The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says Michigan needs to ‘close things down’ in light of the rising number of COVID-19 cases.
In the last month, new infections have exploded from an average of about 2,000 per day to more than 6,000 per day, an xx percent increase.
During a press briefing on Monday, Dr Rochelle Walensky said she believe that the state will not be able to vaccinate its way out of a fourth spike.
‘When you have an acute situation, extraordinary number of cases like we have in Michigan, the answer is not necessarily to give vaccine,’ she said.
‘The answer to that is to really close thing downs, to back to our basic, to go back to where we were last spring, last summer… to flatten the curve, to decrease contact with one another, to test to the extent that we have available, to contact trace.’
During a press briefing on Monday, CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky (pictured) said Michigan needs to shut down again in light of increasing infections
In the last month, Michigan has seen a 200% rise in coronavirus cases from an average of about 2,000 per day to more than 6,000 per day
Walensky said that because vaccines take between two to six weeks for full immunity, it will take too long to see an effect. Pictured: Restaurants along Monroe Street in Detroit, Michigan
Dr Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist, told CNN on Sunday, that there are two factors behind the surge in Michigan,
The first is the coronavirus variant first identified in the UK, known as B.1.1.7, which accounts for about 70 percent of new cases in the state.
Michigan has at least 2,262 confirmed cases of the variant, according to the CDC, second only to Florida, which has 3,510 infections.
Gounder say the other factor is a lack of following public health measures such as not wearing masks before a large percentage of residents are vaccinated.
Michigan Gov Gretchen Whitmer has pushed the Biden administration to send more vaccine doses to the state .
The White House refused, a decision that was criticized by former FDA commissioner Dr Scott Gottlieb.
‘It’s a request that’s been made for weeks now, and I think we should have done it weeks ago,’ he said on CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday.
‘It’s never too late to do it. And it’s not just additional vaccine, but it’s the resources to actually get the vaccine into arms.’
Walensky said that she does not believe the federal government ramping up vaccine shipments to the state will help.
‘We know that if vaccines go in arms today, we will not see an effect of those vaccine, depending on the vaccine, for somewhere between two to six weeks.
This is because it takes two weeks after the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna and two weeks after the Johnson & Johnson single-dose to reach full immunity.
Meanwhile, if you are exposed to COVID-19, it only takes between four to five days later for symptoms to emerge.
‘I think if we tried to vaccinate our way out of what is happening in Michigan, we would be disappointed that it took so long for the vaccine to work, to actually have the impact,’ she said.
‘Similarly, we need that vaccine in other places. If we vaccinate today, we will have impact in six weeks and we don’t know where the next place is going to be that is going to surge.’
Gounder also agreed with Walensky’s reasoning.
‘So there is no way that a surge in vaccination is going to help curb this when transmission is happening right now,’ she told CNN.
‘The hard truth is that the only thing that will curb transmission right now are measures that take effect immediately.
