At the White House Press briefing, the CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, pleads Americans to be safe and not get lost, because the novel coronavirus is still spreading. During her speech, she also acknowledged that the new variants of the coronavirus will waste all the efforts we have done up until today to contain the virus if we remain irresponsible and careless.
Even though many Americans are vaccinated, the rate of coronavirus cases is still 67,000 per day with more than 2,000 fatalities. While talking about the statistics, she showed her concern that several states are rolling back the exact public health measures, which the CDC recommended to protect the population.
Before she concluded her speech at the White House, Walensky added that although the current number of cases is far lesser than the number that was during the peak, still the country cannot celebrate with around 70,000 cases each day with 2,000 fatalities.
However, just a day after the speech briefing by Walensky, Texas Governor, Greg Abbot, and Mississippi Governor, Tate Reeves lifted the COVID-19 restrictions from their states along with ending the compulsory mask mandates.
The CDC warns Americans to stop unnecessary travel, as the current situation of COVID-19 cases is at par with what was during mid-July. To give a better idea about the current situation of coronavirus cases, Brown School of Public health has developed a risk assessment tool, which shows at what speed the COVID-19 cases are rising in each state. According to the tool, currently, one in five states is at a tipping point.
The tool shows the ratings by four-color variations; green, yellow, orange, and red. Each color shows the average daily number of reported cases on a seven-day rolling. As per the current statistics, the 10 states where the situation is not yet under control and are marked with red are; Texas, Connecticut, Delaware, Arkansas, New York, Florida, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Georgia, and South Carolina. The red marking represents that all of these states have 25 new cases each day per 100,000 people.
However, most of the other states of the US are marked as orange, which means that these states have only 10 new cases each day per 100,000 people and are over the threshold to allow non-essential travels.
Other than this, the US health officials are also concerned about the spread of the new variants that were found in the UK and South Africa at an alarming rate. Around 46 states have reported cases with B.1.1.7 COVID-19 variant, which was found in the UK and around 17 states have reported B.1.351 variant, which was found in South Africa.
However, things are yet to settle down and Americans have to wait for the WHO to announce that ‘the pandemic is over.’ With more than 62 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines distributed around the country, we can surely expect the light at the end of the tunnel.
