Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, said Friday it will be well into next year before life begins to return pre-pandemic normalcy. That all depends, he said, on whether a vaccine is available later this year.
Fauci told MSNBC that “by the time you mobilize the distribution of the vaccinations, and you get the majority or more of the population vaccinated and protected, that’s likely not going to happen till the mid or end of 2021.”
Hours after Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced that Dr. Joan Duwve would be the state’s new health director, Duwve turned down the position because she was informed of the harassment her predecessor, Dr. Amy Acton, had faced because of lockdown orders she gave early in the coronavirus outbreak.
Duwve, who was South Carolina’s public health director, said in a statement in South Carolina’s The State newspaper, "In conversations preparing for the transition to the Ohio Department of Health, I was informed that the former director’s family had faced harassment from the public.” Duwve said, “While I have dedicated my life to improving public health, my first commitment is to my family. I am a public figure. My family is off-limits. I withdrew my name from consideration to protect my family from similar treatment."
Some hospitals in the U.S. have been turning down part of their allocated supply of remdesivir, the COVID-19-fighting drug made by Gilead Sciences, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department confirmed Friday.
From July 6 to September 8, state and territorial public health systems accepted about 72% of the remdesivir they were offered by HHS, a spokesperson confirmed Friday to Reuters. Hospitals then bought about two-thirds of what the states and territories accepted.
The government has been leading the distribution of the drug, but that effort expires at the end of the month, and some hospitals are stockpiling remdesivir because they don’t know what the availability of the drug will be after September and want to be prepared if the pandemic flares this winter.
Gilead did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Hospital say their supplies of the drug are adequate partly because they are only using it to treat the sickest patients despite the Food and Drug Administration greenlighting its use in more cases.
Dr. Adarsh Bhimraj, an infectious disease specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, said he is skeptical about using remdesivir in patients with moderate COVID-19, especially given the price.
The resulting surplus of remdesivir, which costs $3,120 for a six-vial intravenous course, contrasts the early days of the pandemic, when the new drug was in short supply in some regions.
For the first time since mid-March, Canada has gone 24 hours without reporting a death from COVID-19, according to public health agency data released late Friday.
Canada has 9,214 deaths from COVID-19 and 137,676 confirmed cases of the coronavirus disease as of Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Clown Tapetito, wearing protective gear amid the new coronavirus, poses for a photo before disinfecting a home free of charge, in El Alto, Bolivia, Sept. 11, 2020.
Most of the country’s provinces are easing their pandemic restrictions and schools are opening for in-person classes, leading to a mild uptick in infections in the last few days. The rest of the provinces, including British Columbia have added new curbs to halt the spread of the virus.
Health officials say Canada's experience with SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, helped them to be better prepared. SARS killed 44 people in Canada, the only country outside Asia to report deaths from that outbreak in 2002 and 2003.
Canada's first recorded case of coronavirus was in Toronto, on January 25.
The global count of COVID-19 cases is just over 28.5 million, according to Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. continues to lead the world with the most infections at more than 6.4 million and deaths at more than 193,000.