NEW YORK (Reuters) – The top of the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention stated on Sunday it’s “completely” too quickly to carry masks mandates, citing every day COVID-19 case numbers that regardless of latest declines stay greater than double the degrees seen final summer time.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky’s warning that face-covering necessities are nonetheless crucial got here simply days after governors in Iowa and Montana lifted long-standing masks mandates of their states.
Showing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Walensky stated stopping additional surges of an infection is vital to soundly reopening faculties and regaining some stage of social normalcy till collective COVID-19 immunity could be achieved by mass vaccinations.
Whether or not People can look ahead to strolling down the road with out sporting a masks by the top of the yr “very a lot is determined by how we behave proper now,” she stated.
Requested if it was nonetheless too early for states to get rid of guidelines requiring the usage of face masks in public, Walensky replied, “Completely.”
Whereas COVID-19 an infection charges and hospitalizations look like waning, the US has a protracted method to go earlier than it might probably safely return to a mask-less regular, she stated.
“The instances are greater than two-and-a-half-fold instances what we noticed over the summer time,” stated Walensky, who was sworn in as CDC director final month after President Joe Biden took workplace. “It’s encouraging to see these tendencies coming down however they’re coming down from an awfully excessive place.”
Well being specialists say population-wide masks sporting is without doubt one of the best methods of pushing COVID-19 transmission right down to controllable ranges.
Continued adherence to social distancing and face coverings stays particularly pressing given the dangers posed by new coronavirus variants discovered to be extra transmissible, and probably extra proof against antibodies, than the unique pressure.
COVID-19’s grip on the US remained robust on Sunday, with 27.6 million instances confirmed and greater than 484,600 lives misplaced to the extremely contagious respiratory virus so far, in keeping with a Reuters tally.
The U.S. inoculation marketing campaign has gained appreciable momentum since a sluggish begin in December, with 52.9 million complete vaccines administered thus far, in keeping with the CDC.
As the US continues wrestling to ramp up vaccine provides and distribution, an unusually broad swath of wintry climate in latest days triggered the newest setback, forcing mass vaccination facilities from Texas to Virginia to droop operations.
Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York; Extra reporting by Raphael Satter in Washington; Enhancing by Steve Gorman and Daniel Wallis
