Dr. Rochelle Walensky, appointed by U.S. President-elect Joe Biden to lead the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), hears Biden announce candidates and nominees to be part of its health and response teams to the coronavirus during a press conference at the transition headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, on December 8, 2020.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Sunday that it is too early for states to lift masks wearing masks given the high number of cases and daily coronavirus deaths in the United States.
“We still have 100,000 cases a day. We still have between 1,500 and 3,500 deaths a day,” Walensky said in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “And yet we see some communities relaxing some of their mitigation strategies. We’re nowhere in the woods.”
As the spread of the virus in the United States slows and the implantation of the vaccine accelerates, states have begun to loosen restrictions. Republican governors in Montana and Iowa withdrew statewide mask-wearing requirements this month. North Dakota’s mask mandate expired in January.
In New York, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently allowed 25% capacity covered food, despite the high risk of contagion indoors, and opened stadiums and arenas with limited capacity.
But health experts fear that the rapid spread of more contagious variants could lead to a further rise in cases and deaths in the United States. the country.
“If we relax these mitigation strategies with increasing transmissible variants, we could be in a much more difficult place,” Walensky said. “Now is the time not to let the guard down. Now is the time to bend.”
Health officials are urging Americans to tighten and duplicate masks, which provide significant protection against viral transmission. Recent research by the CDC suggests that widely used surgical masks or duplicating them with a surgical and fabric mask reduce the risk of transmission by up to 96%.
“We need to get our communities back to normal operation before we start thinking about leaving behind our mitigation strategies,” Walensky said.