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Hospitals await the post-Thanksgiving surge — and the Christmas one is just around the corner.
“After an event, we would expect to see an increase in new cases in one to two weeks, an increase in hospitalizations from two to three weeks, and an increase in bad outcomes from four to six weeks,” Dr. Thomas Russo, the chief of infectious diseases at the University at Buffalo, told WGRZ 2 Television News over the weekend.
The U.S. set a record for COVID-19-related hospitalizations this month with 100,100 patients, and the number of people with the virus in intensive-care units surpassing 20,000. In South Dakota, for instance, Dr. David Basel, vice president for clinical quality with Avera Medical Group, one of the state’s largest hospital systems, said ICU wards were running at or above capacity.
“ ‘We would expect to see an increase in new cases in one to two weeks, an increase in hospitalizations from two to three weeks, and an increase in bad outcomes from four to six weeks.’ ”
Cindy Friedman, chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Traveler’s Health Branch, told a briefing, “We know it’s a hard decision and that people need to have time to prepare, and have discussions with family and friends, and to make these decisions.”
“It’s a good thing that people have options to prevent infection, and they can take time now before the Christmas holiday,” she said. “We have several weeks to really think about the safest option for them, and their family, which we think is to postpone travel, and then we’ve outlined all the other measures that they can take if they do have to travel.”
Here is advice for those who wish to travel
Risk factors to consider before attending a gathering include whether there is community spread of COVID-19; exposure during travel; the location and duration of the gathering, and whether it’s indoors; the number of attendees and capacity for physical distancing; and attendees’ preventive behaviors before and during the gathering, such as mask wearing.
The WHO estimates that 16% of people are asymptomatic and can transmit the coronavirus and advises wearing masks. As of Monday, 67.2 million people worldwide had contracted COVID-19, with 1,538,533 deaths, with 14.8 million cases in the U.S. and 282,436 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.
“ The U.S. set a record for COVID-19-related hospitalizations this month with over 100,000 patients, and coronavirus-related intensive-care units surpassing 20,000. ”
Data from the Transportation Security Administration showed that 3 million travelers went through TSA checkpoints over the weekend, the most since March 16, even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged people not to travel to see family and friends in an effort to try to stem the spread of COVID-19.
Despite public health officials’ recommendations against travel, AAA, formerly known as the American Automobile Association, estimated in mid-October that 50 million people did not plan to take that advice over the Thanksgiving holiday travel period, a five-day stretch from Wednesday, Nov. 25 to Sunday, Nov. 29. That was down from 55 million last year; an estimated 95% traveled by car. AAA used economic forecasting from insights firm IHS Markit.
One million people tested positive for COVID-19 in the U.S. during a six-day period in mid-November. North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Iowa are leading U.S. states by per capita case numbers, according to Raymond James. COVID-19-related hospitalizations are at their highest level since the pandemic began, as some states tighten restrictions.
“People should be very careful and prudent about social gatherings,” Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has worked with six presidential administrations, said.
“You may have to bite the bullet and sacrifice social gatherings unless you’re pretty certain that the people you’re dealing with are not infected, or have very recently tested, or they’re living a lifestyle in which they don’t have any interaction with anybody except you and your family,” he said.
Dispatches from a Pandemic:It’s 2:30 a.m. in Wyoming: ‘You’re holding a smartphone to let a husband say goodbye to his wife via FaceTime after 60 years of marriage’
AstraZeneca AZN, +1.03% and the University of Oxford said their coronavirus vaccine is up to 90% effective when administered as a half dose, and then a full dose one month later. Effectiveness falls to 62% when two full doses are given one month apart.
It was later revealed that the initial half-dose, deemed as the more effective option by the company than two full doses, was given accidentally to participants. They were also 55 or under. That age group was not initially disclosed when AstraZeneca said the half and full dosage was more effective. The firm defended these errors and apparent lack of transparency.
“I’m not going to pretend it’s not an interesting result, because it is — but I definitely don’t understand it and I don’t think any of us do,” said Mene Pangalos, AstraZeneca’s executive vice president for biopharmaceuticals R&D.
BioNTech SE BNTX, +4.81% and Pfizer PFE, +1.83% announced progress in a vaccine, and later said a final analysis showed 95% rather than 90% efficacy. Meanwhile, Moderna MRNA, +6.00% said its vaccine candidate was 94.5% effective.
Johnson & Johnson JNJ, -0.89% ; Merck & Co. MERK, +3.18% ; GlaxoSmithKline GSK, -0.10% ; and Sanofi SAN, -3.97% are also working on fast-track coronavirus vaccines. Moderna, Sanofi and AztraZeneca’s vaccines do not need to be kept ultra-low temperatures.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.66% recently broke 30,000 on vaccine news and progress in the transition of power to President-elect Joe Biden. The DJIA and the S&P 500 Index SPX, -0.37% were slightly lower Monday, while the Nasdaq Composite COMP, +0.33% was marginally higher, buoyed by reports of a possible compromise between lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle on a new COVID-related stimulus bill.
Fauci has expressed optimism that the vaccine news could mean millions of Americans will have access to a vaccine by the year’s end, but he reiterated that there’s unlikely be a rollout for the broader population — beyond frontline workers like medical staff and school teachers, and people with underlying health conditions and older people at risk — until the second quarter.
