Meanwhile, vaccinations continue to gain footing. An advisory panel for the Food and Drug Administration voted to recommend the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 on Tuesday. That’s in addition to the rollout of booster shots and vaccine mandates for some workers.
Currently, more than 57 percent of the country’s population is fully vaccinated, with Vermont having more than 70 percent of its population fully vaccinated. Puerto Rico and Guam have pushed that number slightly higher with about 73 percent of their populations fully vaccinated.
West Virginia, which initially rolled out vaccines faster than most states, has the lowest vaccination rate in the country at 41 percent.
While cases across most of the U.S. are heading down, the colder months could bring another surge. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation is projecting a 40 percent rise in cases by mid-January 2022.
However, Truelove, who is part of a team at Johns Hopkins that works on the Covid-19 Scenario Modeling Hub, projects a continued decline in new cases.
“Barring any introduction of a new variant, we should expect to have a relatively mild impact of Covid during that time,” he said.
Patrick Martin contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
