COVID-19 hospitalizations among older Americans have fallen by more than 70% since the beginning of the year, and deaths in that age group also appear to have declined, providing strong evidence that the vaccination campaign is working.
Now, the task is to convince more young people in the country to get vaccinated.
The decline in severe cases among people 65 and older is especially encouraging as the elderly have accounted for about 80% of COVID-19 deaths since the pandemic hit the United States, where some 570,000 people have died in cause of disease.
Deaths from COVID-19 in the United States have fallen to an average of 700 per day, compared with the peak of more than 3,400 deaths registered in mid-January.
“What we’re seeing is exactly what we expected and wanted to see: As vaccination rates go up, hospitalization and death rates go down,” said Jodie Guest, a public health expert at Emory University.
The best available data shows that deaths from COVID-19 among Americans 65 and older have declined by more than 50% since their peak in January. The picture is not entirely clear because the most recent data on COVID-19 deaths by age from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is not complete and is subject to review.
However, the numbers show that the decline in deaths among the nation’s elderly is driving an overall decline in deaths from COVID-19, vindicating the United States’ strategy of putting the elderly first or foremost. sites lined up to receive the vaccine once it became available in the winter.
The trend reflects what is happening in other countries with high vaccination rates, such as Israel and Great Britain, and marks a stark contrast to the worsening crisis in places like Brazil and India, which lag far behind in their vaccination campaigns.
According to US government statistics, hospitalizations have been reduced by more than 50%, but more drastically among the elderly, who have been eligible for vaccines longer and have received them with enthusiasm.
Two-thirds of the elderly in the United States have already received both doses of the vaccine, compared with just one-third of all adults. More than 80% of older people have received at least one dose of the vaccine, compared to just over 50% of all adults.
However, the demand for vaccines in the country appears to be declining despite the fact that injections are now available to all adults. Average daily doses administered appeared to drop from 3.2 million to 2.9 million in mid-April, according to CDC figures.
“My concern is whether the vaccine will be so widely accepted in these younger age groups,” Guest said. “If not, we will not see the positive impact of vaccines in these younger age groups that we have seen in our older population.”
Meanwhile, new coronavirus cases in the United States have stalled at worrying levels since March, averaging more than 60,000 a day, matching the numbers recorded during last summer’s rebound. New infections are increasingly occurring among people in their 30s, 40s and 50s, who also account for a larger portion of hospitalizations.
If enough people are vaccinated, COVID-19 cases would begin to decline as the virus finds fewer and fewer people to infect. Guest and other experts noted that Israel appeared to have reached that threshold last month after about 40% of its population of 9 million people received the two doses of the vaccine.
However, the United States faces problems carrying out mass vaccinations due to its greater size, diversity, geography, and health disparities.
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