Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday that she was “really concerned” about some states withholding public health measures intended to contain the coronavirus pandemic, as U.S. cases appear to be a “very high number” is.
The decline in Covid-19 cases seen since early January now appears to be weakening about 70,000 new cases per day, Drs. Rochelle Walensky, CDC director, said during a newsletter in the White House. “With these statistics, I’m really concerned about more states reinstating the exact public health measures we recommended to protect people against Covid-19.”
“Seventy thousand cases a day look good compared to where we were just a few months ago,” she said. “Please hear me clearly: at this level of cases with variants spreading, we could completely lose the hard-earned ground we won.”
The U.S. records at least 67,300 new Covid-19 cases each day, based on a seven-day average calculated by CNBC using Johns Hopkins University data. The US reached a peak of almost 250,000 cases per day in early January after the winter holidays.
The best American health officials, including Walensky and the medical advice of the White House, dr. Anthony Fauci, has warned in recent weeks that the emergence of more contagious variants could reverse the current downward trajectory in infections in the US and delay the country’s recovery from the pandemic.
As of Sunday, the CDC has identified 2400 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant, which was first identified in the UK. The agency identified 53 cases of the B.1.351 strain from South Africa, as well as ten cases of P.1, a variant first identified in Brazil.
Fauci said Monday that U.S. health officials are also monitoring another variant in New York that contains mutations that help it evade the body’s natural immune response.
Officials say viruses cannot mutate if they cannot infect and replicate hosts. They also urge Americans to be vaccinated as quickly as possible before potentially new and even more dangerous variants continue to take hold.
Walensky said Monday that vaccinations will help the U.S. get out of the pandemic, claiming that the Food and Drug Administration approves Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 emergency vaccine, making it the third shot approved for distribution in the US and the only vaccine that requires only one dose. Walensky signed the vaccine on Sunday.
The J&J vaccine is a “much-needed addition to our toolbox,” she said. The addition of the authorization will allow more people to be vaccinated.