The US just hit a record 7-day average of new Covid-19 cases
“We have not yet seen the full effect of a potential surge upon a surge,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN Friday night. “The travel associated with Thanksgiving, the congregating at family and social gatherings with people indoors, sometimes without masks. So that may peak two to three weeks from now.”
And that surge will come right as travel and social gatherings will likely pick up again for the Christmas holiday.
“So, we’re really very concerned,” Fauci said.
As of Friday the US averaged 182,633 daily new cases over the last week — a record high for the country, according to Johns Hopkins University data. And the average number of daily Covid-19 deaths across a week hit 2,010 on Friday, the highest its been since April.
The US recorded 227,885 cases on Friday alone, the highest one-day count of the pandemic.
But health officials warn that while some Americans may receive a vaccine by the end of the year, the country likely won’t see any meaningful impacts until late spring.
In the meantime, experts project an incredibly challenging next few months.
Stay-at-home order for San Francisco Bay Area counties
More than 278,800 people have lost their lives to the virus in the US since the pandemic began. More than 10,000 of those were recorded in the four days since the beginning of December, with more than 2,500 daily deaths reported across the US each day.
Hospital systems across the country are hitting their breaking points.
In Miami-Dade County, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Peter Paige says hospitalizations have spiked by nearly 140% over the past two months, while ICU rates have jumped 58% over the same time period.
“This is particularly concerning considering we really don’t know that the most challenging days may still be ahead of us,” Paige said.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Friday called the accelerating pandemic “the greatest threat to life in Los Angeles that we have ever faced.” Hospitalizations in Los Angeles County have tripled in the last week, he said, and the county will likely run out of beds in two to four weeks if cases continue climbing.
It will go into effect Sunday and remain in place until at least January 4, according to Contra Costa Health Director Dr. Chris Farnitano.
While the Bay Area has not met that threshold, officials warned they’re seeing evidence of transmission over Thanksgiving weekend that could fuel a surge in their community.
“I don’t think we can wait for the state’s new restrictions to go into effect later this month,” Farnitano said Friday. “We must act swiftly to save as many lives as we can. This is an emergency.”
The Bay Area’s not alone. Southern California is reporting just 13.1% ICU availability, and the state Department of Health confirmed Saturday morning that if the region remained under 15% after Saturday, new restrictions could go into effect Sunday evening. The San Joaquin Valley Region also fell below 15% on Friday evening.
“It really is time for us to pull back on the activity and see if we can turn this thing around before hospitals get overwhelmed,” said Dr. Robert Wachter, the chairman of the department of medicine at University of California, San Francisco, pointing out California has had a “better than average performance” throughout the pandemic.
“I see other parts of the country that are still open, even though the case rates and hospitalization rates are far worse than here,” he told CNN. “So I think we’re acting correctly.”
Here’s when most Americans will begin getting vaccinated
Fauci told CNN Friday night that healthy, non-elderly Americans with no known underlying health conditions will likely start getting vaccinated in late March to early April.
“The quicker you get the overwhelming majority of the country vaccinated, the quicker you’re going to have that umbrella of herd immunity — which would be so, so important in bringing the level of that virus way, way down to below the threatening level,” Fauci said.
Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the US Department of Health and Human Services, said Friday the FDA will consider emergency use authorization of the Pfizer vaccine after the meeting of its outside advisory committee on December 10, with consideration of the Moderna vaccine not far behind.
According to Giroir, at least 20 million Americans are expected to be able to get the Covid-19 vaccine by the end of the month.
“It’s going to be very challenging. Distribution is going to be crucial,” former FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg told CNN Saturday, adding, that it will fall to the states to set priorities for who should get vaccinated first.
On top of that, the first vaccines require two doses, so officials will also need to keep track of how many doses each individual has received.
“This is going to be almost as hard as making the vaccine itself,” Hamburg said.
Face masks remain critical tools
But the start of vaccinations will not mean an end to Covid-19, health officials warn.
“Vaccines and vaccination will add a major, major, powerful tool to the tool kit that we have,” Dr. Michael Ryan, the executive director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Programme, said. “But by themselves they will not do the job.”
Leading public health officials in the US have emphasized masks will continue to play a crucial role in helping curb the spread of the virus — and save lives — in the coming months.
Even the people who get vaccinated earliest will need to continue to take precautions like wearing masks and social distancing, Fauci told CNN Friday.
That’s because clinical trials of the two vaccines under consideration for emergency use authorization in the US show they were about 95% effective in protecting against symptomatic disease. That does not mean, however, that vaccinated individuals cannot become infected and then spread the virus.
“There may be half the country that is still not vaccinated which means there is a lot of virus floating around there, and even if you are vaccinated, you may be protected against getting sick, but you may not be protected from infection,” said Fauci.
“Just 100 days to mask, not forever. One hundred days. And I think we’ll see a significant reduction,” Biden said.
CNN’s Andrea Diaz, Anastasia Graham-Yooll, Maggie Fox, Jacqueline Howard and Tina Burnside contributed to this report.