(WXYZ & ASOCIATED PRESS) – Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday in a press briefing by the White House COVID response team on Monday that the response to the growing Michigan case is not necessarily the implementation of more vaccinations in the state, but rather to flatten the curve by closing things.
“If vaccines go in our arms today, we won’t see the effect of these vaccines … somewhere between two and six weeks. When you have an acute situation, an extraordinary number of cases, as we have in Michigan, the answer is not necessarily vaccine, for in fact, we know the vaccine will have a delayed response, “she said Monday. “The answer to that is to really close things down, to go back to our basics, to go back to where we were last spring, last summer and close things down, to flatten the curve, to decrease contact with each other, to test as much as we have to contact the traces … really what we need to do in those situations is close things up. “
She added: “I think if we tried to get vaccinated to get out of what’s going on in Michigan, we’d be disappointed that it took so long for the vaccine to work to have an effect.”
Washington, meanwhile, will rush federal resources to support vaccinations, testing and treatment in Michigan in an effort to control the state’s worst COVID-19 outbreak.
Last week, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer strongly recommended, but did not order, a two-week break for face-to-face high school instruction, an indoor restaurant, and youth sports. She cited more contagious variants of coronavirus and pandemic fatigue as growing factors, prompting some hospitals to postpone non-emergency procedures.
State-level hospitalizations have quadrupled in one month and are approaching peak levels in the spring and fall.
“Politics alone will not change the tide. We need everyone to step up and take personal responsibility, “Whitmer said Friday, without ruling out future restrictions. The seven-day case rate in Michigan was 506 per 100,000 people, well above the worst in New Jersey, with 314 per 100,000 residents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
20210406 Data and modeling … of WXYZ-TV Channel 7 Detroit
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