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National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins warned on Sunday that the continued rise in Delta variant-powered Covid-19 cases could take the nation back to the worst days of the pandemic.
“It’s going very sharply up with no sign of peaking,” Collins said on Fox News Sunday.
Covid-19 cases have increased again due to the highly contagious nature of the Delta variant. The country registers more than 129,000 new cases per day, an increase of more than 700% since the beginning of July. Those numbers could reach more than 200,000 new cases per day, levels not seen since the deadliest months of January and February, Collins said.
“Here we are with [the] The delta variant, which is so contagious, and this heartbreaking situation where 90 million people are still unvaccinated, which are ducks sitting down for this virus, and that’s the mess we’re in, ”Collins said.
“We are in a world of pain,” he said, “and this is a critical time to try to do all we can to turn the tide.”
Meanwhile, Collins said health officials are still monitoring the data to determine whether the general population will need a booster, amid concerns about the decline in the effectiveness of the coronavirus vaccine over time. .
That decision, however, has not yet been made, and Collins assured that current data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that those who are vaccinated are protected against serious illness and hospitalization.
Collins also discouraged people from going ahead and getting additional injections on their own until there was new evidence to support the need.
For now, the problem is with those who haven’t been vaccinated and are vulnerable to the highly contagious Delta variant, Collins said.
“The big message right now this morning,” he said, is “for people who are not vaccinated, this is the time to absolutely come out of the fence and take care of it because you are a duck sitting for this virus, it’s looking for you.
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