More than half of people in the United States aged 65 and over are at least partially vaccinated against Covid-19, said a senior adviser to President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 response team on Friday.
This is creating more pressure for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to disseminate their guidelines on what people can do safely after being fully vaccinated.
At a press conference on Friday, the director of the CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, acknowledged the urgency and promised that guidance would come soon.
“These are complex issues and science is evolving rapidly,” she said. “The CDC is working to ensure that the communications we release about this guidance are clear. We are making sure and taking the time to get this right.”
While the vaccination rate is accelerating in the U.S. – more than 2 million doses were administered on Thursday – the number of new cases of Covid-19 started to stop after weeks of steady decline, Walensky warned.
“The most recent data shows that cases continue to fluctuate around 60,000 to 70,000 cases per day,” she said. The decline in the number of deaths reported each day has also dropped to around 1,900.
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These numbers are “still very high,” said Walensky, “and have stabilized for more than a week at the levels we saw during the peak of late summer.”
The latest information is a concern for public health officials – especially since some states, including Texas and Mississippi – have announced that they will begin to relax the rules on the use of facial coverings.
The slowdown in the decline in cases suggests that the country is “at risk for another peak” in Covid-19, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during the briefing.
Meanwhile, the release of CDC guidelines on how fully vaccinated individuals can interact with other fully vaccinated people – which were expected to be released this week – has been postponed.
The CDC said it is working to simplify the guidelines and make them clear to the public. It has been speculated that the guidance might suggest that fully vaccinated people may meet indoors with other fully vaccinated people without masks.
“I know that the idea of relaxing using a mask and returning to daily activities is attractive. But we are not there yet,” said Walensky.
“I think the CDC is taking its time to ensure that they are cautious, that they are not extrapolating from science,” said Dr. Richard Besser, president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and former acting director of the CDC.
Meanwhile, Americans are desperate for permission to reconnect with their loved ones.
“I hope there is some guidance there that will change so that fully vaccinated grandparents can embrace their grandchildren,” added Besser.
Also on Friday, a new CDC report found that indoor dining in restaurants was associated with an increase in Covid-19 cases, as well as Covid-19 deaths.
The study assessed the impact of eating and drinking at the site.
“Increases in Covid-19’s daily case and death rates grew more rapidly within 40 to 80 days after restaurants were allowed to resume meals on site,” said Walensky.
She added that the findings serve “as a warning about the premature lifting” of the masks’ mandates. In addition to Texas and Mississippi, Iowa, Montana and North Dakota are also in the process of ending the rules that require facial coverage.
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According to the CDC, more than 54 million people in the United States have received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccination. That number is expected to increase significantly in the coming months, as Biden said on Thursday that the country should have sufficient vaccine doses for each eligible adult by the end of May.
Also on Friday, the administration announced that two stadiums will serve as federal Covid-19 vaccination sites. These are the Mercedes-Benz stadium in Atlanta and the Wolstein Center in Cleveland.
Both sites are expected to administer at least 6,000 vaccinations per day.
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