President Trump’s coronavirus testing czar Brett Giroir issued a stark warning about the rapid rate that COVID-19 has been spreading across the country.
Along with spikes in cases, Giroir said that hospitalizations and deaths are rising 25% week over week, adding that there is no sign that the country is working on flattening the curve any time soon.
“This is not going in the right direction,” Giroir told MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday. “We are at an absolutely critical, dangerous point.”
Giroir urged everybody to wear a mask in public spaces, as more local and state governments begin issuing mandates to ensure face coverings. He also asked the public to follow the same public health measures advocated from the start of the pandemic, including social distancing and frequent hand-washing.
“We have to take with the utmost seriousness. This is not crying wolf,” Giroir said. “This is the worst rate of rise in cases that we’ve seen in the pandemic in the United States, and right now, there’s no sign of flattening. We all have to be incredibly concerned. We all have to be diligent. We have to make clear choices to wear our masks, to physically distance, and try to make a better choice every single day.”
On Wednesday, Pfizer and BioNTech revealed their vaccine candidate to be 95% effective in preventing COVID-19. Moderna announced a similar revelation this week. In the United States, the coronavirus has infected more than 11 million people and killed over 250,000.
After vaccines are distributed to the most vulnerable populations, officials in the Trump administration are aiming to distribute the vaccine to the general public by early spring 2021.
Even when a vaccine is distributed, people should not abandon wearing a mask and social distancing since the full efficacy of the vaccine cannot be determined, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top medical expert on the White House coronavirus task force.
