Meanwhile, vaccines continue to gain a foothold. An FDA advisory panel voted Tuesday to recommend the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children ages 5 to 11. This is in addition to the release of booster shots and vaccine mandates for some workers.
Currently, more than 57 percent of the country’s population is fully vaccinated, with more than 70 percent of Vermont’s population fully vaccinated. Puerto Rico and Guam raised that number a little higher as about 73 percent of their populations have been 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 in most parts of the United States are trending down, colder months may trigger another increase. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation expects a 40% increase in cases by mid-January 2022.
However, Truelove, which is part of a team at Johns Hopkins working at the Covid-19 Scenario Modeling Hub, expects a steady decline in new cases.
“Excluding any introduction of a new variant, we should expect a relatively mild impact of Covid during that period,” he said.
patrick martin Contributed.
