WH Covid chief warns US is ‘vulnerable’ to virus going forward

A senior White House official warns that the country may remain vulnerable to COVID-19 if Congress no longer approves funding for tests and vaccines, just as many Americans hope the pandemic will end soon and prove they will never be the same again. He is worried about the virus, as he has been in the past months.

Dr. Ashish Jha, recently appointed as the White House coronavirus response coordinator, told the Associated Press on Thursday that Americans have a reduced immunity to the virus from both vaccines and natural infection.

This is because the federal government fears that funding for COVID-related programs will soon run out, dramatically reducing Americans’ access to vaccines, testing, and treatments. Jha explains that this will make the population “vulnerable” to the virus in the future.

According to a recent report, these warnings come when fewer Americans poll worry about the virus and many are willing to move on with the virus and return to normal life. Less than a third of those surveyed said they were still concerned about Covid.

However, the number of cases in the United States is rising 37% from last week to 90,000 a day for the first time since the end of February. However, deaths are on the rise, showing the milder nature of recent Covid strains, with deaths falling 30% last week to 386 per day.

“As we approach autumn, we will all be much more vulnerable to a virus today, and certainly more immune defense than six months ago,” Jha told the newspaper. AP †

“This makes many of us vulnerable.”

Dr. White House Covid Response Coordinator Ashish Jha (pictured) warned Americans could soon become vulnerable to the pandemic if no more funding is approved

Jha is urging lawmakers to approve more federal government funding for Covid mitigation measures, an issue that has become controversial in recent weeks as some want to spend the money elsewhere.

Biden insisted that the funds be part of a spending package that included aid to Ukraine, but had to withdraw it for fear that disagreements over that part would cancel the entire bill.

Federal officials say the funding will be enough to trap America while also allowing the country to continue ordering Covid vaccines. If funding is not approved, it is estimated that the United States will no longer be able to offer vaccines to all Americans, but only to high-risk groups †

Jha fears that when funding is delayed this will push the US up the vaccine order hierarchy, other countries will order more vaccines in the future, and take priority as more vaccines are produced by leading companies like Pfizer and Moderna. .

“I would say we are indeed a little bit near that deadline and waiting much longer is putting us in line even more,” Jha added.

“If we’re willing to stay behind the line and get our vaccines in the spring, we’ll have plenty of time. But then we lost the whole fall and winter. I don’t think it’s an acceptable outcome for the American people,” he said.

However, whether Americans want more Covid hits is still up for debate. While the former Americas weren’t too big to photograph in the way the federal government expected, the rollout of COVID-19 boosters was slow when they were first made available in the fall of 2021.

When a fourth dose of vaccine was approved for Americans aged 50 and older earlier this year, minor changes were seen in daily vaccines as well.

A Gallup poll released Wednesday found that only 31 percent of Americans said they were “quite worried” or “very worried” about contracting COVID-19, a three percent drop from the survey’s version in February. Within this group, 17 percent of Americans said they were still “very worried” about Covid, down 5 percent.

The survey points to the changing state of the virus as America approaches summer. In previous years, warmer months were accompanied by massive waves of devastating viruses.

The study was conducted in mid-April, when the downward trend in cases, which had existed for about three months after the Omicron winter peak in mid-January, began to reverse.

Participants were asked what their feelings were about the pandemic, the virus, and the personal restraint strategies they used or ignored in their daily lives.

The study also revealed that 64% of Americans believe the pandemic is getting better. During the investigation, cases dropped to just under 30,000 a day, making it one of its lowest levels since the pandemic began in March 2020.

About 21% of Americans said they believed the situation was more or less the same, and only 12% believed it was getting worse.

These few Americans last believed that the situation was getting worse, in the summer of 2021, when cases hit rock bottom just before the Delta variant exploded.

These good feelings also led to some behavioral changes. Only 17% of Americans reported maintaining social distancing, the lowest point of the pandemic to date.

Just under a third of Americans said they avoid large crowds, a fifth said they avoid public places, and only 15% said they avoid small gatherings.

These numbers are also pandemic lows, according to Gallup reports.

The shift in sentiment about Covid is a positive sign for the future, but it also comes with authorities warning that more pandemic threats are emerging around the world.

The prevalence of the new strain of Covid BA 2.12.1, the most contagious version of the virus ranked by US health officials, continues to rise, officials said.

The strain, first discovered in New York last month, accounts for 42.6 percent of the listed Covid cases in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Tuesday. That’s an increase from the 33% of cases the tribe collected a week ago.

This newly discovered version of the virus is a descendant of the “hidden” BA.2 variant, which remains the dominant strain accounting for 56% of cases. The new strain is believed to have a growth advantage of about 27% over the previous one and will likely become the dominant strain in the country by the end of the month.

Every single Covid case listed by the CDC falls under the umbrella of the Omicron variant, and the Delta variant has now been completely deleted from its successor.

The BA.1 strain of the virus, which caused a record number of worldwide epidemics during the winter months, now accounts for only 0.6 percent of cases in the United States, as the sub-variant has almost completely outgrown it.

Although it took some time for BA 2.12.1 strains to adopt the invisible variant as the dominant species throughout the country, the CDC reports, it already accounts for two out of three cases in the New York and New Jersey region of the United States.

It is the only region of the country where the species is dominant. It’s also part of the country where authorities first discovered this new strain in the United States.

The new strains account for about half of cases, 48 ​​percent, in the Mid-Atlantic region of Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, according to the CDC.

It also accounts for more than 40% of cases in New England and the southern regions of the Americas.

Like previous strains, this version of the virus appears to have spread across the country from east to west, while its incidence is decreasing in the westernmost parts of the country.

The BA 2.12.1 (red) strain now accounts for 43% of COVID-19 cases in the United States, up from 33% the previous week. The “hidden” variant BA.2 (pink) remains dominant, accounting for 56% of cases

BA 2.12.1 (red) represents two out of three cases in the New York and New Jersey area, according to CDC reports. In all other regions, the latent variety (pink) still predominates.

Even the newest versions of Omicron may be making their way to America.

There are growing concerns about the BA.4 and BA.5 strains of the virus currently gaining ground in South Africa and triggering another wave in the country. The country also became the first to be affected by the original Omicron release in late November.

Last month, the World Health Organization announced that it is officially monitoring two strains of the virus as potential concerns.

A previously published study from South Africa also found that the two variants may have the ability to evade immunity against the virus caused by a previous infection.

This could be of great concern to officials, as the massive spread of Omicron that has immunized most Americans against the virus during the winter months will no longer protect humans in the future, opening the door to another new big wave.

With these new threats, the White House worries that America will face a dark fall and winter in the second half of 2022.

A senior Biden administration official told CNN that the White House currently estimates about 100 million infections from the virus in the coming fall and winter, a time of year when both of the pandemic will occur.

By comparison, approximately 40 million cases of Covid-19 were reported in the United States between September 1 and February 28, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. While this is probably a serious underestimate given the highly contagious yet mild nature of the Omicron variant, it does mean that the White House believes the number of cases could reach even higher levels this year than last year.