Though the number of Americans who have died from COVID remains high, Vice President Joe Biden has proclaimed an end to the pandemic in the United States.
While “we still have a problem,” Mr. Biden reassured the public that things are looking up. According to the latest numbers, the virus is responsible for the deaths of over 400 Americans every single day.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan declared last week that the end of the pandemic is “in sight.”
In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes that aired on Sunday, Mr. Biden said the United States is still doing “a lot of work” to manage the virus in an interview with CBS.
Part of the president’s weekend interview, which aired on ABC, was shot on the floor of the Detroit Auto Show, where he waved to the spectators.
He remarked, “If you look around, you’ll see that nobody is hiding their identities behind masks.” It would appear that everyone is in quite decent health… I believe that things are shifting.
U.S. media reported on Monday that administration officials had assured them the comments did not indicate a shift in policy and that there were no immediate plans to end the current COVID-19 public health emergency.
The public health emergency declared by the United States in January 2020 was extended through October 13 of that year.
To date, the coronavirus has caused the deaths of over a million Americans.
According to research conducted by Johns Hopkins University, approximately 3,000 people have lost their lives over the last week.
In comparison, approximately 23,000 deaths were attributed to the virus in only one week in January 2021. The vaccination rate in the United States is estimated at around 65%.
Healthcare workers, people in the military, and some foreigners who fly into the U.S. from other countries are still required by the federal government to get vaccinated.
Republican leaders have voiced their disapproval of the president’s comments, with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeting, “Biden now says ‘the pandemic is gone,’ while he’s forcing tens of thousands of healthy soldiers out of the military with his COVID vaccine demand.”
In the past few weeks, public health officials have been cautiously hopeful that the world is starting to recover from the pandemic. However, they still warn people to be careful.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, welcomed the progress made on Monday.
On the other hand, he recently said at a think tank in Washington, DC, that the number of daily deaths was still “unacceptably high.”
Dr. Fauci stated, “We are not where we need to be if we are going to be able to ‘live with the virus.'”
He added that new forms of COVID-19 could yet appear, he added, especially over the upcoming colder months.
After new vaccines for the Omicron form that is now circulating in the U.S. were approved, health officials have been telling people to keep getting their shots.
Last week, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the world has never been in a better position to put an end to the pandemic.
He emphasized that “we are not there yet.” However, relief is on the horizon.
The National Bureau of Economic Research reported last week that COVID-related sickness had reduced the US workforce by around 500,000 people, and this has had a considerable impact on the economy.
According to Vice President Biden, the pandemic has had a “profound” effect on the American people.
He went on to say that the event had a profound impact on people’s perspectives on “everything”: their personal lives, their families, the nation, and their local neighborhoods.
“It’s been a trying period. Definitely not easy. “
Since the pandemic’s inception, more than 6.5 million people have perished around the globe. The United States, then India, and finally Brazil, have all suffered the greatest loss of life.
