December is the deadliest month for the coronavirus since the pandemic began, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The US has recorded more than 63,000 deaths so far this month. Before, April was the most lethal month of the pandemic, with more than 55,000 deaths. According to the COVID Tracking Project, deaths exceeded that figure just three weeks in December, as temperatures dropped, people gathered for holidays and cases increased.
According to the latest data from Johns Hopkins, the United States has recorded more than 19 million cases of coronavirus and more than 330,000 deaths due to COVID-19.
President-elect Joe Biden
Joe BidenBrother, from Biden’s consultant, Ricchetti, hired as a lobbyist to preview Amazon’s Sunday shows: COVID-19 relief awaiting Trump’s signature; government continues vaccine launch Global cases of COVID-19 exceed 80 million MORE warned last week that the pandemic will worsen before it gets better, even with the arrival of vaccines, and warned Americans to be vigilant.
“I’m going to tell the truth. And here’s the simple truth: our darkest days in the battle against COVID are ahead of us, not behind us,” said Biden during a news conference on Tuesday.
“As frustrating as it is to listen, it will take patience, persistence and determination to overcome this virus. There will be no time to lose in taking the measures we need to reverse this crisis,” he added.
Anthony Fauci
Anthony FauciSunday shows the preview: relief from COVID-19 awaiting Trump’s signature; government continues launching vaccine first aid Fauci Serenade with ‘happy birthday’. AIDS activists recruit Barbra Streisand for Fauci’s surprise birthday party at Zoom MORE, the nation’s leading infectious disease specialist, agreed on Sunday with that assessment, warning that the United States could see the worst of the pandemic in the coming weeks.
“As we move from late autumn to early winter, the numbers are really worrying,” said Fauci.
“With hospitalizations above 120 thousand, we are really in a critical phase,” he added.
Two vaccines – made by Pfizer and Moderna – have been approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with just over 1 million people vaccinated so far. More than 9 million doses of the vaccines have been shipped.
The federal government had a goal of vaccinating around 20 million by the end of the year, but that goal now seems out of reach.
In late November, when news of coronavirus vaccine approval was on the horizon, former NATO commander James Stavridis wrote in an article for Fortune magazine that changes should be made to the government’s plan for the distribution of the vaccine.
Stavridis questioned the fact that only one company, McKesson, was in charge of distributing the COVID-19 vaccines. He said the government needs more companies to protect itself against the possibility of a failure in its distribution plan.
But even with promising developments like the vaccine, new challenges continue to emerge. A new, more contagious strain of coronavirus has been detected in the UK and South Africa, causing many nations to limit or ban travel to and from these countries. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued a requirement for UK travelers to provide a negative coronavirus test when traveling to the USA
On Sunday, former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” program that the new strain is probably already in the U.S. Gottlieb also said that vaccine distribution would likely be impeded by communities that are difficult to reach. He suspected that more people were vaccinated than reported due to the delay in data collection.
“But the idea that we will reach 20 million vaccines, vaccinations by the end of the year, is probably not realistic at this point,” said Gottlieb.
However, Gottlieb predicted that once the vaccine was made available through drugstore chains like Walgreens and CVS, there would be a significant increase in the distribution of the vaccine.
The order in which people receive the vaccine has been left to state governments to decide. Many state governments are still trying to figure out how they will determine order. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine
Mike DeWineSunday shows the preview: relief from COVID-19 awaiting Trump’s signature; government continues to launch DeWine vaccine says Ohio teachers and school officials will be the next group to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. (R) recently announced that teachers and school staff would be next in line to receive the vaccine.