The World Health Organization has reported a promising update on Tuesday (February 16) regarding the ongoing coronavirus pandemic: The number of new global coronavirus cases has declined by 16% in the past week. And, according to The Washington Post, the number of new U.S. cases has fallen by 23.7 percent in the same time frame.
NBC News reports that the daily average number of new cases in the U.S. has finally fallen below 100,000 on Friday (February 12) – the first time in months that the number of reported new cases stayed below the 100,000 mark.
Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, shared some insight on some of the things Americans are doing right to help curb the spread and bring down the numbers.
“One, we came off of really high numbers from the holidays,” he said.
For reference, the seven-day average has been above 200,000 cases in December 2020, and reached a record high of 250,000 in January 2021, per NBC News.
“Second, there is pretty good evidence that people are doing a better job of social distancing and mask wearing,” Dr. Jha continued.
“Third, I think in a lot of communities, we’ve had so much infection that you have some level of population immunity. Not herd immunity, but enough population immunity that it is causing the virus to slow down,” he added.
However, despite the declining numbers, experts continue to urge everyone to continue practicing social distancing and wearing masks.
“It’s encouraging to see these trends coming down, but they’re coming down from an extraordinarily high place,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday (February 14).
“All of it is really wraps up into we can’t let our guard down,” Dr. Walensky said. “We have to continue wearing masks. We have to continue with our current mitigation measures. And we have to continue getting vaccinated as soon as that vaccine is available to us.”
There’s also the growing concern over the emerging new variants of the COVID-19 virus – some of which are believed to be highly contagious, like the B.1.1.7 strain which was first spotted in the U.K. and has been confirmed in 1,100 cases in the U.S.
“We’ve had three surges. Whether or not we have a fourth surge is up to us,” said former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden. “And the stakes couldn’t be higher — not only in the number of people who could die in the fourth surge, but also in the risk that even more dangerous variants will emerge if there’s more uncontrolled spread.”
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, also pointed out how taking simple precautionary measures have contributed to how the “weekly reported cases (have) fallen by almost half.”
“This shows that simple public health measures work — even in the presence of variants,” he said.
“What matters now is how we respond to this trend. The fire is not out, but we have reduced its size.”
So far, only 4% of the U.S. population have been vaccinated. And Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading expert on infectious diseases recently amended his estimated timeline of when vaccines will be available to the “general public.”
“That timeline will probably be prolonged, maybe into mid- to late May and early June, that’s fine,” Dr. Fauci told CNN.
He also went on to explain that it could also take several months from the vaccine being publicly available to having most of the population inoculated.
“You can say, let’s say in May, vaccines are going to be widely available to almost anybody May, June, but it may take to June, July and August to finally get everyone vaccinated,” he said. “So when you hear about how long it’s going to take to get the overwhelming population vaccinated, I don’t think anybody disagrees that that’s going to be well to the end of the summer and we get in the early fall.”
In the meantime, please continue to practice more immediate measure to curb the spread of COVID-19, such as avoiding large indoor gatherings, wearing masks, practicing physical distancing and using other public health measures.
Take care and stay safe, everyone!
