In less than a year, Covid-19 killed almost 400,000 Americans.
And in the next month alone, another 100,000 lives could be lost to the disease, said the new director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“In mid-February, we expect half a million deaths in this country,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky to CBS’s “Face the Nation” program on Sunday.
“This does not concern the tens of thousands of people who live with an uncharacterized syndrome after they recover,” said Walensky, who was head of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital before President-elect Joe Biden chose her to lead the CDC.
Some people who had Covid-19 experienced symptoms months after the test was positive.
“And we still haven’t seen the ramifications of what happened to vacation travel, to vacation collections, in terms of high rates of hospitalizations and deaths after that,” said Walensky.
“I think we still have some dark weeks ahead of us.”
100 million doses in 100 days: Walensky said on Sunday that the Biden administration will resolve the “bottlenecks” in delivering the Covid-19 vaccine and meet its goal of delivering 100 million doses in 100 days.
“I think there are bottlenecks in different places across the system,” Walensky told Face the Nation.
“Different states are facing different challenges – how much is being distributed to each state, whether these states have adequate staff, whether these states are taking the vaccine to pharmacies,” she said. “Our job is to ensure that, with all the support from the federal government, we resolve all of these bottlenecks wherever we are, so that we can put the vaccine in people’s arms.”
President-elect Joe Biden says his goal is to distribute 100 million doses of vaccines in his first 100 days in office.
“We analyzed it carefully and are confident that we have enough vaccines for the 100 million doses in the next 100 days,” said Walensky. “It will be a heavy lift, but we are able to do that.”
Read More:
