The intensive care unit and lung doctor, Dr. Vin Gupta, criticized the Republican governors of Arizona, Florida and Texas for what he said were premature reopenings, especially as new variants are taking place across the country.
“It is not good public policy what the governors of Arizona, Florida and Texas are doing,” said Gupta. “It just doesn’t make sense from a scientific point of view … There is a big concern here, especially in these populous states with generally older populations living in those states, that the variants are already taking root there.”
The US is reporting 58,618 new cases of Covid a day, on average, an increase of 6.7% last week, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. It is the biggest increase week after week since mid-January. The director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, issued a severe warning on Friday.
“I remain deeply concerned about this trajectory,” said Walensky. “We have seen cases and hospital admissions move from historic declines to stagnation and increases. And we know from previous outbreaks that if we don’t control things now, there is real potential for the epidemic curve to rise again.”
Gupta, a medical collaborator at NBC, warned that the first reopenings could even generate new vaccine-resistant variants of Covid.
“We are going to give rise to a variant that can escape any type of immunity that the vaccine will transmit … that is the big concern here,” said Gupta on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” program.
“That’s why we really need governors to be vigilant, to preach vigilance, to have consistent public policies in all 50 states in the coming months until everyone gets the vaccine,” he said. “This is going to be the key piece here, otherwise, we may not have normality on the 4th of July.”
Gupta said the United States was in a “race against time” to vaccinate as many people as possible.
The White House announced Friday a record 3.4 million vaccines administered across the country. That number could grow as Johnson & Johnson prepares to deliver 11 million doses of its single injection vaccine next week.
Representatives of the governors of Arizona, Texas and Florida were not immediately available for comment.