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(CNN) The nearly year-long coronavirus pandemic has been filled with grim numbers, but Wednesday brought an encouraging one: More than 1 million people have received their first injection of the COVID-19 vaccine.
And that reported number is low, because many of the doses administered in recent days have not yet been tabulated in figures from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency said.
“As COVID-19 cases continue to rise across the country, this achievement comes at a critical time and will help protect those on the front lines, our healthcare providers treating COVID-19 patients, as well as our most vulnerable – the elderly living in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, “said Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the CDC.
The government has said it intends to distribute 20 million first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines in the coming weeks. So far, around 9.5 million doses have been distributed.
“It’s been a great week of vaccine delivery,” Gen. Gustave Perna, Operation Warp Speed’s chief operating officer, told reporters on Wednesday. “More than 7,800 deliveries by the end of tomorrow, as we will deliver the 7.9 million doses of vaccine that were allotted for this week across the country, truly a tremendous feat.”
Perna said that about 15.5 million doses of vaccine have been assigned and that between 4.5 and 5 million will be assigned next week.
“We will finish those deliveries in the first week of January,” he said.
Health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have said that vaccines will help put the pandemic behind us, but most Americans, who won’t get vaccinated until next year , they should get the vaccine. vigilante with mask and social distancing measures for the next few months.
Vaccines in nursing homes expected to increase
Thanks to coordinated efforts between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and two major pharmacy chains, COVID-19 vaccines have reached 238 long-term care facilities in 12 states, Perna said.
“Walgreens and CVS are being greeted by cheering crowds and are doing their best to make sure everyone gets the photos,” Perna said during a news conference.
Perna said 13 more states and another 1,000 facilities with residents requiring long-term care will receive doses of vaccines next week.
“Every week we are building on that as we go along,” he said.
Surge saw cases and now deaths and hospitalizations are on the rise
Thousands more families have just lost a loved one this holiday season as the US reported its second-highest number of coronavirus deaths in one day – 3,401 on Tuesday, according to Johns Hopkins University.
And by Wednesday night, at least 2,700 more deaths were announced.
Hospitalizations reached a record high of 119,463.
In nine states, there are more people hospitalized with COVID-19 than at any other point in this pandemic: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Georgia, Mississippi, New Hampshire and North Carolina, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
Doctors say that many deaths occurring now were likely driven by Thanksgiving travel and gatherings, as COVID-19 deaths typically occur weeks after infection.
“We were preparing for this and we were hoping we were wrong,” said Dr. Esther Choo, professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health and Science University.
“But every holiday has been similar. And on Thanksgiving, we saw the kind of trip that happened then. And the people who are hospitalized in ICU and die now, a lot of it is due to the Thanksgiving surge. “.
Health experts like Choo and Fauci say the next 10 days could lead to even more infections, hospitalizations and deaths than Thanksgiving.
“We now have an extended vacation between Christmas and New Years. And according to AAA estimates, although this year’s travel is roughly 30% less than last year, it still means 84 million people will travel on vacation.” Choo said.
“And it is not just the trip, it is what is happening at the other end, where they travel, which are many family and friends gatherings. So I think we are already preparing for the result of that, which will be well entered the end of January, in February … And I have no doubt that it will be an increase over increase over increase. “
A new strain has probably already spread in the US.
Around the world, a mutated strain of the new coronavirus is raising concerns, even if it is more transmissible and if current COVID-19 vaccines will work against it.
“I think I can be more reassuring,” said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health.
“First of all, this is not a surprise. This virus is an RNA virus. RNA viruses tend to change their instruction books slowly over time, resulting in the appearance of these types of variants,” he said .
“The good news is that the antibodies these vaccines generate are quite effective in terms of binding to multiple parts of the spike protein. So if there is a change in it, which is what the mutant has done, we would expect that the vaccine should be effective against that. “
Pfizer and Moderna, makers of the two vaccines currently being rolled out in the US, said they are testing their vaccines to see if they work against the new strain, which was first detected in the UK.
Scientists advising the UK government estimated that the new strain could be up to 70% more transmissible than other variants.
Peter Horby, chairman of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threat Advisory Group (NERVTAG), said Monday that experts “are now very confident that this variant has a transmission advantage” over other variants.
The UK variant does not appear to cause more serious disease and it appears that the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines will continue to be effective.
So far, the strain “has not been identified through sequencing efforts in the United States, although viruses have only been sequenced from about 51,000 of the 17 million cases in the United States,” the CDC said Tuesday.
“Given the small fraction of US infections that have been sequenced, the variant could already be in the United States without being detected.”
Some researchers believe that the strain likely reached the US in mid-November and that many people in the US may already be infected with it.
“If I had to guess, I’d say probably hundreds of people now,” said Michael Worobey, director of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona.
“It is very possible that he has come several times to various places.”
This story was first published on CNN.com, “America Over 1 Million People Vaccinated Against Coronavirus.”
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