Another wave of coronavirus could be just around the corner, say public health officials in the US, and now is not the time to relax COVID-19 restrictions.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases, said on Sunday that while the number of new daily infections was significantly lower than in January, they had risen to a very high number.
“Historically, if you look back at the growth differences we had, when they decrease and then start to reach the plateau at a very high level, the payment at a level of 60 to 70,000 new cases per day is not an acceptable level. It’s really big, “Fauci said in a CBS interview.” Make the Nation. “
“And if you look at what happened in Europe a few weeks ago, they are usually a few weeks ahead of us in these models, they also came down, and then they flattened out. And in the last week or so, they recorded an increase of about 9% in cases. ”
See: The fast variants COVID-19 increase the energy virus that crosses Europe
A number of states have recently relaxed restrictions as infection rates have fallen since the peak of COVID-19 winter growth. California plans to reopen schools, outdoor sports stadiums, live outdoor shows and Disneyland in April, while Texas and Mississippi lift face masks, despite demands from health officials.
Fauci warned that mitigation measures should be eased slowly and carefully – “But don’t turn this switch on and off because it would be risky to have a new increase again, which we don’t want to happen because we pay at a fairly high level. ”
His concerns have been raised by infectious disease specialist Dr Celine Gounder, who has warned that new, more contagious variants of COVID-19 are spreading rapidly, especially variant B.1.1.7, first discovered in the UK.
“This strain is growing exponentially. It’s getting bigger, “Gounder told CNN. “So we’re probably at a peak right now.”
Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the current vaccination rate is not fast enough to stop the spread of new variants.
“We are in the eye of the hurricane right now,” Osterholm said. “Things are going very well, we see the blue sky.” But the British version “is about to come upon us,” he said. “Today it is wreaking havoc in parts of Europe.”
Read also: US believes Pfizer vaccines and other Western COVID-19 vaccines become ultimate target of Russian misinformation
Osterholm said the British version has risen from 1% to 4% of all cases in the US about a month ago to about 30% to 40% now. “What we saw in Europe, when we reach this 50% mark, you see that the cases are increasing.”
To counter the threat, Osterholm said the US must not give up coronavirus restrictions and must work to vaccinate the population even faster.
Fauci said the United States is on the right track, however. “With each passing day, we keep the lid on things will get better and better, because we now put at least 2 million vaccinations in people’s arms every day. … So we’re going in the right direction. We just have to stay there a little longer. “
As of late Sunday, the United States had 28.9 million cases of COVID-19 and nearly 525,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Both are by far the most countries in the world.