By Elishya Perera
WASHINGTON DC (CWBN)_ According to data published by Johns Hopkins University, the United States is hurling towards 10 million Coronavirus infections, with over 9.9 million reported cases as of Sunday evening (Nov 08).
The nation nears the grim milestone as global Coronavirus cases exceeded 50 million yesterday.
The United States has reported about a million cases in the past 10 days, the highest rate of infections since the first case was reported in January this year.
As of 9:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, the nation recorded 100,762 new cases and 453 new deaths, marking the fifth highest day of new cases in the country since the pandemic began.
“We’re going to see these case numbers really start to explode,” former US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb said. “It’s not just the cases; it’s the hospitalizations as well. That’s really the number to watch: 53,000 people hospitalized, 10,500 people in ICUs. That’s a lot, and it’s growing very quickly,” he pointed out.
Biden’s plans on US pandemic response
Meanwhile, President-elect, Joe Biden, who criticized President Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic throughout his election campaign, pledged on Friday to make tackling the pandemic a top priority.
“The pandemic is getting significantly more worrisome all across the country,” Biden said. “I want everyone to know on day one, we’re going to put our plan to control this virus into action”.
However, the University of Washington Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation model projects that by the time Biden takes office on 20th January, there will be around 135,000 more COVID-19 deaths than the current total.
“By the time that the Biden-Harris administration takes over, this virus is going to have already run rampant through the communities across the United States,” Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician at Brown University said.
Nevertheless, Biden is expected to announce a 12-member task force on Monday to deal with the pandemic, which will be led by former Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, former FDA Commissioner, Dr. David Kessler and Yale University’s Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith.
In addition, Biden has also promised more testing and contact tracing. Even though testing has been expanded since the earliest days of the pandemic, however, experts say the nation needs tens of millions of tests per day to keep the country open safely.
The President-elect has also said that he intends to work with local governments to mandate masks in public, as studies have shown that if 95% of Americans wore masks, more than 100,000 lives could be saved from Covid-19.
On the other hand, while the Trump administration has spent billions of dollars to develop and scale up Covid-19 vaccines and treatments, Biden has promised to invest $25 billion more to make and distribute vaccines to everyone in the US for free.
More importantly, Biden has said that he intends to have the United States rejoin the World Health Organisation (WHO), following the nation’s withdrawal from the organisation during the Trump administration.
He has also claimed that he will restore the White House National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, which was created by the Obama administration in 2016 to help managing threats like Ebola. The unit was disbanded by the Trump administration in 2018, and merged into other units within the National Security Council.
Edited By Chathushka Perera
