Southern US in contagion wave – ‘more people will die’

The epidemic in the United States has gained a new frightening momentum with dismal and startling records of recent times. In just four days, the previous record from last week, with 590,000 cases, doubled to more than one million infected as reported in one day, on Monday.

According to Bloomberg, this information is also assumed to be an underestimate because many use home tests, where the result is not recorded by the authorities.

However, there may be a lagging effect in the stats, such as on weekends.

Johns Hopkins University reports On January 2, there were 2.8 million cases in one week, also surpassing the previous highest list in January 2021, then 1.7 million cases in one week.

People are feeling the effects of the pandemic immediately by self-isolating and staying at home, which has resulted in flights being canceled, schools and offices closed, hospitals fully occupied and transportation curtailed, leading to a shortage of goods as a result.

Although omikron seems to give moderation Disease processes with a smaller proportion of infected people needing hospital care, and large numbers fear a sharp increase in deaths, although it has not yet appeared in the statistics.

So far, the United States has about 830,000 deaths in the pandemic, and the worst period in nearly a year was in mid-January 2021. At that time, 23,000 people died in one week, according to Johns Hopkins University statistics. This can be compared to the most recent data, with just over 8,700 deaths reported per week on January 2, 2022.

In southern states in particular, a strong Omicron wave is feared, the Washington Post wrote, after “infections have exploded in the northeastern and central United States.” This is partly due to the lower rate of vaccination in the South, but also because state leaders have been less inclined to impose penalties and rules on oral hygiene.

In the United States, there are just over 505 million doses Coronavina vaccine and a total of 62 percent of the US population has been fully vaccinated, According to Our World in Data. It is much lower than many European countries.

In states like Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina, the vaccination rate is low.

data as Produced by The Washington Post It also shows that in these states there has been the largest increase in hospitalizations since Christmas weekend.

According to the paper, it could get worse as omicrons spread from large cities to smaller towns in the countryside, where the vaccination rate is lower.

One state at risk is Florida, which has an average of about 43,000 new cases per day, nearly double when delta disease peaked this summer.

Just before the end of the year, there were alarm reports of increases in infections of up to 1,800 percent in areas like Miami-Dade and Palm Beach.

Georgia is described as “The state where hospital beds are filling up fastest after New Jersey.” Governor Brian Kemp (right) agreed to increase the number of testing sites, deploy 200 National Guard soldiers and hire nearly 1,000 new health workers.

Kemp refused to impose restrictions that might negatively affect entrepreneurship or “divide people into vaccinated and unvaccinated.”

He has been criticized for focusing on dealing with the consequences of the pandemic rather than trying to limit the spread of infection.

“Unfortunately, the deja vu we’re seeing in Georgia also includes the state’s health care department, which, in the face of the expected severe epidemic wave, is doing very little to respond proactively,” said Harry Heymann, professor of public health. at the University of Georgia.

At the same time, researchers say That experience from South Africa shows that Omicron’s first wave can end quickly – Within a week, the spread of the infection may have peaked. But more waves are expected. The American South was hit hard by the pandemic in the summer of 2021, a pattern that is feared to be repeated this year.