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WASHINGTON – American leaders urgently called on Americans to wear masks and threatened even more drastic stay-at-home orders after coronavirus deaths set a single day record, with two people dying every minute.
More than 213,830 new cases and 2,861 deaths were reported on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally of official data, with several experts projecting the death toll will soon exceed 3,000 a day.
President-elect Joe Biden promised a new national strategy that will impose mask mandates where he will have authority, such as federal buildings and for interstate travel, once he takes office as outgoing President Donald Trump on January 20.
Beyond the mandate, he urged people to voluntarily wear masks, a novel approach after lax public discipline to date and Trump’s timid endorsement of masks.
“The first day I take office … I’m going to ask the public for 100 days to mask, only 100 days to mask, not forever, 100 days,” Biden told CNN in an interview Thursday. “And I think we will see a significant reduction if we do that, if that happens, with vaccines and masking, to reduce the numbers considerably.”
Two promising vaccine candidates could soon receive emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and some 20 million Americans could be vaccinated this year, Commissioner Stephen Hahn told Reuters in an interview on Friday.
As soon as the FDA approves a vaccine, “I will be the first in line and encourage my family to take this vaccine,” Hahn said.
Biden also told CNN that he would be happy to get publicly vaccinated, as former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama promised, to increase public confidence and persuade vaccine skeptics.
Other public figures have followed, including novelist Stephen King.
“When I was a 5- or 6-year-old, I lined up with other little people to get the polio vaccine. As a 73-year-old man, I will line up for the Covid vaccine as soon as they tell me it’s time,” King said. On twitter.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said Friday that he expected to see another spike in coronavirus infections two to three weeks after the Nov. 26 holiday, when many Americans traveled to visit. family members and feared Christmas shopping. and the festivities would fuel another peak.
“We are in a very precarious situation right now. There is certainly light at the end of the tunnel with a vaccine, but we are not there yet. So we really have to step up our public health measures to try to stop this trajectory.” “Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NBC’s” Today “show.
Fauci said he has accepted Biden’s offer to be his top medical adviser, in addition to maintaining his current position.
“I said yes on the spot,” Fauci said, while backing Biden’s 100-day request.
With cases in the U.S. since the pandemic began to exceed 14 million on Thursday and more than 100,000 people were hospitalized, California Governor Gavin Newsom said he would impose new strict stay-at-home orders to be they would activate region by region when less than 15 percent of UCI capacity is available.
The University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation now projects nearly 539,000 deaths from COVID-19 by April 1, nearly double the current number of deaths since the pandemic began, even with the effects of vaccines. that save lives.
But 66,000 people could be saved if the proportion of Americans wearing masks in public rises to 95% in the next week, the institute said.
Globally, the pandemic has killed more than 1.5 million people. – Reuters
