Federal health officials warned on Wednesday that a third of Americans live in areas where the threat of coronavirus infection is now so high that they should consider wearing a mask in public indoors, whether or not local leaders demand it.
Dr Rochelle P. Valenski, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said federal data showed that the average for seven days of hospitalization in the United States by Covid-19 had increased by about 20 percent in the previous week. About 3,000 people a day are now admitted with Covid, she said, although mortality, a lagging indicator, remains low.
For areas with high levels of community transmission, especially in the northeast, “we call on local leaders to encourage the use of prevention strategies such as camouflage in public indoor and increase access to testing and treatment for individuals,” she said. People in areas with medium levels of transmission, including counties in almost every state, should consider wearing a mask in closed public places, avoid crowds and get tested, especially before meeting other people indoors, she said.
Dr. Valenski and other federal officials spoke at the first White House briefing on the six-week pandemic alone. They did not explain the interruption, but said they had given dozens of media interviews in the meantime.
Dr Ja called the current increase in infections “very significant” and warned that if Congress failed to meet the administration’s $ 22 billion request for new funding for Covid, the government would not have enough vaccines and treatments to fight it. with the renewed tide of the virus expected this fall. The administration said it wanted to launch an intensification campaign this fall, hoping with vaccines refitted to work better against the latest version of the virus.
Although biostatists’ forecasts differ widely, he said a scenario in which the nation would have to fight the virus without sufficient doses of vaccines and treatments would be “terrible”. If Congress fails to secure critical funding, he said: “I think we will see a lot of unnecessary loss of life.”
Officials also said too many Americans are failing to use booster vaccines to boost declining protection against infection, leaving themselves vulnerable to increasingly contagious versions of the coronavirus. Dr Valenski said 62 per cent of those aged 50 to 64 had not received a booster in the past six months, nor had 57 per cent of those aged 65 or over.
Dr Ja said the incidence of severe disease would have been worse without Paxlovid, an oral treatment developed by Pfizer that helps prevent severe disease if taken early enough after symptoms appear. Doctors now prescribe Paxlovid pills to about 20,000 patients a day, he said. This, he added, may explain why the rate of hospitalizations and intensive care is lower than expected given the rise in infections.
“Paxlovid makes a big difference,” said Dr. Ja.
As an implicit acknowledgment that the pandemic is not over, the administration on Monday quietly set a deadline for lifting the public health emergency, which allowed the government to take steps such as offering Americans free vaccines, tests and treatments for coronavirus; a ban on states revoking people’s Medicaid coverage; and expanding access to remote healthcare appointments. It also allowed hospitals to receive more for the treatment of Medicare patients who have Covid.
Public health experts and hospital staff praised the extension of the emergency, which was due to expire on July 15th.
“We see an increase in cases and hospitalizations and levels of positive tests; “Now is not the time to put an end to these flexibilities that allow great access to care,” said Ashley Thompson, senior vice president of policy development at the American Hospital Association. “We haven’t come out of the woods yet.”
As of Tuesday, the average of new, confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States has exceeded 100,000 a day for the first time since Feb. 20, according to a New York Times database. That figure is up 61 percent from two weeks ago. Public health experts believe that the true number is far higher, as many people do not report home test results.
The big unanswered question, experts say, is whether the increase in cases already under way will eventually be followed by a commensurate increase in hospitalizations and deaths.
“We may be entering a period where we have an increased number of cases, but a significantly reduced severity of the disease, so that we see fewer hospitalizations and far fewer deaths,” said Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Research. Infectious Diseases and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “But as inconvenient and unsatisfactory as it is, we just don’t know what this virus will bring us in the next 90 days.
This is a challenge for the White House, he said: “What we need to do is not move from ‘We’re done’ to ‘Oh my God, how bad it can be.’ ”
Other experts said federal health officials have been too quiet in recent weeks. “I think it would be important for us to get more guidance from Dr. Valenski and Dr. Fauci on what we need to do right now,” said Dr. Janis M. Orlowski, chief health director at the Association of American Medical colleges.
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist, medical ethicist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who led efforts to develop a new pandemic strategy called The Next Norm, was more outspoken in his calls for the White House to improve its communication strategy for Covid: “They need to step up their game.”
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