“It’s what we’re doing right: staying apart, wearing masks, not traveling, not mixing with others indoors,” Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Sunday.
But that doesn’t mean the US is in the clear.
“We’ve had three surges,” Frieden added. “Whether or not we have a fourth surge is up to us, and the stakes couldn’t be higher — not only in the number of people who could die in the fourth surge, but also in the risk that even more dangerous variants will emerge if there’s more uncontrolled spread.”
“It’s encouraging to see these trends coming down, but they’re coming down from an extraordinarily high place,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told NBC on Sunday. “If we want to get our children back to school, and I believe we all do, it all depends on how much community spread is out there.”
“We need to all take responsibility to decrease that community spread, including mask wearing, so that we can get our kids and our society back,” the director added.
Homegrown Covid-19 variants spotted in US
Among the most concerning Covid-19 strains that has been detected in the US is the highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant, first spotted in the UK. More than 1,100 cases of the variant have been reported across 39 states — with roughly a third of the cases reported in Florida, according to data from the CDC.
The US has also reported at least 17 cases of a strain initially seen in South Africa and at least two cases of another strain, this one first linked to Brazil.
States still struggle with vaccine supply
Public health experts say the US is now in a race against time to vaccinate as many Americans as possible before the variants continue to spread and mutate further.
But while states ramp up their vaccinations, challenges remain — including supply shortages.
In San Francisco, officials announced that a high-volume vaccination site will pause for a week and will reopen “once supply is sufficient to resume operations.” A second high-volume site expects to resume vaccinations Friday — but only for second doses. A third high-volume vaccine site is set to launch this week, officials said, but “with available appointments far below full capacity.”
“The vaccine supply coming to San Francisco’s healthcare providers and the Department of Public Health (DPH) is limited, inconsistent, and unpredictable, making vaccine roll out difficult and denying San Franciscans this potentially life-saving intervention,” officials said in a news release Sunday.
“The City has the capacity to administer more than 10,000 vaccines per day but lack the vaccine supply,” they added.
Read More: US Coronavirus: Widespread vaccinations in the US won’t come until the summer.