After After three years, more than 6 million hospitalizations and more than 1.1 million American deaths, the Biden administration will end the federal COVID-19 public health emergency on May 11, 2023. officially declared.
In a fact sheet summarizing the decision, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said that since January 2021, COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths have dropped by 91 percent and 95 percent, respectively.
The World Health Organization also declared earlier this month that COVID-19 is now not an “emergency of international concern” but simply a global health threat, and May 2023 will be a pandemic. A turning point.
However, some experts are concerned that such declarations could be misleading. “I don’t think it’s going to help if the government sends out a message that the coronavirus is almost over,” said Harvard epidemiologist William Hanage. “I would argue that the ongoing costs from COVID-19 should be lower than we can tolerate. People are still dying, and unfortunately many of these deaths are preventable. that it is possible.”
Covid-19 is still killing people
The massive surge in hospitalizations and deaths that characterized most of 2020-2021 is long gone, but the effects of global vaccinations are still driving COVID-19 deaths. there is
More than 1,000 Americans still die each week from causes related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This ongoing death toll can reach alarming numbers over the course of weeks and months. About 42,924 Americans died from COVID-19 between Dec. 28 and May 3, according to CDC statistics.
“It’s a slow burn, but a steady one,” says Dennis Nash, an epidemiologist at the City University of New York. “When you start looking at this data chronologically, it’s really frightening and insidious how many deaths are still occurring. I think when people hear leaders, politicians and other high profile figures discussing this issue, they really start to understand how this issue is far from over.”
Who are the most vulnerable?
Older people and those with underlying medical conditions remain the most vulnerable to the virus. In particular, the seven million Americans with weakened immune systems are still at risk from the virus. This is because the main monoclonal antibody therapies are ineffective against new variants.
The reduction in data collection has made it difficult for scientists to know which sectors of the population have been hospitalized and died from COVID-19. The CDC has announced it will suspend some of its new coronavirus data tracking activities, such as tracking and reporting new cases.
“There are people who have been vaccinated, so doctors think they are no longer vulnerable, but because of their age and health, their immunity is not as strong and they are slipping through the cracks.” ‘ says Nash.
The majority of people currently hospitalized are routinely vaccinated but fall into certain high-risk groups, said William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. It says. “These people are elderly, frail or young patients with underlying medical conditions such as heart or lung disease or diabetes,” he says.
Variants in progress
New variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus continue to emerge and become dominant in different parts of the world, often subtly altering Covid symptoms in the process.
As an example, the latest subvariant of Omicron, XBB.1.16 (aka Arcturus), contains an additional mutation in the spike protein that makes it more infectious than Omicron. First detected in India, it was detected in 30 other countries by early May.
