Top Biden administration officials warned Wednesday that one-third of Americans live in communities experiencing rising levels of coronavirus cases and hospitalizations and urged them to resume taking personal protection measures, including wearing masks.
The increase in new infections — nearing 100,000 a day — comes as the nation heads into Memorial Day weekend with its large gatherings and travel. That case count is almost certainly an undercount, officials said, given the widespread use of at-home tests for which results are often not reported to health officials.
Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, strongly encouraged those living in communities designated yellow or orange, indicating they have large numbers of new infections and hospitalizations, to consider wearing masks in indoor public spaces and taking other steps to protect themselves.
“As we’re currently seeing a steady rise of cases in parts of the country, we encourage everyone to use the menu of tools we have today to prevent further infection and severe disease, including wearing a mask, getting tested, accessing treatments early if infected and getting vaccinated or boosted,” she said.
Wednesday’s warnings from Walensky and two other officials — Ashish Jha, White House coronavirus coordinator, and Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser — came on the same day the United States surpassed the grim milestone of 1 million covid-19 deaths, a toll that even the starkest predictions at the start of the pandemic in 2020 did not anticipate.
While officials stressed that the current situation is far less dire than the winter omicron-variant surge, they cautioned that the country will be ill-prepared to respond effectively in the coming months if Congress does not soon appropriate billions of dollars in coronavirus aid to buy a new tranche of antiviral treatments, vaccines, and tests.
Walensky said the seven-day average of new infections has climbed to about 94,000 per day, an increase of 26 percent over the previous week and a threefold increase over the past month. Hospitalizations are also beginning to rise, she said, with admissions increasing about 19 percent over the previous week, to about 3,000 per day. READ MORE
