“We must find the fortitude to hang in there for just a little bit longer,” Walensky said during a White House press briefing. “We are at a critical point in this pandemic, a fork in the road, where we as a country must decide which path we are going to take.”
“As I’ve stated before, the continued relaxation of prevention measures while cases are still high and while concerning variants are spreading rapidly throughout the United States is a serious threat to the progress we have made as a nation,” Walensky added.
Walensky cited what is happening in Europe right now, with several countries reimposing lockdowns due to a sharp rise in coronavirus cases, according to NPR.org.
France, Poland, and Italy have imposed restrictions and lockdowns, following Hungary, Bulgaria, and Bosnia, who imposed lockdowns earlier. Germany is considering a possible return to stricter measures in the days ahead.
Walensky again warned that states are lifting restrictions too early, and called on the public to continue to wear masks, avoid crowds and wait to travel, even if they’ve been vaccinated. “I’m calling the American people to action, whether vaccinated or not, to recommit to doing the right thing — take the steps we know work to stop Covid-19,” she said, according to Bloomberg Quint.
The CDC director said that health officials are also seeing a greater number of cases attributed to COVID-19 variants, with two new variants, B.1427 and B.1429, accounting for nearly 52 percent of the new cases in California, and 41 percent of the cases in Nevada.
The UK’s B.1.1.7 variant accounts for 9 percent of cases in New Jersey and 8 percent in Florida. She said the Biden administration is encouraging governors, as well as the private sector, to maintain or reimpose coronavirus restrictions, according to CNN.
“We are looking at these data, we’re reaching out to individual states, trying to encourage them. We are having weekly governors’ calls. We’re doing outreach with states, territories to encourage them to look at their case data, to look at what’s happening with the variants, and to do as much outreach as we can to try and slow down the relaxation,” Walensky said.
