Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control, held back tears and discussed what she called an “impending doom” — a rise in Covid-19 cases.
“Now is one of those times when I have to share the truth and I have to hope and trust you will listen. Right now I’m scared.”
CDC Director Rochelle walensky
Walensky urged Americans to keep taking precautions: “I’m speaking today not necessarily as your CDC director, but as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter to ask you to just please hold on a little while longer.”
“I so badly want to be done,” Walensky added. “I know you all so badly want to be done. We are almost there but not quite yet.”
“When we see that uptick in cases…things really have a tendency to surge and surge big,” Walensky said. “I just worry that we will see the surges that we saw over the summer and the winter again.”
Disturbing trend lines give credence to Walensky’s fears. The number of new daily reported Covid-19 deaths has risen by 6.2 percent in the past week and new cases are up by nearly 9 percent. A thousand Americans a day are still dying from a disease that has already killed nearly three million people worldwide.
Although over a quarter of Americans – 93 million – have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, Walensky warned last week that variants are “spreading rapidly” and could cause “another avoidable surge.”
