And the country now has an average of more than 3 million daily doses, according to CDC data.
But only about 18.5% of Americans are fully vaccinated, CDC data show, and Covid-19 cases in the country have recently seen worrying increases.
“I think we still have a few more difficult weeks ahead of us,” Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist, told CNN on Sunday. “What we know from last year about the pandemic is that we tend to be about three to four weeks behind Europe in terms of our pandemic patterns.”
What’s worse, experts say, is that the variant is changing the roadmap for the pandemic and could cause problems for younger groups that have not yet been vaccinated.
“We have to think of variant B.1.1.7 as almost a new virus,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “It’s acting differently than anything we’ve seen before, in terms of transferability, in terms of affecting young people, so we have to take this very seriously.”
Younger infected, hospitalized
The difference between previous outbreaks and another possible increase now is “the people most affected now are the youngest individuals,” emergency doctor Dr. Leana Wen told CNN on Sunday.
“We are seeing in places like Michigan that the people who are now being hospitalized in large numbers are people in their 30s and 40s,” said Wen. “And now we are seeing even more children being infected as well.”
It is not just Michigan.
“What we are seeing are pockets of infection across the country, especially in young people who have not been vaccinated, and also in school-age children,” former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb told the program ” Face the Nation “from CBS. ” on Sunday.
“If you look at what’s going on in Michigan, Minnesota, Massachusetts, for example, you will see outbreaks in schools and infections in social groups that have not been exposed to the virus before.”
“The infection is changing its shape in terms of who is being hit by it now,” he added.
And a third of all county Covid-19 hospitalizations were for people under the age of 45, according to Dr. Raul Pino, director of the Florida Department of Health in Orange County.
New Jersey officials said last week that variants, including strain B.1.1.7, were contributing to an increase in cases and hospitalizations – including in younger age groups.
Between the first and the last week of March, there was an increase of 31% and 48% in the number of hospitalizations among the 20-29 and 40-49 age groups, respectively, said state health commissioner Judy Persichilli on Wednesday .
Meanwhile, older residents saw only one-digit percentage increases, she added.
How can we contain another outbreak of infections
Despite the alarming warning signs, the United States is not powerless, experts stressed.
“We say this repeatedly and we need the local population, we need governors and mayors and others to be able to say, we are not yet out of this,” said Fauci.
“People say, ‘Well, you just want to confine us forever.’ No, this will not last forever, because every day that you vaccinate four million, three million people, you get closer and closer to the control ”.
Hotez estimated on Sunday that Americans need to endure “another four to six weeks, and then we’ll be on the other side.”
“All vaccines seem to work so well against this UK variant B.1.1.7 … so it’s really good news,” he said. “I am very confident that we will be in a really good place in the summer.”
“But if you haven’t been vaccinated, you have to behave as if you are highly vulnerable to this virus, this is no time to be sick,” added Hotez.
CNN’s Naomi Thomas, Ganesh Setty and Heather Law contributed to this report.