A federal declaration of a health emergency for COVID-19 is formally ending in the United States, ushering in a new era for a country that recorded the most pandemic deaths in the world as the coronavirus swept across America’s health care facilities, schools and entire communities.
more than 1.1 million COVID-19 deaths have been recorded in the US since the emergency declaration was first issued in January 2020, more than any other country in absolute numbers.
The virus has also underscored existing inequalities in American society, caused widespread unemployment and further political polarization as the nation prepared for a deeply divisive presidential election when the pandemic began.
But with infection rates plummeting and hundreds of millions of Americans receiving COVID-19 vaccines, US President Joe Biden’s administration announced in late January that it was ending the emergency declaration.
“To ensure an orderly transition, we have been working for months to continue to meet the needs of those affected by COVID-19,” the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a statement. fact sheet this week.
With the statement set to expire just before midnight on Thursday (03:59 GMT on Friday), Al Jazeera takes a look at how COVID-19 has affected the country.
1.1 million deaths
The United States has recorded more than 1.12 million deaths from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.
The figure represents some 341 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, according to johns hopkins – substantially higher than other wealthy Western nations, such as France and Germany.
While deaths from COVID-19 have decreased significantly in the US compared to earlier periods during the pandemic, the virus has continued to kill about 1,100 people each week across the country.
Almost 104 million infections
There have also been nearly 104 million COVID-19 infections since the pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins data.
US case numbers have ebbed and ebbed several times in the last three years, with the most dramatic wave of infections coming with the arrival of the Omicron variant in the winter of 2022, when there were up to 5.5 million new cases in just one week.
Now, there are approximately 77,000 new cases per week.
“We have the tools to detect and respond to the potential emergence of a high-consequence variant as we continue to monitor the evolutionary status of COVID-19 and the emergence of variants of the virus,” HHS said this week.
22 million jobs lost in the first days of the pandemic
When the US began announcing lockdowns in March 2020, many worried that the virus would be accompanied by widespread economic devastation.
Those concerns were validated early on, as 22 million people lost their jobs between March and April 2020, and applications for assistance programs as unemployment insurance and government health care skyrocketed.
However, the US government invested more than $4.6 trillion in recovery efforts from the pandemic, according to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), and by mid-2022, the country had returned to its pre-pandemic employment rates.
By comparison, after the 2008 financial crisis, which was met with a more subdued government response, the US did not return to pre-crisis unemployment levels until 2015. according the think tank of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).
670 million doses of vaccines
The Biden administration also released a robust effort to develop vaccines in response to the virus, and granted emergency authorization for the use of the first jab in December 2020.
Since then, the US has distributed more than 676 million doses of vaccines, according to health authorities, giving the country an administration rate of about 204 doses per 100 people, well above the global average of about 168 per 100 people.
However, the percentage of people in the US who have received the full initial vaccination protocol is lower than in many other countries; About 69 percent of people in the US have completed the protocol compared to 78 percent in France, 81 percent in Italy and 86 percent in Spain.
Vaccines have been a politically tense topic in the US, even as they allowed life to largely return to normal when COVID-19 lockdown measures were lifted.
During the first months of the pandemic, then-President Donald Trump disseminated false claims on COVID-19 and promoted scientifically dubious solutions.
Anti-vaccine misinformation was widespread, with Republican-led states often pushing for restrictions to be relaxed and disputed public health measures, such as mandatory vaccination requirements.
41 Percent Of Nurses Plan To Quit Smoking: Survey
In the early days of the pandemic, health workers across the country raised the alarm about overflowing and understaffed hospitals, and a lack of personal protection equipment to respond to the increase in COVID-19 infections.
according to a March study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine based on a voluntary survey of US healthcare workers, 28.7 percent of respondents said they intended to leave the profession. That number rose to 41 percent specifically for nurses.
Even higher percentages of respondents reported experiencing burnout or burnout at their jobs, after years of working in stressful conditions with little improvement in their pay or benefits.
Over the past few years, the US has also seen a number of labor strikes by nurses who describe being pushed beyond their limits for little money in facilities that remain understaffed.
Black and other racialized Americans face elevated risks
While the pandemic has affected people of different races and income levels, it has also highlighted existing social and economic problems. inequalities In the USA.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). April 2023 dataNative American, Hispanic, Black, and Asian people in the US faced higher risks of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and death than white people.
In 2022, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to health policy, also reported that Black people in the US were “approximately twice as likely” to die from COVID-19. than their white counterparts of similar ages.
Indigenous peoples in the US had the highest death rate, with about 552 deaths per 100,000 people, KFF said. This compares with 466 deaths among Hispanics, 442 among blacks, 269 among whites and 197 among Asians.