400 Americans Are Dying Each Day From Covid—Here’s How That Can Become Nearly Zero

Dr. Anand Parekh, chief medical advisor for the Bipartisan Policy Center, explains how the tools are there to nearly eliminate Covid deaths—they just need to be deployed.

For most Americans, Covid-19 is in the rear-view mirror. Indoor mask use has plummeted, vaccination rates remain sluggish, and, a recent Axios-Ipsos poll shows, few Americans are taking extra steps to avoid infection before going on vacation. Many Americans seem to think the pandemic is now “endemic,” meaning that it will not cause unexpected disruptions to daily lives.

Unfortunately, Covid-19 continues to have what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers a high or medium impact in 73% of America’s counties. Approximately 400 Americans are still dying each day, and that level has remained steady for several months. Were those 400 daily deaths to continue, the United States would lose nearly 150,000 lives to the virus each year, placing it in competition to be the nation’s third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.

Tragically, the vast majority of Covid-19 deaths are now preventable – if all Americans were up to date with vaccines, and if high-risk individuals got treated promptly after testing positive. If all that were to happen, Covid deaths in the U.S. would be nearly zero, as White House Covid-19 Response Team Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation recently.

What can the nation do to make that happen? Put simply, we must embrace the notion that Covid-19 deaths are largely preventable, not inevitable. Instead of trying to put those deaths out of mind, we should focus on what we can do to stop them.

Why are 400 Americans still dying each day? For starters, 15 million seniors have not received their first booster, and only 33% of Americans over 50 and 40% over 65 have received their second booster. In addition, over 20% of adults have not completed their primary vaccination series.

The health impacts of that inaction are sizable. The CDC estimates that among those 50 and older, the unvaccinated had a 29-fold increased risk of dying from Covid-19 and vaccinated people with only one booster had a 4-fold increased risk compared to those with two or more booster doses.

Meanwhile, access to the oral antiviral medication Paxlovid – which reduces the rates at which high-risk people get severe cases of Covid-19 or die from it – is the most limited in zip codes in which people were highly vulnerable to the virus. Moreover, access to and awareness of Evushield – which reduces the risk that immunocompromised people will develop symptomatic Covid-19 for up to six months – remains limited.

To keep Covid-19 and its impact in public consciousness, local health officials should publicly recognize when citizens in their communities lose their lives to the virus. For the same reason, local print and broadcast media should provide coverage of community memorials to those who have died. That should inspire citizens within communities to help each other fully access and use the tools available to all Americans, whether vaccines or treatments.

Local faith organizations, businesses, and other community leaders who have the trust of the population should redouble their efforts reminding individuals that their actions with respect to Covid-19 testing, vaccination, and treatment can make a tangible difference for their community.

Health care professionals should use every office visit, even if unrelated to Covid-19, to remind patients about the need to stay up to date with their vaccinations and have a plan to access treatment if they test positive and are eligible for treatment. The medical community’s attention to preventing and managing chronic conditions such as obesity and diabetes is now even more vital given their detrimental impact on Covid-19 outcomes.

As autumn approaches and the campaign begins to convince all eligible Americans to get the new bivalent vaccine before our third Covid-19 winter, we should not grow numb to the pandemic’s daily toll in lives lost.

The emergency may be over and, as individuals, we may personally be “over” Covid-19, but we cannot forget the tools we now have to fight the pandemic moving forward – tools that can help save almost all the lives we are losing and get us closer to zero deaths. That is a goal that, even in these bitterly divisive times, we should all be able to unite around.

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