Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, warned of the toll the pandemic would take as Covid deaths rose again to more than 1,000 a day in the US.
“I think the death toll will rise even higher in the next few weeks, but I hope that major breakout states like Florida, Louisiana have peaked and may be falling,” Jha said on “The News with Shepard Smith.” “Let’s hope so.”
The Delta variant has continued to spark a lethal spike that is overwhelming hospitals and driving cases to levels the country hasn’t seen since February. According to Johns Hopkins, there are an average of about 147,000 new infections every day in the United States.
Jha told host Shepard Smith, however, that the Food and Drug Administration’s full approval of Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine could convince enough vaccinated people to contain the spread of Delta.
“I think it will make a huge difference and you see, I think there are some people who have been waiting for this full approval and for them I think it will help,” Jha said. “If you look at the unvaccinated, about two-thirds of them say they would get the vaccine if there was a mandate. So I think you will see a lot of these people jump off the fence and get vaccinated.”
Following the FDA’s decision, the Pentagon announced that it would mandate Covid shots for all active military personnel. New York City’s public school system, the largest in the nation, announced that teachers, caregivers and staff must have at least one dose of the vaccine by the end of September, which affects approximately 148,000 city workers.
