WaPo: (freebie)
U.S. cases ‘going in the right direction,’ Fauci says
The rate of new coronavirus cases in the United States is “going in the right direction,” Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, said Sunday.
Pointing to other countries that have experienced sharp drops in cases after a surge of infections from the omicron variant, Fauci, speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” said that “things are looking good.” Still, he cautioned that the virus “has certainly surprised us in the past” and that cases are still rising in the South and West, where omicron outbreaks started later than in the Northeast.
New coronavirus cases have fallen 14 percent in the United States in the past week, based on a seven-day average, although average daily cases, at more than 695,000, are still not far from the U.S. peak of about 762,000. Covid-19 hospitalizations are also close to their peak, straining short-staffed hospitals, but they are also starting to fall. Covid-19 deaths, which often lag days to weeks behind outbreaks, are still increasing nationally.
Fauci said he was hopeful that in “the next weeks to month or so,” the country would see a low enough level of contagion that the coronavirus would be “essentially integrated into the general respiratory infections that we have learned to live with,” allowing society to carry on somewhat normally. The World Health Organization’s Europe director, Hans Kluge, has expressed similar optimism for Europe, telling Agence France-Presse that “it’s plausible that the region is moving towards a kind of pandemic endgame.”
Here’s what to know
- Hospitals grappling with worker shortages are asking employees with covid-19 to come back to work, even if they might be infectious.
- New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern canceled her wedding amid an omicron outbreak in her country that led her to introduce limits on public gatherings. “Such is life,” she said.
- Vaccine boosters provide robust protection against severe disease from the omicron variant in the United States, according to three reports released Friday that show the shots are effective at keeping vaccinated people out of the hospital.
Reason for hope
But don't get stupid
The monster ain't dead yet
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