CDC Director Rochelle Walensky warns of an 'avoidable surge' in coronavirus cases

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky on Monday, March 22 warned of an "avoidable surge" in the coronavirus cases. During a White House Briefing, she said, “We must find the fortitude to hang in there for just a little bit longer. We are at a critical point in this pandemic, a fork in the road, where we as a country must decide which path we are going to take”. 

Earlier, US President Joe Biden visited the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta after the US surpassed administering 100 million doses of the vaccine. During the visit, Walensky informed Biden that the 100 million vaccine-threshold had been reached as the country gets immunized after more than one year in lockdown. Biden said, "We owe you a gigantic debt of gratitude and we will for a long, long long time. He added, "Science is back”. 

A new finding 

A morbidity and mortality weekly report by the US CDC found that the UK's more virulent strain of coronavirus is fast spreading across the US roughly doubling the caseload every 10 days. According to CDC, the highly transmissible variant of SARS-CoV-2, B.1.1.7, first identified in the UK  has been detected in at least 12 US states. “B.1.1.7 has the potential to increase the U.S. pandemic trajectory in the coming months,” the report warned, adding that the CDC has stepped up efforts for the mutant’s genomic surveillance and its sequencing to generate more accurate data. 

Suggesting the increased compliance to the health safety measures such as social distancing and mask usage, the CDC insisted that the officials were targeting a new containment approach under National SARS-CoV-2 Strain Surveillance program. This included expansion of vaccination among the vulnerable population or those at higher risk of contracting the more contagious mutant, such as people with comorbidity. Earlier, scientists found that the more virulent UK strain of the coronavirus which was first detected across England and London has a "significantly higher” mortality rate. The variant dubbed as B.1.1.7, is “more lethal, and leads to more hospitalizations and caseload” as compared to the other mutants, based on the analysis of data released by New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) on SARS-CoV-2 variant B.1.1.7.

(Image Credits: AP)