How many people have died from coronavirus? The United States touches the million contagions of coronavirus

How many people have died from coronavirus? The United States touches the million contagions of coronavirus. 

The United States is very close to surpassing one million coronavirus infections, while the number of deaths due to the pandemic is close to 55,000, as several states have reactivated some sectors of the economy and others are preparing plans for the reopening.

Contagion cases across the country rose to 972,085 this Sunday and the death toll from the disease reached 54,900, according to the latest NBC News figures.

New York remains the state most affected by the new coronavirus, with 294,491 infected and 22,309 deaths. They are followed by New Jersey (109,038 infections and 5,938 deaths), Massachusetts (54,938 infected and 2,899 deaths) and Michigan (37,778 infected and 3,315 deaths).

Other states that also suffer heavily from the consequences of the pandemic are Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, and Florida.

REACTIVATE THE ECONOMY

For now, only four states partially reopened their economies (Alaska, Georgia, Oklahoma and South Carolina), while the vast majority continue to analyze the strategy to return to normal by stages.

The US wants to revive its economy, but there are certain disturbing scientific unknowns about the coronavirus that go beyond the logistics of applying the tests to detect if a person is sick with COVID-19.

In an ideal world, everyone would be vaccinated and life would return to normal, but despite unprecedented efforts, there will be no vaccine for the foreseeable future.

"We will all be wearing masks for some time," predicted Dr. Rochelle Walensky, chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, during a podcast meeting with the US Medical Association.

Three great unknowns top the list.

WHO IS CONTAGIOUS?

"To speak with full transparency, the big question here" is the asymptomatic contagion, said Dr. Deborah Brix, coordinator of the White House commission to combat the coronavirus.

From the beginning, authorities have been correct in telling people to stay home if they are sick, but according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, a virologist at the US National Institutes of Health, between 25 and 50% of those infected possibly do not exhibit symptoms, so you can never know if the person next to you at the supermarket checkout is contagious.

And even for people who begin to experience symptoms, it is not entirely clear when they will stop being contagious after recovering. That is why the authorities in the US exhort people to wear cloth masks in public and at the same time keep a distance of two meters from each other.

To resume economic activity, authorities say, it is necessary to have more evidence to discover and isolate the sick, while tracking and quarantining those who had contact with them, but it is not a panacea.

"If you get tested today, that does not mean that tomorrow or the next day or the other or the other one can have contact with someone who does not even know they are infected and believe they tested negative," Fauci said at a conference recent press in the White House.

WHO IS IMMUNE?

Doctors believe that people who had COVID-19 will have some kind of immunity against a relapse, but they don't know how strong that protection will be or how long it will last.

Another crucial question: Will people who survive a serious infection have greater immunity than those with mild symptoms or no obvious symptoms?

To find out, scientists are creating blood tests that look for antibodies - proteins that the immune system creates to fight an infection. Those tests do not detect active infections as clinical tests do to detect those who are sick. The intention of the blood tests is to determine who was infected, whether they knew it or not, including those who had few or no symptoms and those who, being ill, were unable to obtain a diagnostic test.

As tests multiply, researchers will look for the level of antibodies they consider to be the key threshold of protection. They also try to determine if having a certain type of antibody is more important than the total count.

"How long is the protection? A month, three months, six months, a year? ”Asked Fauci. "We have to humbly and modestly acknowledge that we don't know everything."

Another hurdle: Dozens of types of antibody tests are being sold without proof that they deliver on what they promise. Some countries have reported that certain tests give totally incorrect results. Among other things, scientists must demonstrate that tests do not confuse antibodies from other respiratory diseases with those generated by COVID-19.

The situation is so troubling that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner recently warned that the agency only gave "authorization for use in emergencies" to four tests and that it is working urgently to validate others.

WHO IS AT RISK?

One of the first warnings has been confirmed: Older adults are especially susceptible to COVID-19. So are people of any age who have lung, heart, diabetes or other disorders.

But being young and apparently healthy is not a guarantee. Many twentysomethings, thirtysomethings and even children are infected and some die.

"Some people get over it very well and others die," Fauci said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. "There is more to it than age and an underlying disorder."

There are some theories. Perhaps genetic differences are a factor in the body's response to infection. Many deaths are attributed to the overactive immune response, the so-called "cytokine storm." Some scientists are studying variations in cell receptors - the anchor points that allow the virus to attach to and penetrate a cell.

Whatever the culprit is, there is no way to predict who will be a critical case, but that will become increasingly important if some of the experimental therapies under study turn out to be effective, Fauci said, because doctors will have to know whether to focus. treatment in the seriously ill or rapidly reaching the newly infected.

"If it acts like any other virus, you always want to attack it early," he said.