With more people being vaccinated against COVID-19 each day, the conversation has turned to when the restrictions we’ve been adhering to for a year can be removed, so that we can get a taste of normal life again. Although several US states have started to reduce masking mandates and increase capacity requirements, experts such as the Director of the CDC Rochelle Walensky, MD and COVID White House advisor Anthony Fauci, MD, has warned that it is too early to make these moves. But that begs the question: when will is it safe to return to some appearance of normalcy? In an interview on March 4 on CNN The leadership with Jake Tapper, Fauci gave a clear schedule about when exactly it will be safe to remove the restrictions from COVID. And to get there, we have to reduce the COVID cases to a specific number. Read on to find out what it is and for more vaccine news, check out the CDC that has just been warned about 3 new vaccine side effects.
Fauci wants to assure the American public that this will not be forever. “We will be backing down, “he said on the subject of easing restrictions.” We now have about 2 million vaccinations a day. This means that with each passing day, with each passing week, you have more and more people protected. “
At the moment, it is the plateau of new case numbers that concerns Fauci: the seven-day average for new daily cases of COVID-19 on March 5 was around 61,169.
Tapper asked Fauci: “When would it be the right time to reopen companies with full capacity? When would it be the right time to remove the masks? ”The doctor’s response suggested that we still need to be vigilant for a while. “Well, I wouldn’t want to see a light switch go on and off when it comes to restrictions, Jake. I would like to see, as we lower the level of viruses in the community to a very low level, well, well below 60,000 to 70,000 new infections, somewhere – I’m just going to pick a number, although there isn’t a good model there yet , but I would say less than 10,000, and maybe even considerably less than that. “
The number has not dropped below 50,000 daily cases since mid-October 2020, and has been over 10,000 new cases per day since mid-March 2020. And to find out more about where the numbers are currently increasing, check the COVID Numbers Now they are increasing again in these 10 states.
New variants of the virus are in circulation, including variant B.1.1.7 from the United Kingdom, which now accounts for 2,672 cases in the United States and has been found in 46 states, in addition to Washington, DC and Puerto Rico, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And Fauci said that this variant, and the South African variant and the Brazilian variant, are one of the reasons why he is concerned with our current trajectory.
“Another thing that bothers me and worries me a little, Jake, is that we have variants circulating in the community. … Some of them have greater transmission capacity and others are less protected by vaccines, which means that you want someone to be vaccinated to get that level of antibody high enough, so that you can have protection against the variant, if you happen to be infected with the variant, “he told Tapper. “So, there are so many reasons why you don’t want to back down now. You want a plan that can go back in a reasonable time, but not at a time when we have variants circulating and when you have what looks like a plateau of decline in cases on a daily basis. “And to learn more about where the variants are spreading the fastest, check out These 2 states are the biggest access points for the new COVID strain.
The latest evidence indicates that variant B.1.1.7 is between 43% and 90% more infectious than previous strains of the virus, reports CNN. During the interview, Tapper pointed out these estimates of the UK variant’s transmissibility rate and asked, “What does this mean in the US? Are we going to enter a period now when more people are being infected because of the UK variant? “
In response, Fauci said: “I believe that if you step back from public health measures, that will be possible. And that is one of the reasons why I keep saying that now is not the time to step back. Some of the encouraging news, that it seems that vaccines that are currently being distributed, two million or more a day, work very well against isolated UK 1.1.7, as we call it, which means more incentive for people, when their turn comes up, to please get vaccinated. “
Fauci reiterated that there are two things that Americans can do to “continue a downward trend” in the cases of COVID: “one, respect the public health measures I have been talking about and others have done, and, two, get vaccinated when you arrive your time. “
He assured Americans that “we will be able to open the country, open the economy. But now, we want to have that level of virus much, much lower than it is today.” And for more COVID news sent straight to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter.
Texas and Mississippi recently announced that they were removing mandates from the masks and loosening companies’ capacity limits. In response, Fauci issued a warning to these states during a March 4 appearance on MSNBC’s Good morning Joe. “I would advise the people of Texas and Mississippi to only comply with the public health measures that we talk about all the time: uniform wearing of masks, physical distance, avoiding congregational environments, especially indoors, washing your hands often,” he said. he. “We just have to keep doing this because we know it works.”
The White House chief medical advisor also warned that we have already seen the disastrous effects that loosening public health restrictions at the wrong time can have. “It’s a bad sign, we’ve seen it before,” said Fauci, referring to the current level in new cases across the country. “We saw this last summer, when we were trying to call the ‘opening of the economy and the country’, and then we had that very big spurt that we don’t want to repeat now. We were going in the right direction. Now it’s time to keep our foot on the gas and not start because what we don’t want is another wave. “And if you are preparing to be vaccinated against the virus, know that the CDC says that you should not take this after the vaccine without the approval of a doctor.