Don’t let guard down, experts warn
Giuliani said to be in hospital after Trump tweet on positive test
With a COVID-19 vaccine perhaps just days away in the U.S., most of California headed into another lockdown Sunday because of the surging outbreak and top health officials warned Americans that this is no time to let their guard down.
“The vaccine’s critical,” Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “But it’s not going to save us from this current surge. Only we can save us from this current surge.”
Also Sunday, President Donald Trump said his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani tested positive for the coronavirus, making him the latest in Trump’s inner circle to contract the disease.
The former New York mayor has traveled extensively to battleground states in recent days and weeks in an effort to help Trump subvert his election loss. On numerous occasions he has met with officials for hours at a time without wearing a mask.
Trump, who confirmed Giuliani’s positive test in a tweet, wished him a speedy recovery. “Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!” Trump wrote.
Giuliani was at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, according to a person who was aware of his condition but not authorized to speak publicly.
Giuliani, at 76, is in the highrisk category for the virus.
Meanwhile, President-elect Joe Biden selected Xavier Be
cerra, a former congressman who is now the Democratic attorney general of California, as his nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
If confirmed, Becerra would face the task of battling a pandemic that is blamed for more than 282,000 deaths and over 14.7 million confirmed infections in the country.
With the U.S. facing what could be a catastrophic winter, top government officials warned Americans anew to wear masks, practice social distancing and
follow other basic measures — precautions that Trump and other members of the administration have often disdained.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA commissioner, warned on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the U.S. death toll could be approaching 400,000 by the end of January. “As bad as things are right now,” he said, “they’re going to get a lot worse.”
Deaths per day have surged to an average of more than 2,160, a level last seen during the dark days in April, when the outbreak was centered around New York.
A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel is scheduled to take up a request Thursday to authorize emergency use of Pfizer’s vaccine. Vaccinations could begin days later, though initial supplies will be rationed, and shots are not expected to become widely available until the spring.
In California, the first place to enact a statewide lockdown last spring, new stay-at-home orders took effect Sunday night in Southern California, much of the San Francisco Bay Area and other hot spots in the state.
The new rules in the state of 40 million people prohibit residents from gathering with those outside their household. Retailers, including supermarkets and shopping centers, can operate with 20% capacity, while restaurant dining, hair salons, movie theaters, museums and playgrounds must shut down.
Hospitals in California are seeing space in intensive care units dwindle amid a surge in infections. Health authorities imposed the order after ICU capacity fell below a 15% threshold in some regions.
Some law enforcement officials, though, said they don’t plan to enforce the rules, and some business owners are warning that they could go under after a year of on-and-off closings and other restrictions.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he hopes the new lockdown order is the last one he has to issue, declaring the vaccine offers “light at the end of the tunnel.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that health care workers and nursing home patients get priority when the first shots become available.
Both Pfizer’s vaccine and a Moderna vaccine that will also be reviewed by the FDA this month require two doses a few weeks apart. Current estimates project that a combined total of no more than 40 million doses will be available by the end of the year. The plan is to use those to fully vaccinate 20 million people.
Dr. Moncef Slaoui, head of Operation Warp Speed, the government’s vaccine development program, suggested on CBS that using those 40 million doses more broadly to reach 40 million people right away would be too risky, because of the possibility of manufacturing delays that could hold up the necessary second doses.
“It would be inappropriate to partially immunize large numbers of people and not complete their immunization,” he said.
But Gottlieb said he would push out as many doses as possible, taking “a little bit of a risk” that the supply would catch up in time for people to get a second dose.