dr. Ashish K. Jha, the White House’s new Covid-19 coordinator, said on Tuesday that as the United States sees an increase in known cases of coronavirus and keeps an eye out for new variants, the government was not trying to cure every infection. fuses.
When he first appeared at a White House press conference since taking on the role earlier this month, Dr. Jha’s relatively low number of new deaths — although about 300 a day was “still too high,” he added — and hospitalizations at their lowest point in the pandemic. Those numbers, set against the rising number of cases across the country, amounted to a promising “inflection,” he said.
When asked what Americans should think of high-profile people like Vice President Kamala Harris who test positive for the virus, Dr. Jha that with such a contagious virus spread “it would be difficult to make sure nobody gets Covid in America”.
“That’s not even a policy goal,” he said. “The aim of our policy should be: of course to minimize as many infections as possible, but to ensure that people do not become seriously ill.”
The average number of confirmed new cases per day in the United States — more than 49,000 per day as of Monday, according to a DailyExpertNews database — is comparable to the level last seen in late July, even if the number of cases with has increased more than 50 percent. Over the past two weeks, infectious disease experts have attributed a trend to new Omicron subvariants.
dr. Jha warned that “we will see the number of cases rise and fall during this pandemic as we move into the weeks, months and years to come.” The main reflection of progress, he said, would be whether health care systems are under pressure and whether people are hospitalized with and dying from Covid-19.
Since Omicron’s arrival in the United States, other federal health officials have made similar arguments. dr. Janet Woodcock, then the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told lawmakers in January that infections were inevitable for many people.
“It’s hard to process what’s really happening right now, which is that most people are going to get Covid,” she said. “What we need to do is make sure the hospitals can still function, transportation, you know, other essential services are not disrupted while this is happening.”
That thinking is enshrined in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recent changes to its mask-wearing guidelines, which use Covid-related hospital admissions and the percentage of hospital beds occupied by Covid patients, in addition to the number of virus cases, as markers for whether certain communities can do without masks.
Every day, about 15,000 people are in US hospitals with the virus, comparable to the number in the first weeks of the pandemic. dr. Jha pointed out on Tuesday the protection offered by vaccines and treatments, including Pfizer’s antiviral pill Paxlovid, which he said is the government’s new effort to reach vulnerable Americans and doctors he said were too hesitant to give the drug. to prescribe.
He also pleaded with lawmakers to fund more of the federal Covid-19 response as an aid package that would inject $10 billion into the effort has stalled in the Senate. dr. Jha showed a chart showing other countries investing in more vaccines and drugs, a clear suggestion that the United States was negligent in prioritizing the same issues.
That aid package will not include what the White House had hoped would be billions more in funds for global efforts to respond to Covid-19, including the work to get gunfire.
“There are people in this country who sometimes think we can handle a global pandemic alone,” said Dr. yah. “That’s not a thing. You can not do that.”
