This is our generation’s D-Day : As US surpasses 500,000 COVID-19 deaths, weary health care workers fight on amid the heartbreak Jorge L. Ortiz, USA TODAY
Experts say COVID-19 vaccines may be less effective on some variants
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SAN FRANCISCO – Nearly a year into a life-altering pandemic, many Americans are fed up with wearing masks, desperate for a return to normalcy and numb to the relentless stream of grim numbers, such as the 500,000 COVID-19 deaths the USA surpassed Monday.
Health care workers don’t want to hear any of that.
They have been working endless hours amid constant death and suffering, forsaking time off and exposing themselves to the disease, leaving them exhausted and with no real indication of when the pandemic will relent.
Healthcare worker Pam Peter, right, prepares to receive her second round of a COVID-19 vaccine in Florida.
Photo: AP We ve never had another situation where people will be required to both be vaccinated and tested when travelling. I can t think of any other disease where that s happened, says Professor Esterman.
Professor Esterman says the 95 per cent efficacy that BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin claims against COVID-19 symptoms is very high for a vaccine, but the estimated 50 per cent efficacy against transmission means the vaccination doesn t guarantee an individual is not infectious. Although the COVID vaccines we have at the moment that have been distributed are showing good protection against the disease, we re not sure if the vaccine is preventing the spread of the virus says Dr Adam Taylor, virologist at Griffith University.
Understanding the numbers
Since mid-July, daily reported COVID-19 cases in Florida remained under 10,000. And, between Sept. 1 and Oct. 16, daily reported cases stayed below 4,000.
That changed on
The
highest single-day case number Florida has reported so far is 17,783 for Jan. 5. The report released on Jan. 2 of 31,518 newly-reported cases is higher, but that reported combined updates for Dec. 31 and Jan. 1.
The
738 confirmed on Sept. 28.
On Oct. 30, Florida became the third state to cross the 800,000 reported COVID-19 cases mark. Then on Dec. 1,
Florida became the third state to surpass 1 million confirmed cases. As of Jan. 6, California and Texas have 2.5 and 1.9 million cases, respectively, according to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.