The Omicron-variant fueled COVID-19 wave is showing more signs that it will soon come to its end, and some public health leaders are calling for some pandemic-related restrictions to be phased out in the U.S., just as they recently were in the UK.
America is averaging 682,374 cases per day, according to data from Johns Hopkins University (JH), a 12 percent drop over the past two weeks. The drop has Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, optimistic about where the wave is heading.
‘Things are looking good. We don’t want to get overconfident, but they look like they’re going in the right direction right now,’ Fauci told ABC’s This Week on Sunday.
He notes that while cases are increasing in much of the south and Midwest, they are beginning to decline in northeastern states that were hit hard and fast by the new variant in December. It is likely that western states will also follow the same path as their east coast peers, with cases expected to soon crest before a rapid decline.
‘If the pattern follows the trend that we’re seeing in other places, such as the northeast, I believe that you will start to see a turnaround throughout the entire country,’ Fauci said.
‘Since it’s a large country and a great deal of variation in the degree of vaccinations that we have in one region compared to another … there may be a bit more pain and suffering with hospitalizations in those areas of the country that have not been fully vaccinated or have not gotten boosters.’
Dr Scott Gottlieb, former director of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and current board member at Pfizer, says that the declining cases should be a signal to officials that it is time to start lifting some pandemic-related restrictions.
Dr Anthony Fauci (pictured), the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said that the country’s pandemic situation is ‘heading in the right direction’ as cases continue to fall
‘I think certainly on the east coast where you see cases declining dramatically we need to be willing to lean in and do that very soon I think as conditions improve we have to be willing to relax some of these measures with the same speed that we put them in place,’ he told CNBC’s The Squawk Box.
He compares the current U.S. situation to that of the UK. Across the pond, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has set plans to drop all pandemic restrictions amid a drop in cases. Gottlieb said that America should soon follow, and pointed out masks in schools and vaccine mandates as particularly ‘divisive’ restrictions that he thinks should go.
‘We haven’t described clear goalposts for when we’re gonna withdraw a lot of these measures and the two most contentious things right now in the U.S. are the masks among children in schools and the vaccine mandates,’ he said.
He also added that in order for people to comply by Covid rules, health officials need to ‘have a flexible doctrine’ that changes as the situation of the pandemic does.
The calls for restrictions to be dropped come as the overall infection rate has sharply declined in recent weeks. According to data from Our World in Data, 4,110 out of every one million Americans recorded infections on January 10 - by far the highest total. The rate was also 2,643 as late as Friday. That figure has dropped all the way to 615 per one million as of Sunday.
While quirks in U.S. case reporting definitely play a role in the steep decline - with Sundays always having the lowest case totals since many health departments are closed for the day - the dramatic drop in cases also signals a change in the pandemic for the country.
Deaths usually lag behind cases, and are beginning to rise to a worrying degree. Data from JH also shows a daily death average of 2,003 - the highest total the nation has reached since late-September. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released projections expecting deaths to rocket in the coming weeks, up to 35,700 deaths - 5,100 per day - during the week of February 13.
The number of Americans hospitalized with Covid is also at a record high, but the figure is misleading. Official numbers have 157,429 Covid positive people in the hospital every day, though the figure also includes people who are there for other treatment and testing positive while present. Many of the people included in the total have mild symptoms, or are asymptomatic, and are not suffering severe enough cases to require hospitalization.
Massachusetts health officials released data last week showing that half of ‘Covid hospitalizations’ in the state were actually people receiving treatment for another condition.
In the UK, which often front runs ahead of the U.S. by a few weeks, cases are continuing to fall. Daily case totals are hovering around 100,000 per day, a far fall from the 180,000 per day peak reached in early January. Some experts are calling for daily case reporting to be halted for the time being, since the large figures could be misleading and even cause fear among the public.
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