Rising US Covid-19 death toll: ‘Every one of those deaths is unnecessary,’
“We’ll be able to prescribe this to folks. They’ll take a five-day course and hopefully be able to stay home, not come in for an intravenous infusion and keep folks out of the hospital. So, it’s really very promising news,” Dr. Jonathan Reiner, CNN medical analyst and professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University, told CNN’s Pamela Brown Saturday.
But Reiner noted full immunization of the country — the best method for beating back the pandemic — will not happen due to resistance from some, and a substantial number of Americans have died since late February as vaccine access began to expand.
“We’ve lost 700,000 Americans now and fully 200,000 of those folks have died since vaccines have been available almost to everyone in this country, and every one of those deaths is unnecessary. So even though the news is great for this antiviral agent, really the message that people need to receive is ‘get vaccinated.’ No one needs to die from this virus,” he said.
As progress slowly moves forward nationwide with the rate of inoculations, tens of millions of unvaccinated Americans remain at higher risk for Covid-19.
Different parts of the country continue to have varying levels of success with vaccination efforts. Fifteen states have yet to fully vaccinate more than half of their residents, according to CDC data: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice on Wednesday urged residents of his state to do their part to turn things around. “I keep reminding everybody — all across this wonderful state — that the way we absolutely curb this and stop this is get vaccinated,” he said.
While much of the focus from health experts and officials remains on new inoculations that will help lower hospitalization rates, booster shots for some who were earlier fully vaccinated by the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine are gaining traction.
About 4.74 million people have received an additional dose — or booster — since August 13, CDC data shows, which is a marked increase from less than two weeks ago. The number of recipients stood at around 2.2 million on September 20.
Appearing on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday morning, Dr. Anthony Fauci addressed people who remain hesitant about the vaccines, believing they are too new, saying, “This vaccine has been given to hundreds of millions of people … throughout the world, so although it is ‘new,’ there is a lot of experience with this vaccine.”
“It’s within our capability to make sure that that turnaround we’re…
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