The world has killed 2 million Covid-19 and the number of cases is still skyrocketing

The world, especially in the United States, has reached the dreaded Covid-19 threshold, killing 2 million people and hardly expecting numbers to begin to decline soon.

“We want to reach the point where the virus can’t overtake you first,” said Greg Gonzalves, an epidemiologist at the Graduate School of Public Health and co-director of the Global Health Justice Partnership. “It’s very difficult to predict with fine-grained resolution how many people will die from this, even for six months to a year.”

Pfizer Inc.-BioNTech SE Vaccine Deployment and Moderna Inc. Shots are progressing slowly in the United States and are virtually non-existent in many parts of the world, so it is unlikely to control outbreaks as early as summer. In particular, it can take weeks for an infected person to die.

“We have a big wildfire that a pandemic is happening,” Gonzalves said in a telephone interview. “But if there is only a bucket of water in the wildfire, it’s not working.”

Overall, the United States leads all countries with 388,705 people, followed by Brazil, India, Mexico and the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, Covid has already killed more than the combined number of malaria and tuberculosis in the past year, approaching the peak annual AIDS deaths in 2005.

French Prime Minister Jean Castex expects to gradually move out of his pandemic, perhaps by next summer.

Castex said at a press conference in Paris, “This tragedy in which our country lives, the world has lived for months and is oppressing many of us. The top priority for getting out of this crisis. Is to rely on vaccination. ” .. “But it will take months before vaccination can fully protect us, so we must collectively show patience and responsibility.”

In the United States, public health officials say most people will have access to the vaccine by the summer. This blocks the virus and establishes some protection.

Ali Mokdad is a population scientist at the University of Washington and a professor of global health. Here, the Institute for Health Metrics is tracking and modeling outbreaks over the past year.

The institute predicts that by the end of 2021, about 3 million people will not die worldwide. This means that less than one million people will die from the coronavirus this year. The group’s latest analysis estimates that 2.89 million people will die worldwide by the end of the year.

“Until December, it won’t be another million,” Mokudad said in a telephone interview. Regarding infectious diseases, he said, “In the United States, there will be no more deaths of 4,000 people a day.”

According to Mokudad, people need to wear masks until 75% of the population is immunized. It assumes that the vaccine will continue to be deployed, with no further side effects, no new mutations that make it less effective, and that Americans will not start celebrating too soon.

“Vaccines and the weather will reduce the number of cases,” he said. “It is our responsibility to keep doing what we have to do.”

Nevertheless, it has not been confirmed whether the vaccine blocks the spread of the virus itself, but instead it has been shown to prevent the recipient of the vaccine from contracting a symptomatological or severe infection. Still, mortality and hospitalization rates should begin to slow as more and more people gain some protection from the immediate destruction of pathogens.

But even if the United States could stop the outbreak, Gonzalves is concerned that the virus will continue to proliferate elsewhere. “If you can’t put it anywhere, you can’t put it anywhere,” he said. You will always have a new outbreak that sows the seeds of travel. “

Booster shot

Vaccines that are licensed for emergency use in the United States currently promise to protect people, but it is unclear how long that protection will last.

Pfizer continues to research vaccines in the hope that it will move from an emergency use authorization to final approval and determine if regular booster shoots are needed to prevent the virus from reappearing.

Deaths can decrease as more people are vaccinated, but herd immunity (which occurs when the majority of the community is immune to the disease and is less likely to be transmitted from person to person). Experts, including Anthony Fauci, say that it will not decrease until at least 70% of the population is protected.

IHME predicts that this will happen sometime in July. Forch, a top U.S. infectious disease doctor and chief adviser to Joe Biden as soon as he becomes president on January 20, said herd immunity occurred in the summer and returned to normal by the end. .. Year.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization will set a global timeline in 2022.

Global protection

“Even if the vaccine begins to protect the most vulnerable people, we do not intend to achieve herd immunity or herd immunity levels in 2021,” WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said at a press conference on January 11. I mentioned in. “In some countries, it’s not going to protect people around the world, even if it happens in some pockets.”

WHO has ordered more than 2 billion vaccines from low- and middle-income countries through a COVAX facility designed to combat pandemics. According to Bruce Aylward, a Canadian epidemiologist working with WHO, there is also the option to acquire an additional $ 1 billion.

“This problem is not a shortage of vaccines we order from low- and middle-income countries,” Aylward said. “Importantly, these doses are fast enough to protect these healthcare workers at the forefront of these countries, as well as the elderly and other people who may die from them. It’s time to get at least part of the disease. “

Rather than ensuring that wealthy countries are vaccinated first for all populations, Aylward gives priority access to countries at highest risk and most likely to survive the virus worldwide. I asked you to focus on doing so.

“Incredible progress”

“Now is not the time to be disappointed,” said Swaminasan of WHO, an Indian pediatrician known for his tuberculosis and HIV research. “We have made incredible progress. A year ago, no one predicted that there would be more than one vaccine against this new virus that was developed, manufactured, manufactured and distributed. I didn’t. “

“We’re talking about billions here, not just millions,” she said, taking time to expand production of doses. “We have to be a little patient.”