The director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, made some alarming declarations regarding the expected surge in COVID cases. As Dr Collins explained in a Sunday Interview, the current situation is generated by the significant number of people refusing to take the vaccine or wear a mask. At the moment, according to CDC, there has been a 700% increase in Coronavirus cases compared to the beginning of July. As such, daily cases have reached an average of more than 11.000.
The NIH director believes that reaching 200.000 cases per day is almost a certainty given the current situation, which he named “heartbreaking”. He also added that COVID cases should not rise to such alarming numbers given the fact that vaccines are now widely available: “That was January-February, that shouldn’t be August. But here we are with Delta variant, which is so contagious, and this heartbreaking situation where 90 million people are still unvaccinated who are sitting ducks for this virus and that’s the mess we’re in.”
Dr Collins also warned Americans that those who choose not to take the vaccine and refuse to wear a mask go, in fact, expose themselves to significant risks, expressing his regrets that politics have shifted the population’s perception of face masks.
More than a half of the population of the United States is now vaccinated with at least one shot, with a percentage of 59,2 and more than 196 people. Half of the Americans qualify in the completely vaccinated population, around 50,4% (167,4 million persons). However, vaccine rates have gradually decreased in the past weeks. As new COVID variants continue to emerge, health officials have recommended a third booster shot for people with immunity problems.
