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COVID-19 surge brings U.S. hospitals to the brink as second vaccine nears approval


WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States pushed ahead with its immunization program on Thursday and prepared to ship nearly 6 million doses of a new vaccine ahead of regulatory approval, as a continued surge in the U.S. coronavirus pushed beleaguered hospitals further to the brink of collapse.

A health care worker draws a coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine from a vial at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in South Los Angeles, California, U.S., December 17, 2020. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

COVID-19 hospitalizations hit a record high for the 19th day in a row, with nearly 113,000 coronavirus patients in U.S. health care facilities across the country on Wednesday and 3,580 more deaths, the most in a single day.

The virus has claimed more than 311,000 lives in the United States so far, and health experts warn the crisis will deepen this winter as intensive care units (ICUs) overwhelm and hospital beds fill corridors.

“We expect the number of dead bodies to outstrip the capacity to hold them,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said at a news conference on Thursday, adding that intensive care units in the country’s second-largest city are completely depleted.

U.S. cases rose by at least 239,018 on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, the largest one-day increase since the pandemic began, bringing the number of known infections nationwide to more than 17 million.

The toll mounts as U.S. regulators weigh whether to grant emergency use authorization for a vaccine developed by Moderna Inc., just a week after an early-stage vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and German partner BioNTech SE was licensed for mass distribution.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s external advisory panel overwhelmingly backed Moderna’s vaccine candidate for emergency use after a one-day meeting on Thursday. FDA authorization could come as early as Friday.

Both vaccines require two doses for each recipient, three to four weeks apart.

Shipments of the first 2.9 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine began Sunday and are still in the arms of hospitals and doctors, nurses and other frontline medical professionals across the country.

Some of the first vaccines were also administered to residents and staff of long-term care facilities. Other essential workers, the elderly and those with chronic medical conditions would be next on the list.

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A vaccine is still months away from being widely available to the public on demand, and polls have found many Americans are hesitant to get vaccinated.

Some are skeptical about overall immunization, and others are wary of the unprecedented speed with which the first vaccines are being developed and rolled out — 11 months after the first recorded case of COVID-19 in the United States.

Health authorities have sought to reassure Americans that large clinical trials and rigorous scientific scrutiny have found the vaccines to be safe and highly effective at preventing disease.

The messages were combined with urgent calls for Americans to practice social distancing and wear masks until widespread vaccination.

Infections continued to spread almost unabated across much of the country, data showed, apparently driven by increased virus transmission as many Americans ignored warnings to avoid social gatherings and non-essential travel during the Thanksgiving holiday last month.

California has been hit especially hard in recent weeks, with many hospitals reporting that intensive care units are at or near capacity, a dire situation that has prompted the reimposition of sweeping stay-at-home orders across much of the state.

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“Hospitals and health care workers continue to be stretched to capacity, while our conditions continue to exceed our expectations. We’re not even through the holidays,” said Adam Blackstone, a spokesman for the Southern California Hospital Association.

In San Bernardino County, available ICU space has dropped to zero and newly admitted patients at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center are lining up on beds in hallways waiting for care, spokeswoman Justine Rodriguez told Reuters.

With medical staff under increasing pressure, expanding vaccination coverage is critical to preventing the health care system from collapsing.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told CNBC on Thursday that 5.9 million doses of the Moderna vaccine have been allocated to state governments to receive and ready to distribute nationwide starting over the weekend.

The Moderna vaccine has lower refrigeration requirements than the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, making it a better option for remote and rural areas.

Yet even among the small group of health care workers designated as the first recipients of the vaccine, there has been ambivalence about the vaccine.

“Some people are on the sidelines. Some people think we need to get it done. “It splits down the middle,” said Diego Montes Lopez, 28, of the Martin Luther King Jr. community in South Los Angeles. A phlebotomist at a hospital said this about a colleague after he received an injection.

But Dr. Simon Mates, co-medical director of the ICU at California Dignity Health Hospital Medical Center in downtown Los Angeles, said doctors and nurses he knows believe the vaccine is coming at a critical time.

“Our biggest concern was: ‘What if one of us gets sick?’ But now that there is a vaccine, that concern seems to be fading.” Matz was informed Wednesday that he had been vaccinated as a participant in a Pfizer trial. Vaccines, not placebos. “It’s one less thing to worry about.”

Reporting by Susan Heavey, Sharon Bernstein, Dan Whitcomb, Manas Mishra, Peter Szekely, Richard Cowan, Susan Cornwell, Lucy Nicholson and Anurag Maan; Writing by Daniel Trota and Steve Gorman; Editing: Steve Orlofsky, Bill Berkrot, Grant McCool and Richard Pullin



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