By Marie Rosenthal, MS
After weeks of decline, the United States is beginning to see another uptick in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths, according to Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, the director of the CDC, and she called this a scary trend. However, she said that people were not powerless, and individual acts could help reverse this course.
After weeks of declines, the seven-day average of new cases is slightly less than 60,000 per day, which is a 10% increase compared with the week before. Hospitalizations are also up to 4,800 admissions per day versus 4,600 in the prior seven-day period, and deaths which typically lag behind cases and hospitalizations are also rising. They increased nearly 3% to a seven-day average of about 1,000 per day.
At 550,688 deaths as of March 30, the United States continues to lead the world in the number of people who have died from SARS-CoV-2 infection.
“We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope, but right now I’m scared,” she said at the White House COVID-19 briefing on March 29.
“The trajectory of the pandemic in the United States looks similar to how many other countries in Europe, including Germany, Italy and France, looked just a few weeks ago,” she said. “And since that time, those countries have experienced a consistent and worrying spike in cases.”
However, she said the country should not be without hope—that continued mitigation would change that trajectory downward again. “We are not powerless; we can change this trajectory of the pandemic, but it will take all of us, recommitting to following the public health prevention strategies consistently, while we work to get the American public vaccinated,” Walensky said.
The vaccine effort is doing well, according to Andy Slavitt, a White House senior pandemic advisor. “We are vaccinating the country as quickly as humanly possible—now averaging 2.7 million vaccinations over the last seven days,” he said. As of March 29, 73.1% of people aged 65 years and older have received one COVID-19 vaccine, and 49.8% have received both doses, according to the CDC.
“Overall, more than 50 million Americans—approaching one in five adults—are fully vaccinated,” Slavitt said.
And the president recently upped the ante, doubling the number of vaccinations he expected by day 100 of his administration from 100 million to 200 million. Slavitt said two new federally run mass vaccination sites at America’s Center Convention Complex, in St. Louis, and Roosevelt High School in Gary, Ind., will help that effort. Combined, they will be capable of administering 6,000 shots per day. “We now have 21 operational sites that have already administered a combined 1.7 million shots. These sites are run by the federal government in close partnership with state and local officials,” he said.
However, mitigation—wearing a mask, social distancing, hand hygiene and vaccination—must continue for the foreseeable future.
“I’m calling on every single one of you to sound the alarm to carry these messages into your community and your spheres of influence. We do not have the luxury of inaction,” Walensky urged. “For the health of our country, we must work together now to prevent a fourth surge.”
