Anthony Fauci, the Chief Medical Adviser of the White House, issued a stark warning about the current situation of the pandemic without ruling out a new CDC face mask mandate in the US on Sunday.
Speaking with CNN’s State of the Union talk show, Fauci said that the nation is going in the wrong direction due to the fact that Covid-19 cases continue to rise across the United States, particularly among those who are still unvaccinated.
Dr. Fauci emphasized the fact that the problem is primarily for those who are not fully vaccinated, but said that “since we have 50% of the country that is not fully vaccinated, that’s a problem.”
The Chief Medical Adviser admitted that the deaths that could occur in the near future will be predominantly among those who remain unvaccinated.
”So, this is the reason why,” Dr. Fauci noted, ”we’re out there, practically pleading with the unvaccinated people to go out and get vaccinated.”
What makes the situation worse is that the US, like the rest of the world, struggles to cope with the much more infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus, as well as the fact that dozens of states have still a long way to go to fully vaccinate at least one out of every two citizens.
According to the CDC, only 20 states have managed to fully vaccinate at least 50% of their population.
This is one of the reasons why all 50 US states recorded a higher number of cases this week compared to the week before, according to official data released by Johns Hopkins University on Friday.
Face Mask Mandate: Guidance for Vaccinated Could Change
This mixture of low rates of vaccinations and the rapid spread of the Delta variant has made American health officials wonder whether the mask guidance for those fully vaccinated needs to change.
Currently, fully vaccinated people in the US go without wearing face masks, doing so early this Spring for the first time in months.
However, this situation could soon change.
”This is under active consideration,” Dr. Fauci told CNN, leaving a wide-open door to the possibility of a nationwide reintroduction of the face mask mandate even for those who have been fully vaccinated.
However, this is not anything new to millions of Americans anyway.
The counties of Los Angeles in California and St. Louis in Missouri have already asked their residents to wear facemasks in indoor venues regardless of their vaccination status.
Many more local authorities are currently examining this possibility across the country.
This is exactly what Dr. Fauci said on Sunday. Local governments across the United States can issue their own guidance or even rules for their jurisdictions by following the general guidance of the CDC that applies nationwide.
It should be noted that, according to data released by the White House during a press briefing on Thursday, an astonishing 99.5 percent of the current Covid-related deaths are among people who are unvaccinated.
Additionally, 97 out of every 100 new hospitalizations are for people who have not had yet their coronavirus vaccine, making this new wave of infections truly a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
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