Dr. Vin Gupta, of the intensive care unit and lung, criticized the Republican governors of Arizona, Florida and Texas for what they said were premature reopening, mostly because new variants are being taken advantage of across the country.
“It’s not good public policies that the governors of Arizona, Florida and Texas do,” Gupta said. “It just doesn’t make sense from a scientific point of view … There’s a deep concern here, especially in these populated states with generally older populations living in these states, that variants are already taking root there.”
The United States reported an average of 58,618 new cases of Covid per day, up 6.7% from last week, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University. It is the highest weekday increase between mid-January. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dra. Rochelle Walensky, issued a stern warning Friday.
“I feel deeply concerned about this trajectory,” Walensky said. “We’ve seen cases and hospital admissions go from historical decline, to stagnation, to rise. And we know from previous overvoltages that if we don’t control things now, there’s real potential for the curve of the ‘epidemic erupts again’.
Gupta, an NBC medical contributor, warned that early reopenings could even spawn new vaccine-resistant Covid variants.
“We’re going to give way to a variant that can escape any kind of immunity that the vaccine imposes … that’s the big concern here,” Gupta told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith.”
“That’s why we really need governors to be vigilant, preach vigilance, and have consistent public policies in all 50 states over the next few months until everyone gets vaccinated,” he said. “This will be the key piece here. Otherwise, we may not have normalcy on July 4.”
Gupta said the United States was in a “race against time” to vaccinate as many people as possible.
The White House on Friday announced a record 3.4 million vaccines administered nationwide. That number could grow as Johnson & Johnson prepares to administer 11 million doses of its unique vaccine next week.
Representatives of the governors of Arizona, Texas and Florida were not immediately available for comment.