“We’ll easily hit the figure figure in terms of the number of cases,” Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told CNN on Friday night. “And the deaths are going to be fairly high in the next three to four weeks, usually with new cases increasing by about two to three weeks.”
Social gatherings and family events circulating indoors to escape the cold weather are largely to blame for the high rates of spread, officials said over the weekend.
Cases in 34 states are on the rise
At least 35 states reported more new Covid-19 cases last week than the previous week, according to Johns Hopkins data.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy reported an additional 1,994 coronavirus cases on Saturday – the highest number of single-day cases since May.
Murphy tweeted, “We’re still in the midst of an epidemic and everyone needs to take this seriously. Wear a mask. Social distance,” Murphy tweeted.
There were eight new virus-related deaths in New Jersey, bringing the state’s total death toll to 14,492.
“The virus doesn’t just go away because we’re fed up with it,” Murphy said.
In Florida, health officials recorded 4,471 additional cases and 77 new resident deaths on Saturday. According to CNN, more than 20,000,000 new cases were reported in the state on the third day of the month in a single day. There are a total of 776,251 covid-19 cases in Florida and 16,417 residents of the state have died, the health department said. There have also been 203 casualties of non-residents.
There were 2,043 new cases reported in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
“The daily increase is now comparable to what we saw in April 2020,” the state health department said in a statement. An additional 29 deaths related to the virus were reported on Saturday.
According to Lynn Sutfin, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, Michigan on Saturday recorded its highest single-day during the epidemic, with 3, 3333 M new cases. The state has also reported 35 new deaths.
Michigan’s chief medical executive and deputy chief of health, Dr. Joneh Khaldun said the data showed a “worrying increase” in new infections.
“If the rate continues like this, we risk snatching our hospitals and killing many more Michigans and NDRs,” Khaldun said in a statement.
On Saturday, Illinois reported 6,161 new cases, the highest number since the epidemic began. According to the health department, more than 6,000,000 new cases have been reported in the state in the last nine days. In which 63 new deaths occurred.
Illinois Public Health Director Dr. N. Angozi Isik made an emotional appeal to residents on the importance of face painting.
“We’ve seen an increase in the number of hospitals, people bringing in more beds, trying to re-prepare covid units. And these staff who tried to save as many people as they went through so much pain as they see the repetition of history. . “, He said. “We don’t have a vaccine yet, but we do have a mask, and we’re telling people to use it, and I don’t know what else to say.”
And Colorado officials issued a new order that would limit the number of people from more than two households to 10 in response to a climbing infection and hospitalization.
“We need to keep gatherings small and keep people from fewer households – we’re telling everyone to ‘shrink the bubble,'” Jill Hanseker Rhea, executive director of the Colorado Department of Health Environment and the Environment, said in a statement released Friday.
‘This is not an exercise’
Despite the trends of difficulties, health officials can maintain basic public health measures: masks, social distance, avoid crowds and frequent hand washing.
“They seem very simple, but we’re not doing it uniformly and that’s one of the reasons why we’re seeing this boom,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday. “We can control them without shutting down the country.”
“I think it would be a great idea for everyone to do it equally,” he said. “If people don’t wear masks, then we should make it mandatory.”
A leading World Health Organization official on Friday also called on the country’s leaders to take “immediate action” to prevent “further unnecessary deaths, disruption of essential health services and reopening of schools.”
“I said it in February and I repeat it today, this is not an exercise,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanam Ghebrieus told a news conference.
Expert: No vaccine this year
While many experts and officials have worked to give an optimistic estimate of when the Covid-19 will be available, the timeline remains uncertain.
Dr. Franc, Director of National Institutes of Health. Francis Collins said Friday that when he visited the U.S. While “cautiously optimistic” about being vaccinated by the end of the year, he said “it doesn’t happen and it will take longer.”
But Collins added that it’s good news that the U.S. Has more than one vaccine candidate in development.
“I would be very worried if you were betting the whole thing on one vaccine,” he said.
And when the vaccine is approved, experts say it’s very important that Americans get enough. If half the country is ready to be vaccinated, Collins warns, Covid-19 will stick for years.
“While I’m paying attention to the attitude I’m showing now about this vaccine and who would be interested in taking it,” Collins said at the National Press Club’s virtual event. “I’m very optimistic about how the vaccine is likely to be available by the end of the year, but if only 0% of Americans were interested, we would never reach that place of immunity. Going.
CNN’s Alta Spells, Alec Schneider, Melissa Alonso, Brad Parks, Holly Silverman, Ganesh Setti, Shelby Lynn Erdman, Gisela Crespo, Naomi Thomas and Jacqueline Howard contributed to the report.
.
