“We certainly are not winning the battle against the coronavirus,” Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Friday.
“The jurisdictions with the highest probability of the highest number of deaths include: Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, the Virgin Islands and West Virginia,” the CDC said on its website. of forecasts. .
In Florida, Broward County is reducing parties and social gatherings by implementing an evening curfew, Mayor Dale Holness told reporters. He cited cases of escalation, hospitalizations, and decreased ICU availability as motivation for the decision.
And while the projection for the future looks bleak, Collins said the nation has taken over the virus before and can do it again, if the public finds the motivation again.
“We shouldn’t feel hopeless here and we know what works,” Collins said. “We know that if we could, as Americans, agree to take these recommendations seriously, that we would keep our masks on when we were outside, we would stay more than six feet away from each other and avoid meetings indoors where there is a great possibility of spread, we we wash our hands and all that, then we could implement what we know has worked, “he said.
More support and more controversy about masks
Science shows that face masks protect the wearer and those around him from the coronavirus, and everyone should wear one when close to others in public, the CDC said Tuesday.
But in Georgia, which is among the 18 states in the coronavirus “red zone” that reopening measures should reverse, according to an unpublished document prepared for the White House, the governor has clashed with mayors over such restrictions.
“This is exactly the opposite of what we need to be doing,” Utah County Commissioner Tanner Ainge said in the meeting room in Provo. “We are supposed to physically distance ourselves, wear masks. This meeting violates current health recommendations.”
85 babies infected in Texas
As the number of cases continues to rise, a Texas health official asked for help on Friday to stop the spread of the disease, citing dozens of babies who have become infected.
“I’ve been reviewing statistics. We currently have 85 babies, under the age of one in Nueces County, who have tested positive for Covid-19,” said Annette Rodríguez, director of public health for Nueces County, Annette Rodríguez. District meeting. “These babies are not yet on their first birthday.”
“Please help us stop the spread of this disease,” he added.
Texas has been among the states at the forefront of the recent resurgence of the case.
After setting a record 129 deaths in a single day the day before, Texas broke the record Friday with 174 deaths.
The state also reported 10,256 new Covid-19 cases on Friday, bringing the total number of cases in the state to 307,572.
Treatment could be available in months.
Although cases are emerging, Collins said he is “optimistic,” an “effective treatment” for Covid-19 will be available in two to three months.
“There is a lot of progress in therapeutics,” Collins told Blitzer. “We have two proven drugs: remdesivir and dexamethasone, both tested in rigorous randomized controlled trials, which is the only way you really know if something works.”
Remdesivir is an antiviral medication that has been shown to reduce the amount of time people are sick with Covid-19. Dexamethasone is a steroid that can reduce the death rate among seriously ill patients.
“I am optimistic, without being able to fully trust, that we will have something perhaps in two or three months, in terms of effective treatment.”
Collins is also optimistic about developing a successful vaccine by the end of the year.
“The first trial of the vaccine, as you probably heard, based on very successful preliminary data, will begin around July 27 throughout the south of the country where the virus is spreading.”
Collins says that if one of the vaccine trials is successful, there will be “tens of millions of doses ready by the end of 2020, the end of the calendar year.”
CNN’s Steve Almasy, Amanda Watts, Shelby Lin Erdman, Jay Croft, Raja Razek, and Ben Tinker contributed to this report.
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