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(CNN) – Health officials are warning Americans not to relax in the fight against COVID-19, despite a record daily number of vaccine doses being administered to the population.
In a briefing on Friday, White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said that 71% of people 65 and older had received at least one dose of vaccination and that by about mid-April half of the states will have open eligibility for everyone. Adults.
“We will need to continue building on this progress to reach our new goal of 200 million shots in the first 100 days,” Zients said, referring to the first 100 days of the Biden administration. “Thanks to the resources of the American Rescue Plan, we have the resources to scale up the activity, fully implement the strategy and leave the pandemic behind.”
But Zients realized that the fight was not over.
“It is clear that there are reasons for optimism. But there are no reasons for relaxation. This is not the time to lower our guard,” he said. “We need to follow the public health guidelines: wear a mask, distance yourself socially, and get vaccinated when it’s your turn.”
According to the Johns Hopkins University count, there have been at least 30,159,966 cases of coronavirus in the US and at least 548,087 deaths.
On Friday, it reported 80,684 new cases and 1,265 new deaths.
‘Deeply concerned about trajectory’
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned that Covid cases in the United States have increased.
“The most recent seven-day average is about 57,000 cases per day, which is a 7% increase from the previous seven days,” he said. Hospitalizations had also increased slightly and the seven-day average of deaths from COVID-19 “continues to hover around 1,000 deaths per day.”
“I remain deeply concerned about this trajectory. We have seen cases and hospital admissions go from historic declines, to stagnation, to increases. And we know from previous waves that if we don’t get things under control now, there is a real potential for the epidemic curve to rise from new, “Walensky said.
“Please take this moment very seriously. We are vaccinating 2.5 million people a day and they are protected from Covid,” he said. “We can turn this around, but it will take all of us to work together. Please continue to wear your mask that fits well and take public health action now that we know you can reverse these troubling trends.”
Walensky said he knew people were tired, but it would be a little longer before mitigation measures could be relaxed.
“Our advice is clear, we are vaccinating very, very quickly and we are just asking people to hold out a little bit longer in terms of the masks and mitigation strategies so that we can vaccinate the majority of people,” he said. “We just want to make sure that we don’t end up in an increase that is really avoidable.”
Measures against the coronavirus have been easing with some states easing capacity restrictions and more school districts opening up for in-person learning. Travel has also increased with TSA data showing more than 1 million daily passengers at US airports for two consecutive weeks.
‘People are starting to back down’
The CDC reported Friday that 136,684,688 doses of vaccines have been administered, about 77% of the 177,501,775 doses administered.
That’s roughly 3.38 million more than Thursday and set a new daily record. The seven-day average also reached a record high of more than 2.6 million doses per day.
Approximately 27% of the population, almost 90 million people, have received at least one dose of vaccine and 14.7% of the population, almost 49 million people, is fully vaccinated.
Zients told the White House briefing that the administration expects Johnson & Johnson to meet its goal of delivering 20 million coronavirus vaccines by the end of March.
While the company has consistently said it was on track to hit the target, Biden management officials have expressed doubts.
“We have done a lot to help J&J. We are monitoring it very closely and anticipate a significant increase by the end of this month, which will allow them to reach at least 20 million doses,” Zients said.
When asked if the vaccine launch was fast enough, CNN’s chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta told Don Lemon on “CNN Tonight” that the COVID-19 vaccination campaign was “the vaccination project. faster than we’ve ever seen. “
“It’s really extraordinary for what it is,” he said. “But at the same time, cases can increase in certain places, not because they haven’t been vaccinated fast enough, but because people are starting to back off.”
Gupta said many Americans were “looking at this thing in the rearview mirror right now.”
“It has been the same problem throughout this pandemic. We know what to do, we hope that science will rescue us. Science begins to rescue us, we begin to go even further back. That is the real race,” he said.
“Vaccines are really important and it’s great that they are accelerating, but we have to hold out a little longer.”
Diffusion of variants
At the White House briefing on Friday, Walensky said officials were stepping up their surveillance of variants of the coronavirus with more than 8,000 cases of B.1.1.7, the variant first detected in the UK, which is now it has been reported in 51 jurisdictions.
“Our percentage of variants is a little behind our data because it takes a while to sequence and sequence the variants and do that population-based analysis. But yeah, we’re concerned about the increase,” he said. saying.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at the briefing that the variant appeared to be gaining traction.
“The problem is that the dynamics of the increase is telling us that it will continue to be a larger proportion. Because if you look from week to week, B 1.1.7 becomes a percentage and as the percentage increases, that is a reflection that it has the ability to become dominant, “he said.
This story was first published on CNN.com, “COVID-19 Vaccine Record Doesn’t Mean Time to Relax, Authorities Say.”
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