CDC director ‘really worried’ about states rolling back Covid measures as cases appear to be leveling off

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official said on Monday she was “really concerned” that some states are rolling back public health measures designed to contain the coronavirus pandemic as US cases appear to be leveling off at one ” very high number “.

The decline in Covid-19 cases seen since early January now appears to be stagnating at around 70,000 new cases per day, CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky said at a White House press briefing. “With these statistics, I am really worried that more states are reverting to the exact public health measures that we have recommended to protect people from Covid-19.”

“Seventy thousand cases a day look good compared to just a few months ago,” she said. “Please listen to me clearly: at this level of cases with variations spreading, we risk completely losing the hard-earned ground that we have gained.

The United States registers at least 67,300 new cases of Covid-19 every day, based on a seven-day average calculated by CNBC using data from Johns Hopkins University. The United States peaked at nearly 250,000 cases per day in early January after the winter recess.

Senior U.S. health officials including Walensky and White House chief medical officer Dr Anthony Fauci have warned in recent weeks that the rise of more contagious variants could reverse the current downward trajectory of infections in the United States. United and delay the country’s recovery from the pandemic.

On Sunday, the CDC identified 2,400 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant, first identified in the UK.The agency identified 53 cases of the B.1.351 strain from South Africa as well as 10 cases of P. 1, a variant first identified in Brazil.

Fauci said Monday that U.S. health officials are also closely monitoring another variant in New York City that carries mutations that help it evade the body’s natural immune response.

Officials say viruses can’t mutate if they can’t infect hosts and replicate. They are also pushing Americans to get vaccinated as quickly as possible before potentially new and even more dangerous variants continue to take hold.

Walensky said on Monday that the vaccinations will help the United States come out of the pandemic, touting that the Food and Drug Administration has cleared Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use, making it the third vaccine to be approved for distribution in the United States and the only one. vaccine that requires only one dose. Walensky approved the vaccine on Sunday.

The J&J vaccine is a “much needed addition to our toolkit,” she said, adding that the authorization will allow more people to get vaccinated.