A renewed vaccine push mixed with masking could flatten America’s recent spike in coronavirus cases within two weeks, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday morning.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky sounded the hopeful note after her health agency reversed lenient face-covering guidelines on Tuesday, urging even vaccinated Americans to wear masks indoors at schools and in high-risk regions.
Though the country has faced a steep rise in cases this month — a trend that frustrated federal officials blame on vaccine hesitancy — Walensky suggested that jabs and masks can quickly bat back the delta variant wreaking havoc across the U.S.
“We can halt the chain of transmission,” Walensky told “CBS This Morning” on Wednesday. “We can do something if we unify together, if we get people vaccinated who are not yet vaccinated, if we mask in the interim, we can halt this in just a matter of a couple of weeks.”
Over the last two weeks, the nation’s moving seven-day average of cases more than doubled, according to CDC data.
About 49% of all Americans were fully vaccinated as of Tuesday, according to the federal figures. President Joe Biden expressed his irritation that the number was not higher.
“If you’re not vaccinated, you’re not nearly as smart as I thought you were,” Biden said Tuesday. “We have a pandemic because of the unvaccinated.”
