A new course has been crossed. In the United States, more than 600,000 people have died from Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to figures this Tuesday, June 15 from Johns-Hopkins University. A dark cape reminding that hundreds of Americans still die every day from the coronavirus, despite the vaccination campaign.
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This “Sad milestone”, in the words of President Joe Biden, comes as the country continues to complete its reopening and the vaccinated can lift the mask. Almost all restrictions were lifted on Tuesday in California, the most populous state. And New York has reached 70% of adults who have received at least one dose of the vaccine, allowing the governor to announce the lifting of the latest restrictions.
A symbol, knowing that New York had been, for many weeks, the epicenter of the epidemic last year.
Heaviest toll in the world
The United States is by far the country with the heaviest death toll linked to the coronavirus, according to official data communicated by authorities around the world, ahead of Brazil and India.
“There are always too many lives lost”, Joe Biden said on Monday, referring to a “Real tragedy”. “My thoughts are with all those who have lost a loved one”, he said from Brussels, where he was then for the NATO summit. “We still have work to beat this virus. Now is not the time to let your guard down ”, he added, calling on Americans to get vaccinated ” as soon as possible “.
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The immunization campaign has been spurred on by the authorities since the authorization of the first vaccines in December, and peaked in April, with up to more than four million injections per day. But its pace has since slowed down sharply and unvaccinated people still remain vulnerable to the disease.
Just over 52 percent of the U.S. population, or 174 million people, has already received at least one dose of one of the three vaccines licensed in the country, according to health officials.
64% of Americans first vaccinated
Joe Biden has set a goal for 70% of adults to have received at least one dose by July 4, National Day. But that goal is likely to be missed by a few percentage points: just over 64% of adults have received at least one injection so far.
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The House of Representatives observed a moment of silence on Monday in honor of the 600,000 people who died. The 500,000 death mark was exceeded at the end of February, just under four months ago. By way of comparison, only one month had elapsed between the milestone of 400,000 and 500,000 deaths.
The number of daily deaths has therefore fallen sharply, but it still stands at more than 300 per day on average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the country’s main federal public health agency.
The Delta variant worries
And the number of new daily cases has recently started to stagnate, settling on a plateau of around 13,000 cases recorded each day.
In this context, experts are concerned about the arrival of the Delta variant, which initially appeared in India. “Its transmissibility is higher” and “It could be associated with more severe cases”, warned Doctor Anthony Fauci last week during a press briefing by the White House team in charge of managing the health crisis.
This variant currently represents about 10% of cases in the country. But it could gradually replace the Alpha variant, which appeared in England, as the dominant variant. Vaccines remain “Fortunately” effective against Delta, added Anthony Fauci.
“A high vaccination rate is the best way to fight the Delta variant”, Ashish Jha, a researcher at Brown University’s School of Public Health tweeted Monday, saying he was “Worried” in the face of its dissemination ” fast “.
A third of Americans do not want to be vaccinated
However, about a third of the American population has not planned to be vaccinated at the moment, according to a poll in late May of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
If some of the refractories are fiercely opposed to it, others simply remain hesitant, and the authorities are doing everything to convince them, by increasing the number of places for vaccination and assistance to get there, sometimes in partnership with private companies. (transport, childcare, etc.).
States are inventive in convincing their citizens to be vaccinated. Some have even started lotteries for those vaccinated, with prizes going up to several million dollars.
