‘Covid is main cause of US deaths this week’
WASHINGTON: US leaders urgently called on Americans to wear masks and threatened even more drastic stay-at-home orders after deaths from the coronavirus set a single-day record, with two people dying every minute.
The development came as the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) tweeted that Covid-19 has now become the leading cause of deaths in the country this week, with 11,820 fatalities. That’s more than the number of Americans who died from heart disease (10,724), tracheal, bronchus and lung cancer (3,965), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (3,766), according to a CBS report.
For the second day in a row, the United States on Friday notched a record number of coronavirus cases in 24 hours, reaching 225,201 new infections, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
President-elect Joe Biden promised a new national strategy that will impose mask mandates where he will have authority, such as federal buildings and for interstate travel, once he takes over on January 20.
Beyond the mandate, he urged people to voluntarily wear masks, a novel approach after lax public discipline to date and Trump’s own timid endorsement of mask-wearing.
Two promising vaccine candidates could soon receive emergency use authorisation from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and some 20 million Americans could be vaccinated this year,
Commissioner Stephen Hahn told Reuters in an interview on Friday. As soon as the FDA approves a vaccine, “I will be first in line and I will encourage my family to take this vaccine,” Hahn said.
Biden also told CNN he would be happy to get vaccinated publicly, as former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have pledged, in order to boost public confidence and persuade vaccine sceptics.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said Friday he expected to see another surge in coronavirus infections two or three weeks after the November 26 Thanksgiving holiday.
“We’re in a very precarious situation. There certainly is light at the end of the tunnel with a vaccine, but we’re not there yet. So we really have to intensify our public health measures to try and blunt this trajectory,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NBC’s Today show. Fauci said he has accepted Biden’s offer to be his chief medical adviser, as well as keep his current position.