COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. should begin dropping around parts of the country by one week from now, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director stated, as Americans stick to mitigation efforts that help check the spread of the infection.
So far, more than 5.5 million Americans have been tainted and at least 174,255 have died, as per Johns Hopkins University. The country’s seven-day average for daily deaths has topped 1,000 for at least 24 days straight.
Mitigation measures like controlling groups and closing down bars work, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said Thursday, yet it requires significant investment until they’re reflected in the numbers.
“It is important to understand these interventions are going to have a lag, that lag is going to be three to four weeks,” Redfield said in an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association. “Hopefully this week and next week you’re going to start seeing the death rate really start to drop.”
The daily average of new cases in the US has been on the decline for weeks. Redfield’s message comes as one Trump administration official said Covid-19 case trends are now “going in the right direction.”
But Redfield warned that while officials have observed cases fall across red zones in the country, cases in yellow zones across the heart of the US aren’t falling.
“Middle America right now is getting stuck,” he said. “That is why it’s so important for Middle America to recognize the mitigation that we talked about … it’s for Middle America too, the Nebraskas, the Oklahomas.”
“We don’t need to have a third wave in the heartland right now,” he said. “We need to prevent that.”
Photo credit: Kevin Dietsch | Reuters
News source: CNN
