WASHINGTON, Aug 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States surpassed 5.5 million, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
The US case count rose to 5,505,074, with the national death toll reaching 172,418 as of 1:27 p.m. local time (1727 GMT), according to the CSSE.
The hardest-hit U.S. state of California reported 640,722 cases, followed by Florida with 584,047 cases, Texas with 569,331 cases, and New York with 426,571 cases, the tally showed.
Other states with over 180,000 cases include Georgia, Illinois, Arizona and New Jersey, according to the CSSE.
By far, the United States remains the worst-hit nation, in terms of both the caseload and death toll.
Meanwhile, Dr Anthony Fauci, the United States’ top infectious diseases official, said the government wouldn’t make any future COVID-19 vaccine obligatory for the general public — though local jurisdictions could make it mandatory for some groups, like children.
“You don’t want to mandate and try and force anyone to take a vaccine. We’ve never done that,” said Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, during a video talk organized by George Washington University.
“You can mandate for certain groups of people like health workers, but for the general population you can’t” he added, citing the example of the National Institutes of Health, where health workers can’t treat patients without a flu shot.
Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison hours earlier announced that coronavirus vaccines, once approved, would be mandatory for everyone in his country, barring medical exemptions.
But the United States’ decentralized system of government, and anti-vaccine sentiments that have been building for decades, had in any case made a program of mandatory immunization unlikely.
“It would be unenforceable and not appropriate,” said Fauci.
This however doesn’t prevent states from making a vaccine mandatory for children to attend school, as is already the case for certain diseases such as measles, though some are exempt for medical or religious reasons.
At any rate, the administration of President Donald Trump has pre-ordered hundreds of millions of vaccine doses from six companies, and these will be distributed for free. — NNN-AGENCIES
