Keep masks on, NIH director pleads as Texas enters 1st weekend without statewide Covid-19 restrictions

In Houston, a hospital leader told CNN he was worried about how he has seen people respond.

“If you go out of the clubs, they’re full. I mean, people just get together, no masks,” Dr. Joseph Varon, chief of staff at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, told CNN on Saturday.

“I’m sure we’ll have an increase” in cases, Varon said.

Given the spread of variants in some locations and increasing vaccinations, the IHME predicts that daily mortality figures will drop to 651 per day on May 1st.

But if the country approaches pre-pandemic mobility levels, daily deaths would still be in excess of 1,200 by May 1, according to the IHME model.

The country has averaged more than 1,380 deaths from Covid-19 a day in the past week, well below a mid-January peak, around 3,400, but still above its highest summer levels. according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

After a year of Covid-19, it is unclear when all schools will reopen

Starting Monday, teachers and educators from the 50 states will be eligible to receive vaccines against Covid-19. Eligibility occurs as the United States increases vaccination efforts in hopes of halting the spread of coronavirus variants and setting a course toward a certain sense of normalcy.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told Tapper that the safe reopening of the country’s more than 14,000 public school districts for full classes five days a week is his top priority, but he still can’t say when this will happen.

“This is unprecedented, I mean, we are in the middle of a pandemic. It seems to me that (schools) are following science and I think this is hard work. There is no playbook for this in any leadership course. “. Cardona said.

“It’s a balance to make sure we’re moving the needle in the right direction to get students to school every day, but we need to do that by making sure we’re adhering to the mitigation strategies that have worked to keep the our safe schools. “

To date, more than 100 million doses have been distributed for Covid-19 vaccines in the United States, and President Joe Biden has said that by May 1, all adults in the United States will be able to be inoculated.

We hope to have enough vaccine for all adults in the United States by the end of May

The U.S. adult population is approximately 255 million people, according to census data.

Meanwhile, Michigan residents over the age of 16 will be able to get their vaccines starting April 5, ahead of the national calendar, state officials announced Friday.

Fauci says the treatment shows “really dramatic” results in fighting Covid-19

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that while monoclonal antibodies are a “very fluid area of ​​research,” many of these treatments show “really dramatic” results that they help fight the disease.

Fauci, who spoke Friday at the White House Covid-19 response team briefing, referred to several recent studies that have shown the great help these treatments offer patients at the onset of the disease. These are some of the only treatments authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat Covid-19 patients who are not hospitalized and are still underused.

“The reason I point this out is that recently there has been a considerable amount of information about some of the monoclonal antibodies used in the prevention and treatment of Covid-19,” Fauci said.

Fauci added that the treatments are working for now. There is some concern that variants may make treatments less effective, but companies continue to work on several updated approaches to cocktails that scientists believe will work against variants.