Delta variant ‘is a different kind of beast’ says Walensky
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Dr Walensky has urged the public to keep wearing masks indoors to maximise protection from the Delta variant. The CDC director admitted that this type of variant is a “different kind of beast” to fight compared to other mutations of the coronavirus. The U-turn on mask-wearing comes as the US reported an increasing number of fresh Covid infections among the unvaccinated.
Speaking on CBS News, Dr Walensky explains why the CDC has issued new guidance on mask-wearing despite Americans widely shedding the covering over the past two months.
She said: “Where we were in May as we had a country that had mostly Alpha variant of this virus, only 1% of the sequence’s Virus was delta at the time.
“Here we are about 10 weeks later and most of what we’re sequencing now is delta variant and delta is just a different kind of beast as we say.”
Ms Walensky went on: “It is much more contagious, we knew that already.
“The thing that’s important and that is new data that we’ve seen just in the last several days but corroborated several times, is that if you are vaccinated and you are one of those rare breakthrough infections, you actually have the capacity to pass it to somebody else.”
The CDC earlier this week advised Americans living in areas where new surges of COVID-19 have been emerged to wear masks indoors again, even if they are doubled jabbed.
The guidance extends to school children, where masking has been a controversial issue.
Johns Hopkins University reported 89,418 new cases on Monday.
When asked by presenter Gayle King whether the variant would still exist if more people had gotten the vaccine, Ms Walensky replied: “You know, I think it’s very true to see that the country has so much disease right now.
“Eighty percent of our counties with the highest amount of disease have the lowest amount of vaccination in this country and less than 40% of the people vaccinated,
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Ms Walensky added: “And the vast majority of transmission that is happening in this country is happening among unvaccinated people.”
President Joe Biden said that increased vaccination and mask wearing would help the United States avoid the pandemic lockdowns, shutdowns and school closures that the country faced in 2020.
The CDC said that 63.4 percent of US counties had transmission rates high enough to warrant indoor masking and should immediately resume the policy. Manhattan, Los Angeles and San Francisco meet the transmission criteria, as does the entire state of Florida, but Chicago and Detroit do not.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten praised the new CDC mask guidance in a statement, calling it “a necessary precaution until children under 12 can receive a COVID vaccine and more Americans over 12 get vaccinated.”
The CDC’s previous guidance for schools only called for unvaccinated students to wear masks.
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