
“I emphasize how we need to stay there just a little longer,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday. That’s because “early data is really encouraging.”
At the national level, new cases and the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 have fallen in the last two months, although Walensky remains concerned that such progress seems to have stopped in the last two weeks. The new cases average more than 53,000 a day, down from a quarter of a million in early January.
This is almost uncomfortable with the levels observed during the COVID-19 wave last summer.
Biden urged states to make all eligible adults vaccinated by May 1. At least half a dozen states, including Texas, Arizona and Georgia, open vaccinations to anyone over the age of 16. So at least 20 other states have pledged to do so in the coming weeks.
Microsoft, which has more than 50,000 employees at its global headquarters in Seattle, said it would begin bringing workers back on March 29 and reopen facilities that had been closed for nearly a year.
The 80,000 New York City employees who worked remotely during the pandemic will return to their offices on May 3.
However, experts see cause for concern as more Americans begin to travel and socialize again.
The number of daily commuters at US airports has steadily exceeded 1 million in the last week and a half, amid the spring break at many colleges.
Countries such as Michigan and New Jersey are also on the rise.
National numbers are an imperfect indicator. The favorable downward trend in some states may hide an increase in the number of cases in others, especially in smaller ones, said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health measurement science at the University of Washington in Seattle.
And the more contagious variant from the UK has now been identified in almost every state, he said.
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AP journalists Terry Tang and Suman Naishadham contributed from Phoenix. Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed from Washington.