US Progress Against Pandemic Stalls Amid Spread Of More Contagious Variants - Health Dept.

WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th March, 2021) A 3.5 percent rise in the number of US coronavirus cases in the most recent seven-day period suggests the nation is entering a critical phase in efforts to battle the pandemic, as coronavirus variants with increased transmissibility spread, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walenski said on Wednesday.

"We continue to see troubling signs in the trajectory of the pandemic in the US, with the most recent declines in cases and deaths continuing to show signs of stalling. We knew that this could happen as variants emerged and reached more people and more communities," Walensky said during a COVID-19 Task Force briefing.

The CDC director said the most recent seven day average of new cases - 66,000 - represented a 3.5 percent increase from the prior seven days and the latest seven day average for deaths of 2,000 showed a 2.2 percent increase.

She cited the B117 variant that originated in the United Kingdom as a hyper transmissible variant that threatened threatens to hijack efforts to end the pandemic.

Center for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci noted that the UK variant responds "relatively well," to three approved vaccines. But he added that vaccines are less in effective against variants that emerged in Brazil and South Africa, while evidence suggests the same for new variants that emerged in California and New York states.

The Biden administration has set a goal of vaccinating everyone in the United States by the end of May.