Dear Reader:

Worldometer, Dec 28: There are more than 81 million Covid-19 cases and getting closer to 2 million Covid-19 deaths worldwide; getting close to 20 million cases, and closer to 350 thousands deaths in the U.S.; over 10 million cases and getting closer to 150 thousand deaths in India.

CNN: For 26 days in a row, more than 100,000 people have been hospitalized fighting coronavirus, Dec 28: “December has been a devastating month for coronavirus spread in the US. More than 63,000 Americans have died so far this month — the most since the pandemic began… One hospital in Southern California is facing the possibility of rationing the limited number of ICU beds and treatment equipment due to the surge of cases, meaning health care providers may have to make decisions of who gets treatment and who does not..And with waves of holiday travel, health experts predict cases will only grow. More than 1.1 million people were screened at airports on Saturday, according to the TSA. More than 616,000 were screened on Christmas Day alone…

“Nearly 2 million Covid-19 vaccine doses have been administered in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than 9.5 million doses have been distributed. Those numbers now include both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines… With vaccines likely not widely available until the summer, experts have cautioned Americans not to let their guard down as vaccinations begin and to continue wearing masks, social distancing, avoiding crowds and gatherings, and regularly washing their hands…

“For vaccines to really take hold and achieve herd immunity from the virus, 70% to 85% of the population would need to achieve immunity to it, Fauci said Sunday… The measles vaccine is about 98% effective, Fauci said, and when below 90% of the population is vaccinated against measles, there starts to be a breakthrough against herd immunity and people start to get infected. ‘So, I made a calculation that Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2, is not as nearly as transmissible as measles, measles is the most transmissible infection you can imagine,’ he said. ‘So, I would imagine that you would need something a little bit less than the 90%, that’s where I got to the 85.”

Health: Dr. Fauci warns ‘Worst is still to come (Dec 27): “California hospitals are full to overflowing. States down South—including onetime epicenters Florida and Texas—are seeing cases rise… Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, spoke on CNN’s State of the Union this morning to say, well, it can get worse. And it will…

“‘I want to ask about something that President-Elect Biden said this week,’ said anchor Dana Bash. ‘He said the darkest days in the battle against COVID are ahead of us. Dr. Fauci, as you know, over a hundred thousand of our fellow Americans spent their holiday hospitalized with COVID-19 and we’re averaging nearly 200,000 new cases more than 2,000 deaths each day. Do you agree that the worst is still yet to come?’

“‘I do,’ answered Fauci, ‘and the reason I’m concerned—and my colleagues in public health are concerned also—is that we very well might see a post-seasonal—in the sense of Christmas, New Year’s—surge. And as I’ve described it as this ‘surge upon a surge,’ because if you look at the slope, the incline of cases that we’ve experienced as we’ve gone into the late fall and soon to be early winter, it is really quite correctly when you’re dealing with a baseline of 200,000 cases, new cases a day, and about 2,000 deaths per day with the hospitalizations are over 120,000. We’re really at a very critical point…When you travel, you see pictures on the TV screens, then of people at airports, crowded in lines, trying to stay physically separated, but it’s so difficult to do that. And that generally is followed [by a surge]. When people get to the destination, they want to be—you’re going to have mixing of household people at a dinner or at a social function. Those are the things that naturally happen. And as much as we advise against it, nonetheless, it happens”.

The Hill: Fauci: Mutant coronavirus strain must be taken “very seriously” (Dec 28): “Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, on Sunday, said people should take the more contagious strain of the coronavirus that has emerged in southeastern England very seriously.’.. Public health officials are examining the new strain ‘very intensively now,’ including questions such as ‘Does it make someone more ill? Is it more serious virus in the sense of virulence? And the answer is, it doesn’t appear to be that way.’

“He added that while their British counterparts have expressed confidence that existing vaccines will be equally effective against the new strain, “we’re going to be doing the studies ourselves,’.. We’re getting isolates of it, making combination of viruses, to be able to directly test, getting sera from people who we have vaccinated, and see if it still neutralizes this new strain, this mutant strain that’s coming from the U.K., as well as from South Africa,’ he added. ‘There’s a similar, but not entirely the same type of mutation that we’re seeing in South Africa.'”.

anita