Washington (AFP)

The first vaccines are imminent, but the winter will be bleak in the United States, where the Covid-19 epidemic remains out of control and could still kill more than 150,000 people by February, warned the top health official of the United States. country.

As many inhabitants of the richest country on the planet are dying today as at the worst of the first wave in spring, far exceeding 2,000 daily deaths in recent days and bringing the official death toll to more than 273,000 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

The epidemic is actually worse than during the first wave: while doctors know better how to treat the disease and which patients can be followed at home instead of occupying a hospital bed, 100,000 people are hospitalized from Covid-19 , against 60,000 at the peaks of April and July, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

Unlike previous peaks, the coronavirus is circulating everywhere.

The dashboards of several institutions paint the map of the United States in red from coast to coast.

Half of the states have an incidence of more than 400 cases per week per 100,000 inhabitants, i.e. the threshold at which re-containment had been decided in France.

But few states are considering a re-containment, and the restrictions are only reimposed in dispersed order, in the absence of a national strategy from President Donald Trump, focused on vaccines.

- The worst of winters -

"The reality is that December, January and February will be hard times," Center for Disease Control (CDC) director Robert Redfield warned on Wednesday.

"It will be the most difficult period in the history of public health in this country."

“Unfortunately, before February, we could approach the 450,000 Americans” who died, he warned.

According to the average of epidemiological models compiled by the CDC, 300,000 deaths will be reached by early 2021. A figure which is also known to underestimate the reality: by counting the misdiagnosed and indirect deaths, this assessment has was reached in October.

- No national coordination -

Masks are now mandatory in most of the United States, with recalcitrant governors having finally given in in the fall.

But in the patchwork of local rules, one fact dominates: shops, restaurants and places of worship remain in many places open, with varying degrees of conditions, and the only governors who have imposed a curfew are those of California and Ohio.

Locally, cities and counties have taken action, restricting restaurants to terraces, closing schools as in New York.

Many like Chicago have asked residents to stay in their homes, except for essential travel, but generally without coercion.

Decentralization is an American pride, but in this case a weakness, said in essence Anthony Fauci, director of the American Institute of Infectious Diseases, regretting that so many places of gatherings remain open.

"The situation is serious. It would not be wrong to temporarily close the bars," he told Fox News on Wednesday.

But nothing seems to move some politicians.

The Republican governor of Florida, a state which experienced and appears to have passed its worst peak in November, ruled out any further restrictions.

- Obama will be vaccinated -

The Trump administration plans to have vaccinated about 20 million people in December with the Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, if the regulator gives a green light, and 80 million more in January and February.

"The vaccine will be the most important tool to fight Covid, but it is not going to change things overnight," tweeted Tom Frieden, former CDC director.

Collective immunity and the start of a return to normal could appear around April, May or June, according to Dr. Fauci, that is to say that 70 to 75% of Americans may then have been vaccinated.

They still have to want the vaccine.

To convince of its harmlessness, the three former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton said that they would gladly be vaccinated publicly.

© 2020 AFP