Expert sees 'a ray of sunshine' in Covid-19 battle, but deaths and variant cases are growing in the US

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Expert sees 'a ray of sunshine' in Covid-19 battle, but deaths and variant cases are growing in the US

Mon, 2021-01-18 11:11 — mike kraft

Expert sees 'a ray of sunshine' in Covid-19 battle, but deaths and variant cases are growing in the US Despite a steady growth in coronavirus deaths, a medical expert says the United States now has an opportunity to "get a hold of the pandemic." Ralph Ellis and Christina Maxouris, CNN CNN

(CNN) Despite a steady growth in coronavirus deaths, a medical expert says the United States now has an opportunity to "get a hold of the pandemic."

"We're going to see a lot of deaths in the next two months but there is a ray of sunshine," Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a George Washington University medical professor and CNN medical analyst, said Monday on "New Day."

Over the last four days for the first time in months, we've seen a steady decline ... a thousand per day fewer hospitalizations in the United States," he said. "We've seen the same trend in new cases."

Nationally, hospitalizations are now around 124,000 per day, down from 132,000 a few weeks ago. Reiner also said testing has increased in recent weeks, but test positivity has dropped to around 11% from a peak of 14% a few weeks ago.

"All of those metrics point to the conclusion that we may have passed the peak," he said. "If we stay put now and we mask up and we get vaccines into arms as quickly as possible, we can start to get a hold of this pandemic."

Still, Covid-related deaths are nearing 400,000 in the United States and multiple US states have now reported cases of a new Covid-19 variant first detected in the UK.

The number of cases of this variant are likely to "double every week," according to Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner. ...

A new Covid-19 variant is now "increasingly being found in multiple counties throughout California," state health officials announced Sunday in a news release.

The variant, known as 452R, is different from the B.1.1.7 variant first detected in the United Kingdom, health officials say. As testing for variants has ramped up in California, the 452R version has been identified more frequently since November and has been identified in large outbreaks in Santa Clara County. ...

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