02/21/2021 16:01
Clarín.com
World
Updated 02/21/2021 4:01 PM
The United States is approaching the threshold of 500 thousand deaths from coronavirus in almost a year of pandemic, it is a large number,
greater than the number of citizens who lost their lives
on the battlefields of the First World War, the Second and Vietnam added.
This is reported by
The New York Times newspaper
, in an alarming article published this Sunday.
The number of cases is slowing down, but there are fears for the new variants of SARS-CoV-2, capable of unleashing a vertiginous and uncontrolled wave of infections.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the country
is experiencing a 29% decrease in new infections
compared to last week.
The steepest decline in a week the country has seen during the pandemic.
The new administration led by President Joe Biden announced that it has made
improvements to the management of the plague.
In a briefing at the White House on Friday, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said the United States continues to experience a five-week decline, with an average decline in cases of 69% since it peaked on January 11.
But it is unclear exactly how much of the decline can be attributed to the winter weather that has gripped much of the country,
forcing officials to close test sites
, affecting the collection of crucial data, CNN said.
Several states hit by the winter storms are seeing big declines in new cases this week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, including Texas,
where infections are down 56% compared to last week.
The Covid Tracking Project said Thursday that it had been unable to update the daily number of tests conducted in Texas for four days due to winter weather.
Overall, the United States has seen
a
nearly 13.5%
decrease
in testing compared to the previous week.
However, that is not to say that the United States has not made progress in reducing the number of cases.
Earlier this week, Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University, and his colleague Jonathan Reiner, professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University,
pointed to the rise in the use of masks as a of the reasons for the declining numbers.
However, any progress that has been made is also threatened by the rise of Covid-19 variants,
some of which appear to be more transmissible.
"I spoke to all the pharmaceutical companies and scientists, and they all say the same thing: even if these vaccines decrease a little bit (their ability to fight new strains, NDR), they will be able to continually update them," said Andy Slavitt, responsible for the response to the Covid-19 and main adviser to the White House.
Source: ANSA
PB
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