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 CDC Director Dr Robert Redfield urged stricter adherence to safety
precautions such as wearing face coverings, social distancing and
good hand hygiene to slow the spread of a highly contagious
respiratory virus now claiming well over 2,000 U.S. lives a day.
The sober message from one of the nation's top health officers
followed Thanksgiving holiday observances in which millions of
Americans disregarded warnings to avoid travel and large gatherings
even as COVID infections and hospitalizations surged largely
unchecked.
Besides the monumental loss of life, Redfield said, the country
faces the prospect of a healthcare system strained to the point of
collapse. The contagion has now reached every corner of the country
- with 90% of all hospitals in areas designated as coronavirus "hot
zones" - and continues to spread on a much steeper trajectory than
any previous wave of the pandemic.
"The reality is that December, January and February are going to be
rough times," Redfield told a livestream presentation hosted by the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. "I actually believe they're
going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of
this nation."
President-elect Joe Biden amplified the bleak forecast during a
roundtable with workers and small business owners hard hit by the
devastating economic fallout of the pandemic.
"Christmas is going to be a lot harder. I don't want to scare
anybody here, but understand the facts - we're likely to lose
another 250,000 people dead between now and January. You hear me?"
Biden said.
More than 270,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 to date. And the
University of Washington's influential Institute for Health Metrics
and Evaluation has projected the toll could reach nearly 450,000 by
March 1 without greater attention to social distancing and
mask-wearing.
VACCINES ON HORIZON
The dire warnings came as U.S. health experts on Wednesday welcomed
British emergency approval of Pfizer Inc's COVID-19 vaccine, a sign
that U.S. regulators may soon follow suit.
As U.S. coronavirus hospitalizations jumped to their highest since
the onset of the global pandemic, Britain gave emergency use
approval to the vaccine developed by Pfizer and German partner
BioNTech SE, the first Western country to take such action.
Britain said it would start inoculating high-risk people early next
week, a move that could help reassure Americans about the prospect
of an expected mass-vaccination program reminiscent of the
anti-polio campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s.
"This should be very reassuring. An independent regulatory authority
in another country has found this vaccine to be safe and effective
for use," U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar told Fox Business Network
on Wednesday.
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The British approval is also likely to "put a little pressure on"
U.S. regulators to move swiftly, said Kirsten Hokeness, an
immunology and virology expert at Bryant University in Rhode Island.
REGULATORY AND SOCIAL HURDLES
A CDC advisory committee recommended on Tuesday that medical workers
and residents of long-term care facilities should be first in line
to receive initial doses of the vaccines.
U.S. COVID-19 hospitalizations hit a record for a fourth consecutive
day on Tuesday, approaching 100,000, according to a Reuters tally.
At the same time, exhausted healthcare professionals are
short-staffed, with many of their colleagues falling sick.
A U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel of outside advisers
is due to meet on Dec. 10 to discuss whether to recommend
emergency-use authorization of the Pfizer vaccine. Moderna's
vaccine, also found to be nearly 95% effective, is expected to be
reviewed a week later.
While some U.S. health officials described a rollout timeline that
assumed FDA authorization would come within days of the Dec. 10
meeting, FDA officials have said it could take weeks.
Pfizer, Moderna and a third producer, AstraZeneca Plc, have already
started manufacturing their vaccines and say distribution could
begin almost immediately after approval. AstraZeneca, however, may
have to conduct an additional trial to gain U.S. approval after a
dosing error led to better results in recently released data than
for its planned regimen.
Beyond regulatory hurdles, vaccinations face opposition from
significant numbers of Americans who reject medical science and fear
vaccines as harmful.
Similarly, many Americans still refuse to follow basic public health
guidance on wearing masks and avoiding crowds.
In hopes of increasing compliance, the CDC on Wednesday added new
guidelines to shorten the duration of quarantines.
The health agency said seven days with a negative COVID-19 test and
10 days without a test would suffice for individuals showing no
symptoms after exposure to the virus. But it still recommends a
14-day quarantine as preferable.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman, Daniel Trotta, Nathan Layne, Doina
Chiacu, Maria Caspani, Caroline Humer, Lisa Shumaker, Peter Szekely,
Susan Heavey, Mrinalika Roy, Trisha Roy and Simon Lewis; Editing by
Bill Tarrant and Stephen Coates)
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