The United States’ leading infectious disease specialist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has warned that it is too early to end Covid-19 restrictions, although Texas and Mississippi have suspended mask mandates and business capacity limits this week.
States are easing restrictions after a drop in cases, although that decline is beginning to stabilize at a high rate of 60,000 to 70,000 infections per day.
“We are going in the right direction, but we just need to wait a little longer,” said Fauci on Sunday to CBS’s Face the Nation.
Public health experts have warned that the United States could hamper vaccine-related progress and allow thousands of preventable deaths by lifting restrictions at the first sign of improvement. More than 524,000 people died of Covid-19 in the United States and January was the deadliest month in the pandemic to date.
Fauci, Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor, said turning the restrictions on and off risked another increase.
“This is not going to be undefined. We need to step back gradually as we vaccinate people, ”he said.
Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist who assisted Biden’s transition team, warned that the United States is still “in the eye of the hurricane”.
Osterholm told NBC Meet the Press that the situation appeared to be improving, but said he was concerned that the B117 variant, which is 50% more infectious than other variants in the U.S., could create a new outbreak.
“We need to keep America as safe as possible against this virus, by not giving up any of the public health measures we take and we need to vaccinate people as soon as possible,” said Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy at Minnesota University.
In CNN’s State of the Union, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves said he lifted restrictions in his state because of falling hospitalization rates.
“Our goal in Mississippi was never to get rid of the virus … our goal is to ensure that we protect the integrity of our health care system,” said the Republican.
Mississippi saw an average of 461 cases per day, down 17% from the average two weeks ago, according to the New York Times. There were 1,240 deaths from Covid-19 in the state in January, the highest number of months since the pandemic began. About 16% of residents received the first dose of the vaccine.
“The numbers in Mississippi don’t justify government intervention,” said Reeves, who encouraged residents to continue wearing masks in crowded environments.
Other governors celebrated their state’s masking mandates and said they would remain in office until there was a substantial improvement in infection rates.
Mike DeWine of Ohio, a Republican, told ABC’s This Week program that his state’s mask order was followed by a “significant drop in cases”.
“We’ve seen this over the past year – these masks really work,” said DeWine.
He said his state would withdraw health claims once it had 50 cases or less per 100,000 people for two weeks. Although rates were still high in Ohio, he said, the distribution of vaccination in the state was improving by the day.
“But while we are doing this, we cannot give up on defense,” said DeWine.
Brown University School of Public Health Dean Ashish Jha said decisions like Reeves’ and Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s decision to lift restrictions could slow the normalization of life and put residents at risk of infection and death.
“Given how close we are to the finish line, anyone who is infected today and dies in three or four weeks is someone who would have been vaccinated a month from now,” Jha told ABC. “That is why it is urgent to continue for a little while.”