Former CDC chief: recent spike in COVID-19 cases will not lead to closures



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A former acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Sunday he did not believe the recent spate of COVID-19 cases would result in massive closures across the country, although he acknowledged that some schools could close.

“As for the COVID challenge we’re seeing now, with hospitalizations on the rise, infections on the rise, how bad do you think it’s going to become? Is it going to reach the level where we are going to have to see, once again, closures, restaurants close, the economy essentially stopping? Will it come back to this level? Guest host Jonathan Karl asked Richard Besser on ABC’s “This Week” show.

“I don’t think so, Jon. I think what we’re going to see is the closure of schools as cases spread to schools. We’re going to see more recommendations for the use of masks, ”responded Besser, who served as interim director of the CDC in 2009 and chairman and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

“The reason it won’t be the same as when the pandemic started is that there is a vaccine, and we have done a very good job of vaccinating the people most at risk, so the people. elderly, people with underlying health problems. conditions, frontline health workers, ”he continued.

Besser also said there must be “a full press to get people who are not vaccinated. ”

“That’s what’s going to do the most. But it won’t be the same kind of situation we saw a year ago,” he added.

The United States has seen a wave of new cases of COVID-19 as the delta variant spreads among unvaccinated populations in the United States. U.S. officials had been optimistic earlier this year that the vaccine rollout could curb new waves of infections. But the delta variant and the resistance of some communities to obtain the vaccine has complicated efforts to attenuate the virus.

The Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Francis Collins, told “Fox News Sunday” that he would not be surprised if the country started to see at least 200,000 new cases of COVID-19 per day over the years. next weeks.



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