Top officials in the Biden administration are sounding the alarm on the noticeable trend of rising coronavirus cases. New daily infection rates are rising to nearly 100,000 every single day. With memorial day weekend looming ahead and as the nation gathers together the inevitability of rising cases is a certain possibility. As of May 2022, reports of COVID-19-related deaths have topped one million in the United States, according to John Hopkins University. The first recorded death was recorded on May 6, 2020, since then the number has risen later that year to 200,000 on September 22, 2020.

Additional gains spiked to 100,000 later that year, and on the beginning month of the year January 18, 2021, numbers were at 400,000, hitting half a million by February 23, 2021. current numbers of deaths are enough to rival the numbers of populations in entire states in the country or even entire cities. Some examples such as Delaware at a population of 1 million, Rhode Island at 1.10 million, or even Austin Texas at 1.03 million.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director, Yasmeen Abutaleb is urging people in communities listed as yellow or orange that has rising numbers of infections and hospitalizations to wear face masks in public indoor spaces and take any additional precautions for further protection. Trends during the two previous summers suggest that a surge is expected in the summer months due to heat forcing residents to stay inside.

Due to Omicron variants showing an adept ability to ward off immunity, concerns of infection cases rise to million during the winter. Immunity overtime from vaccines and prior infections from Omicron in a few months. Effectiveness remains uncertain, companies such as Moderna and Pzifer combine multiple versions of coronavirus to protect against omicron.

“History should judge us harshly on the number of people that we could have prevented from getting infected, and from hospitalization and even [death],” stated Syra Madad, DHSc, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Harvard University, and the New York City hospital system.

Written by Skye Leon
Edited by Sheena Robertson

Sources:
The Washington Post: Top Biden health officials sound warning on rising coronavirus infections; by Yasmeen Abutaleb
Medscape: US Tops 1M COVID Deaths: ‘History Should Judge Us Harshly’

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Inset Image Courtesy of Victoria Pickering‘s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License