Although coronavirus deaths tend to fluctuate more than cases and hospital admissions, Dr. Walensky said the average for the past seven days was slightly higher than the average for the beginning of the week. The seven-day average of recent deaths was 2,165, as of Thursday.
“We at CDC consider this to be a very worrying change in trajectory,” she said, adding: “I want to be clear: cases, hospital admissions and deaths – all remain very high and the recent change in the pandemic must be taken extremely seriously. “
Dr. Walensky said that part of the increase can be attributed to new variants of the coronavirus that spread more efficiently and faster. The so-called variant B.1.1.7, which first appeared in Britain, now accounts for approximately 10 percent of all cases in the United States, up from 1 percent to 4 percent a few weeks ago, she said. .
The United States’ ability to track variants is much less robust than Britain’s. Even so, data collected by the CDC show that the number of cases with the variant in the country rose from 76 in 12 states on January 13 to more than 2,100 in 45 states on Thursday. But the actual infections can be much greater due to inadequate surveillance efforts.
“I know that people are tired; they want to get back to life, back to normal, ”said Walensky. “But we are not there yet.”
Dr. Walensky’s strong and vocal warnings made it clear that under the Biden administration, unlike the Trump administration, the director of the CDC was receiving a powerful voice. Under President Donald J. Trump, the agency was largely silenced after one of its top officials, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, told reporters almost exactly a year ago that the coronavirus would cause serious disruption to Americans’ lives.
At the same time, government officials tried to highlight their efforts to get the country out of the pandemic, including increasing the national coronavirus vaccination campaign, purchasing new drugs and involving the private sector in the fight.