- New Cases: 738,739 (⬆︎ .89%) 🏆 NEW RECORD!! 🎇
- New Deaths: 13,552 (⬆︎ .75%)
USA
- New Cases: 228,413 (⬆︎ 1.13%)
- New Deaths: 3,438 (⬆︎ .98%)
Projections, at today's Growth Rate
1st week in February
- Total Cases: 30,000,000
- Total Dead Americans: 500,000
About a month later
- Total Cases: 40,000,000
- Total Dead Americans: 650,000
NYT: (pay wall)
The United States begins the new year far behind schedule in its coronavirus vaccine rollout, having distributed shots to a mere fraction of the 20 million it had hoped to reach by this time, even as the nation hit a grim new milestone on New Year’s Eve: 20 million cases since the start of the pandemic.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 2.8 million people have received their first dose, though that number may be somewhat low because of lags in reporting. Federal officials, who said that their goal was to have 20 million people receive their first shot by the end of 2020, said they do not fully understand the cause of the delays and have denied that they are to blame. Officials behind Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to fast-track vaccines, have said that their job was to ensure that vaccines are made available and get shipped out to the states.
But state health officials and hospital leaders throughout the country pointed to several factors for the lag. States have held back doses to be given out to their nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, an effort that is just gearing up and expected to take several months. Across the country, just 8 percent of the doses distributed for use in these facilities have been administered, with two million yet to be given.
The holiday season has meant that people are off work and clinics have reduced hours, slowing the pace of vaccine administration. In Florida, for example, the demand for the vaccines dipped over the Christmas holiday and is expected to dip again over New Year’s, Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Wednesday.
Public health experts say that federal officials have left many of the details of the final stage of the vaccine distribution process, such as scheduling and staffing, to overstretched local health officials and hospitals. The result is a series of notable blunders.
In one case, 42 people in West Virginia who were scheduled to receive the coronavirus vaccine on Wednesday were instead mistakenly injected with an experimental monoclonal antibody treatment.
In another, a pharmacist at a Wisconsin hospital was arrested for allegedly removing hundreds of vaccine doses from refrigeration, intentionally spoiling them. As of Thursday, the pharmacist’s motive was unclear.
The task of administering thousands of vaccines in the United States is daunting for health departments that have already been overburdened by responding to the pandemic. In Montgomery County, Md., the local health department has recruited extra staff to help manage vaccine distribution, said Travis Gayles, the county health officer.
“While we’re trying to roll out vaccinations, we’re also continuing the pandemic response by supporting testing, contact tracing, disease control and all of those other aspects of the Covid response,” Dr. Gayles said.
The United States is not alone in its plight to distribute vaccines. President Emmanuel Macron of France also faced growing criticism for the sluggishness of France’s rollout. Fewer than 200 people have received doses there since Sunday, when the European Union officially began its campaign to distribute shots to its 410 million citizens. Germany has inoculated nearly 80,000 over the same period.
By contrast, the pace of Israel’s vaccination program is far outstripping the rest of the world. Nearly 10 percent of Israel’s population has received the first of two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine after the program began there on Dec. 20.
In a news conference on Wednesday, Operation Warp Speed officials said they expected the pace of the rollout in the United States to accelerate significantly once pharmacies begin offering vaccines in their stores. The federal government has reached agreements with a number of pharmacy chains — including Costco, Walmart and CVS — to administer vaccines once they become more widely available. So far, 40,000 pharmacy locations have enrolled in that program.
We may yet pull it out, but as of today, there's real potential that we'll see a million dead by Summer.
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