Though Paxlovid drugs have been comparatively scarce since they have been approved late final 12 months, Mr. Biden mentioned in his speech on Tuesday that “Pfizer is working time beyond regulation to get us a million drugs this month and greater than double that subsequent month.”
There may be a mean of about 60,000 new U.S. circumstances a day, in accordance with a New York Occasions database. That’s far lower than the day by day common of 800,000 in January, on the peak of the winter surge fueled by Omicron. However it’s nonetheless a lot larger than the day by day caseload final June, earlier than Delta drove a summer season surge.
Even because the White Home asserts that issues are getting higher and new federal pointers counsel 70 % of Individuals can cease sporting masks for now, giant teams of individuals stay in danger. Youngsters below 5 usually are not but eligible for vaccines. On Monday, New York State well being officers launched knowledge displaying that Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine is way much less efficient in stopping an infection in 5- to 11-year-olds than in adolescents or adults.
And an estimated seven million Individuals have weak immune methods, sicknesses or different disabilities that make them extra susceptible to extreme Covid. The White Home introduced final week that it was taking a number of steps to make masks and checks extra accessible to these teams.
However Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist at Yale College, mentioned that with masks mandates dropping across the nation, the administration — and particularly the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, which relaxed its masks steering final week — had put an excessive amount of of a burden on susceptible Individuals to guard themselves.
One masks mandate that won’t be dropped — at the very least not for the subsequent few weeks — is the one Mr. Biden imposed on airplanes, trains and different types of journey. Jeffrey D. Zients, the White Home coronavirus response coordinator, mentioned that it might stay in impact till at the very least March 18, however that the C.D.C. is reviewing it.
In his State of the Union deal with, Mr. Biden known as on Congress to offer new funding for the administration to stockpile extra checks, masks and drugs. And he mentioned that Individuals who ordered free at-home checks from a authorities web site, covidtests.gov, would be capable to order extra subsequent week.
“I can not promise a brand new variant received’t come,” Mr. Biden mentioned. “However I can promise you we’ll do all the pieces inside our energy to be prepared if it does.”