United States tops 20 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, most of any country by far
The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States topped 20 million on Friday, the most of any country according to Johns Hopkins University.
That’s 24% of the planet’s official cases, a sobering figure considering the U.S. is home to less than 5% of the world’s population.
India has the secondlargest number of confirmed cases with 10.3 million, Johns Hopkins said.
Brazil has reported 7.7 million, Russia has reported 3.2 million and France has logged 2.7 million, the university’s tracking dashboard said.
COVID deaths also are up in the U.S., totaling 349,920 as of Saturday, or 19% of the world’s cumulative coronavirus death toll of 1,834,573, according to Johns Hopkins.
The new data comes as health officials around the globe race to get newly approved vaccines into the arms of front-line medical personnel, nursing home residents, vulnerable patients, first responders and other essential workers.
In the U.S., the federal government greatly missed its goal of vaccinating 20 million people by year’s end. As of Saturday, about 4.2 million people in the U.S. have been vaccinated, the New York Times reported.
Much of the responsibility has fallen on the shoulders of overstretched state health departments, overcrowded hospitals and understaffed nursing homes, experts have said.
President-elect Joe Biden criticized the Trump administration Tuesday for the vaccine rollout and vowed to accelerate the current speed once he’s sworn in this month.
“The Trump administration’s plan to distribute vaccines is falling behind, far behind,” Biden said during his remarks from Wilmington, Delaware.
“As I long feared and warned, the effort to distribute and administer the vaccine is not progressing as it should,” he said.
“If (the pace) continues to move as it is now, it’s going to take years, not months, to vaccinate the American people,” he said, saying his administration will push to administer 100 million shots in its first 100 days.
He said Congress would have to fund the plan to ramp up the current pace, but he also plans to use his power under the Defense Production Act to order private industry to accelerate production of the materials needed for the vaccines.
“This is going to be the greatest operational challenge we’ve ever faced as a nation,” he said.
“We need to be honest — the next few weeks and months are going to be very tough, very tough for our nation. Maybe the toughest during this entire pandemic,” Biden warned.
He said it’s likely “things are going to get worse before they get better.”
VACCINES BEING MET WITH SKEPTICISM ON TRIBAL LANDS
The news of a vaccine came during a hopeful time on the largest Native American reservation in Arizona.
Daily coronavirus cases were in the single digits, down from a springtime peak of 238 that made the Navajo Nation a U.S. hot spot. The tribe, wanting to ensure a COVID-19 vaccine would be effective for its people, said it would welcome Pfizer clinical trials on reservation spanning Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
Right away, tribal members accused their government of allowing them to be guinea pigs, pointing to painful times in the past when Native Americans didn’t consent to medical testing or weren’t fully informed about procedures.
A Navajo Nation review board gave the study quicker approval than normal after researchers with Johns Hopkins University’s Center for American Indian Health made the case for diversity. Without Native volunteers, how would they know if tribal members responded to vaccines the same as others?
“Unfortunately, Native Americans have effectively been denied the opportunity to participate in these clinical trials because almost all of the study sites are in large, urban areas that have not done effective outreach to Native Americans,” said Dr. Laura Hammitt of Johns Hopkins.
About 460 Native Americans participated in the trials for the vaccine by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, including Navajos. The enrollment reflects a growing understanding of the role that people of color play in vaccine development and the push to rapidly deploy it to curb infections among populations that have been disproportionately affected by the virus.
Yet, few of the country’s 574 federally recognized tribes have signed on for the studies, a hesitation often rooted in suspicion and distrust.
In the Pacific Northwest, the Lummi Nation and the Nooksack Indian Tribe plan to participate in a vaccine trial from another company, Novavax Inc. A Cheyenne River Sioux researcher plans to enroll Native Americans and others in South Dakota in the Novavax trial and another by Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline.
On the Navajo Nation, Arvena Peshlakai, her husband, Melvin, and their daughter Quortnii volunteered for the Pfizer trials.
“What else am I supposed to do? Just sit back and say, ‘No, I don’t trust them’ and not try something new to see if we can find a breakthrough?” Arvena Peshlakai said. “We have to do something, we can’t just sit by and wait and hope and pray.”