One look at coronavirus hot spots across the country show what might be next in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Per The Associated Press, areas of the Mountain West and parts of the North are seeing spikes in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths right now, which could be a sign of what’s to come in the winter months.
- The coronavirus is spreading to the North and West as people head indoors. This might only continue as the pandemic moves into the winter months.
- “We’re going to see a lot of outbreaks in unvaccinated people that will result in serious illness, and it will be tragic,” Dr. Donald Milton, of the University of Maryland School of Public Health, told The Associated Press.
There’s already some fear out that there the delta variant may create more coronavirus cases this winter, especially among those who don’t get the vaccine, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- “We are now heading in the right direction ... but with cases still high, we must remain vigilant heading into the colder, drier winter months,” she said Wednesday, per CNN.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NPR that keeping hospitalizations and deaths low will be the main goal for the winter.
- “We’re looking for a level of control ... where the level of infection — due to vaccination predominantly, but also people who may have been infected and have some degree of protection — that doesn’t disrupt society the way the COVID-19 outbreak is currently doing with us,” Fauci said.
- “So as we go into the winter months with the challenge of a respiratory infection being worse in the winter months, we can get through this if we really put a lot of effort into getting as many people vaccinated as we possibly can,” Fauci said.