US warns of 'twindemic' prior to holiday season with COVID-19 pill, booster vaccines in clearance

NEW YORK - With holidays approaching in the United States, health experts said some festivities can start to return to a sense of normalcy, but warned that COVID-19 isn't defeated yet and seasonal influenza could launch an attack, despite the federal government's consistent endeavor to vaccinate more Americans against the coronavirus and authorize a new pill and booster vaccines.

"It's a good time to reflect on why it's important to get vaccinated. But go out there and enjoy Halloween as well as the other holidays that will be coming up," Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN on Sunday. Outdoor trick-or-treating, particularly for children who are vaccinated, should be fine this year, he said.

Megan Ranney, associate dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University, cautioned against indoor Halloween parties for children too young to be vaccinated and encouraged parents in areas with high virus transmission to mask their children, but agreed that Halloween fun could go on this year.

However, as the conditions are improving and the sense of normalcy is expanding, Fauci still alerted that the fight against the pandemic is not over. "We have to just be careful that we don't prematurely declare victory in many respects. We still have around 68 million people who are eligible to be vaccinated that have not yet gotten vaccinated," he said.

On Monday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated that 216,889,814 people have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, making up 65.3 percent of the whole US population. Fully vaccinated people stood at 187,215,471, accounting for 56.4 percent of the total. A total of 7,786,263 people, or 4.2 percent of fully vaccinated group, received booster shots.

According to The New York Times data analysis, the 7-day average of confirmed cases of the pandemic stood at 96,549 nationwide on Sunday, with the 14-day change striking a 19-percent fall. The COVID-19-related deaths were 2,000 on Sunday, with the 14-day change realizing a 2-percent decrease, with southern US state of Arkansas having added many COVID-19 deaths.