Public health experts have encouraged Americans to continue social distancing and wear masks at a potentially critical turning point in the pandemic – one in which highly effective vaccines could provide relief, but the fervor to reopen public life could spread. unintentionally new variants Covid-19.
The warnings come the same week Texas and Mississippi opened the doors to normal social life in their states.
Coronavirus cases have declined in most of the United States since mid-January, when the peak of the third wave saw more than 4,000 Covid-19 deaths a day. However, cases remain “extremely high” according to data observers and could be paid at a point equivalent to the peak of summer 2020.
“Everyone is focusing on large declines in the number of cases, claiming that the plateau is not really substantial and ignores the impact of B117,” an extremely transmissible variant first identified in the UK, said Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher. and dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Houston College of Medicine, Texas.
The potential plateau, new highly transmissible variants and the decision to reopen when the vaccines reached relatively few people “has all the elements of a fourth wave and gives me many breaks to worry about,” Hotez said.
On Wednesday, following a winter ice storm, Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, put an end to all pandemic restrictions and opened the state “100%”. The Republican governor of Mississippi soon followed suit and lifted masked mandates for all activities except schools and large arenas.
Only 16.3% of the US population has been vaccinated against Covid-19, or about 54 million people, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In Texas, vaccines have reached only 13.6% of the population.
Government Greg Abbott
(@GovAbbott)NEW: Issuing an executive order to lift the mask mandate and open Texas to 100%. pic.twitter.com/P4UywmWeuN
The movements caused an immediate shout. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner called the lifting of pandemic restrictions a “failure of system-state leadership,” while Joe Biden called the decision “Neanderthal thinking.”
However, intense pressure to reopen business has also led many Democrat-led cities and states to start moving towards reopening. Massachusetts has ended capacity limits in restaurants, although social distancing remains in place and has allowed live music to resume.
New York City is expected to reopen cinemas this Friday with restrictions. Because New York City is a leading Hollywood marketplace, the move is likely to pressure Los Angeles to do the same. And San Francisco has reopened its aquariums, fitness centers, indoor restaurant and museums this week.
The changes came even when CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky warned that reopening too quickly could threaten “the hard-won ground we’ve won.”
Hotez said people should know: “The message is: vaccines are here, just hang on.” This message was echoed by the CDC, which, in this week’s draft guidelines, said fully vaccinated Americans can gather in small groups without masks, while continuing to wear masks and social distances in public.
At the same time, a series of CDC reports this week highlighted the continuing dangers of Covid-19. A CDC report looked at the trip of one of the first patients diagnosed with B117 in the US – and the ability of the variant to spread even with restrictions.
The patient traveled to the UK for the holidays, met a sick relative at a family reunion on Christmas Eve and developed mild Covid symptoms just before taking a transatlantic flight back to Dallas, Texas. A few days before the flight, the patient tested negative for Covid-19, but used a low-specific antigen test.
Once the patient arrived in Dallas, they drove through the state for eight hours; stopped five times for food, gas and food; they arrived home with more severe symptoms and eventually tested positive for Covid-19 variant B117.
In another report released by the CDC this week, the agency found that the Covid-19 rate among children in Mississippi was probably 10 times lower than the number of reported cases and infected perhaps even one in six children by September last year. last.
A third report highlighted the association between the restaurant, the mask warrants and the Covid-19 transmission. The agency found that mask warrants lowered transmission and death rates, while any restaurant on the premises tended to increase transmission and death rates.
To stop the full spread of Covid-19, a nuanced concept called “herd immunity,” scientists believe the United States should vaccinate the vast majority of adults. Even if vaccine manufacturers are able to produce enough doses to reach all American adults by the end of May, as Biden promised, vaccine hesitation, poor distribution and logistical barriers could derail the immunization campaign.