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(CNN) – As the US prepares for the first round of vaccines to combat COVID-19, infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci called on the public to “be part of the solution” and get vaccinated once it becomes available. .
“Say, ‘I’m not going to be one of the people who is going to be a stepping stone for the virus to reach someone else. I’m going to be a dead end for the virus,'” Fauci told Facebook CEO Mark. Zuckerberg on Monday.
The virus has spread rapidly, with November setting 20-fold records for the number of coronavirus hospitalizations, according to the Covid Tracking Project, most recently Monday at 96,039. Meanwhile, data from Johns Hopkins University reports that the US has reached more than 13.5 million total cases and 268,045 deaths. And the impacts of Thanksgiving trips still won’t be felt for weeks, health experts say.
Holiday gatherings, such as Thanksgiving and the upcoming Christmas and Hanukkah, are the “perfect settings” for people with no symptoms to pass infections to their loved ones “innocently and inadvertently.”
With that in mind, officials are preparing for the first wave of vaccine distributions.
Pfizer and Moderna vaccine candidates are awaiting emergency use authorizations (US). States have until Friday to request the number of doses of Pfizer’s vaccine, the executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers, Claire Hannan, told CNN on Monday.
Once the US Food and Drug Administration awards the US and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention make recommendations on which groups will receive the vaccines first, they will be ready to ship, Dr. Moncef Slaoui, chief science advisor for Operation Warp Speed, said Monday. And that same day or the next, the first vaccines can be given, he said.
America continues to fight a tidal wave
But even after the vaccines begin shipping in December, there won’t be enough vaccines for the general public until April or May 2021, Fauci said. Until then, the US is still dealing with an unprecedented surge.
In Minnesota, more than a third of counties are 10 times above what would be considered a high-risk threshold for infection rate growth, as the state is in “the worst place we’ve ever been since March, “Minnesota Department of Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said Monday.
“When there is this huge increase in the number of Minnesotans needing hospitalization for Covid, that can have some really serious implications for the availability of hospital care for other critical problems,” Malcolm said. “And the number of people admitted by Covid is far outshining what we saw in May.”
To manage the risk of reopening, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced a new “red to green” system that ranks counties according to their risk of spread. The data will be updated every two weeks, and if a county does not meet the metrics, it will begin operating at the most restrictive tier within 48 hours.
Nationally, Monday marked the 28th consecutive day that the U.S. reported more than 100,000 new cases, a number that far exceeds the records set in the spring and summer waves, which remained below the 60,000.
Hospitals under stress
As cases rise during the Christmas season, so do hospitalizations, putting health care systems under pressure.
California Governor Gavin Newsom told reporters on Monday that the capacity of intensive care unit beds in the state could reach 112% on Christmas Eve, if the trend of rising coronavirus cases continues.
In Rhode Island, officials prepared to use field hospitals after telling residents that their systems were already on top.
In New York, where some hospitals saw room capacity taxed in March, Governor Andrew Cuomo said this time around medical systems must take steps to move patients to other facilities that have space.
“No patient wants to be in an overwhelmed hospital, because you receive less care, the staff is short, it is in the best interest of the patient, to distribute the patient load through the system,” Cuomo said Monday. “We are not going to relive the nightmare of overwhelmed hospitals.”
Health care systems could be even more strained this time because researchers are now seeing people affected by the virus even after they no longer show symptoms, Fauci said.
Some, called “long-haul carriers,” experience persistent symptoms for months. Others see residual and perhaps undefined organ system dysfunction, he said.
“The idea that you get infected, or you don’t have symptoms or you die, and if you don’t die, that’s okay, I think it’s really a misperception,” he added.
Challenges for small communities to get vaccinated
Health systems already under pressure will face another challenge in distributing vaccines to rural communities, experts say.
Pfizer has planned for its vaccine to be in ultra cold storage and shipped in insulated containers that can hold at least 975 and up to 5,000 doses.
“That’s not feasible from a small-town rural perspective,” Alan Morgan, executive director of the National Rural Health Association, told CNN on Monday. “It just isn’t.”
Those doses will have to be divided among multiple providers in those communities, and they will have to do so without risking the temperature at which they are stored, Hannan said.
Immunization managers in those areas will have to come up with solutions such as providers picking up doses at a central location or shipping them in containers with dry ice, Morgan and Hannan said.
If they don’t, they run the risk of being marginalized, Morgan said.
“That kind of approach just prepares these rural communities in the United States for really unacceptable death rates and the potential for the collapse of the health care system,” he said.
Pfizer did not have an immediate response to questions about concerns about the size of shipments.
CNN’s Lauren Mascarenhas, Raja Razek, Steve Almasy, Holly Yan, Sara Murray, John Bonifield, Shelby Lin Erdman, and Jennifer Selva contributed to this report.
This story was first published on CNN.com “Fauci Asks Americans to Prepare to Get Vaccinated According to State Distribution Plans”
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