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“The question that is open right now is: will we have a fourth outbreak?” Former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Tom Frieden, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday. “Each uncontrolled spread increases the risk that there are dangerous variants which can be more infectious, more deadly or escape immune protection.”
The goal is to keep doing what has worked, Friedan said. “Watching very closely and recognizing masking is here to last for many months and avoiding sharing indoor air with others is very important,” he added.
Such measures can help avoid the dreaded potential surge of the coronavirus variant first identified in the UK and believed to be more transmissible, said Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.
Ho said Thursday that this could cause the vaccine to lose efficacy, although studies indicate that vaccines can still provide strong protection against the variants. He added that the variant could be more contagious, but his team have no evidence to prove it at this time.
States relax restrictions on lounges, stadiums and socializing
Despite being cautious not to overstate the downward trends of recent weeks, many states are relaxing their restrictions.
“We should in no way assume that this downward slope is inevitable. It could start again,” Collins said.
For example, by Monday, hair salons and salons in Wyoming, including barbers, nail salons and tattoo parlors, will no longer have capacity restrictions, Governor Mark Gordon said in a statement. . Over the next month, the state will ease other health restrictions as well, including allowing buffets to resume their operations and limiting gatherings to 50 people instead of 25.
In response to “a sustained decrease in the number of cases,” the city of New Orleans is also implementing changes: Starting Friday, the city is increasing the size limits for gatherings to 75 people inside and 150 outdoors, as well as increased table limits and increased indoor and outdoor spaces. The capacity of the outdoor stadium is limited to 15% and 25%, respectively.
A particular point of contention has been the reopening of schools: While some officials and parents believe that it is urgent to bring students back to the classroom, there are teachers who fear that it is too early and not still safe enough to open campuses.
In Virginia, the state Senate on Thursday approved a bill that, if signed by Gov. Ralph Northam, would require every school board to offer a full-time in-person education option to students enrolled in the local school division, with few exceptions. .
Schools can revert to temporary distance education if the school board and local health department determine that the level of transmission at the school is high, according to the bill.
Officials expand vaccine eligibility and availability
While some states are easing restrictions, others are opening vaccine eligibility to more of their residents, including teachers.
Starting March 15, teachers and other essential workers in Missouri will be eligible for the vaccine, Governor Mike Parson said Thursday.
In addition to educators and staff of K-12 students, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp on Thursday announced that adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, their caregivers and parents of children with developmental disabilities health complexes would be eligible for vaccines on March 8.
And as of Thursday, all people over the age of 16 with certain co-morbidities are eligible for vaccines in Utah, Gov. Spencer Cox said.
“We are prioritizing these people, again, based on age and these underlying comorbidities, as they have the greatest risk of hospitalization or death,” Cox explained, begging the Utahans to not standing in line and assuring them that they have so many. other vaccines will be available soon.
Authorities have worked in recent months to speed up and optimize vaccine dose distribution as states demand more to meet growing demand.
If Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine gets emergency use clearance from the FDA this weekend, President Joe Biden has said it will be deployed immediately.
“The FDA will decide whether to authorize the emergency use of a vaccine based on science, not because of political pressure from me or someone else, not from outside factors.” , Biden said. “What I will say to the American people is this, if, if the FDA approves the use of this new vaccine, we have a plan to deploy it as quickly as Johnson and Johnson can.”
Pfizer’s existing vaccine could also become easier to distribute quickly, thanks to the FDA’s agreement on Thursday to allow it to be transported and stored for up to two weeks at “conventional temperatures” typically found in pharmaceutical freezers.
The company and its partner Biotech are also responding to the growing threat of variants with new tests to see how well a third dose protects them.
Christopher Rios, Lauren Mascarenhas, Nadia Kounang, Andy Rose, Jamiel Lynch, Rebekah Riess, Lindsay Benson, Artemis Moshtaghian, DJ Judd, Jacqueline Howard and Amanda Sealy contributed to this report.
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