Another coronavirus surge could be around the corner, say U.S. public health officials, and this is not the time to relax COVID-19 restrictions.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading expert on infectious diseases, said on Sunday that although the number of daily new infections is significantly less than in January, it has a very high number.
‘If you look back at the various rises we had, when it came down and then started to flow at a very high level, a plateau at a level of 60 to 70 000 new cases is not an acceptable level. It’s really high, ”Fauci said in an interview on CBS ‘” Face the Nation. “
‘And if you look at what happened in Europe a few weeks ago, they usually lie a few weeks ahead of us in these patterns; they also descended and flattened. And over the past week or so, they have had a 9% increase in cases. ”
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A number of countries have recently eased restrictions as infection rates have dropped from the peaks of the COVID-19 boom. California plans to reopen schools, outdoor sports stadiums, live outdoor performances and Disneyland in April, while Texas and Mississippi lift mandates for face masks despite pleas from health officials.
Fauci warned that mitigation measures should be eased slowly and carefully. ‘But do not turn the switch on and off, because it will be really dangerous to have a new boom again, which we do not want, because we are flat at quite a high level. ”
Celine Gounder, who warned that new, more contagious variants of COVID-19 are spreading rapidly, especially the B.1.1.7 variant, which was first discovered in the UK, reiterated its concern by specialist dr. Celine Gounder.
‘This tension is increasing exponentially. “It’s rising,” Gounder told CNN. “So we are probably now on the verge of another boom.”
Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the current vaccination rate just isn’t fast enough to stop the spread of the new variant.
“We are currently in the eye of the hurricane,” Osterholm said. “It’s going very well, we’re seeing a blue sky.” But the British variant “is about to come upon us,” he said. “Today it is wreaking havoc in parts of Europe.”
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Osterholm said the UK variant had grown from 1% to 4% of all U.S. cases about a month ago to about 30% to 40%. “What we have seen in Europe, if we reach the 50% mark, you see cases rise.”
To address the threat, Osterholm said that the US should not abandon the coronavirus restrictions, and that they should work to vaccinate the population even faster.
Fauci said, however, that the US is on the right track. ‘Every day that passes, we will get better and better because we put at least 2 million vaccinations in the arms of individuals every day. … So we’re going in the right direction. We just need to stay in there a little longer. ‘
By the end of Sunday, the U.S. had recorded 28.9 million cases of COVID-19 and nearly 525,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Both are by far the most of any country in the world.