States are curtailing Covid-19 restrictions as new cases of record highs decline across the country. But experts warn that it could be too soon because variants pose an increased risk and the pandemic – almost in one year in the US – is far from over.
In Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, lifted the state’s partial mask mandate Friday. She also said that businesses no longer need to limit the number of customers or do social distancing, and that the size of public gatherings is not limited. The editors of the Des Moines Register call the move ‘inexplicable and irresponsible’.
Reynolds does not act alone. Democratic and Republican governors have weakened restrictions. In New York, Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday that the city of New York plans to allow indoor dining within a few days earlier than originally within Friday, and high schools will be able to reopen for personal tuition on Feb. 25. In Massachusetts, Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, said restaurants would be allowed to operate 40 percent from Monday, citing a decline in hospitalizations as part of his reasoning.
According to NBC News, the move to eliminate virus-related restrictions over the past seven days for new cases in the US is 119,509. The last time the figure was so low was November 9, near the start of the latest boom. The current new case numbers still exceed the spring and summer highs.
“I am concerned that it is premature” to weaken restrictions, said Dr. Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist on infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said.
Lessler said the limitations that are there are what lower the Covid-19 infection rates.
“When we remove interventions, we regularly see revivals,” he said, pointing out that the states want to see continued decline. “If there are new variants, the step back that was previously OK is no longer OK because of the more transferable variants.”
The CDC has reported less than 700 cases of the various strains of Covid-19 entering the country after being first identified in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil. Lessler said the number is ‘very much the tip of the iceberg’ and that it hardly depicts the extent of their distribution.
“The variants are here and are in circulation,” said dr. Jennifer Lighter, a specialist in infectious children at NYU Langone Health in New York, said.
Although much is unknown about how the variants will spread and affect the US, it is unmistakable.
Lighter said the US is not “sufficiently protecting” or sequencing to test how many of the recent positive cases come from the new tribes. Yet she said the boom that some of more transferable variants expect has yet to materialize.
Stopping a mask mandate, she said, makes no sense, but it makes sense, as in Los Angeles County, to eat outside again in late January, meaningful when you are outside, reducing the risk associated with the virus.
To present the variants, dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday that it is crucial that people get both doses of the vaccine.
The boost of the second dose gives a bigger response, ‘says Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which means it can protect against the “wild-type” coronavirus circulating, including the variants.
