As the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S. slows and the vaccine rollout out quickens, states have started loosening restrictions.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Sunday it’s still too early for states to lift mask-wearing mandates.
As the spread of the virus in the U.S. slows and the vaccine rollout out quickens, states have begun relaxing restrictions. Republican governors in Montana and Iowa lifted statewide mask-wearing requirements this month. North Dakota’s mask mandate expired in January.
In New York, Democrat Andrew Cuomo recently permitted indoor dining at 25% capacity and opened up stadiums and arenas at limited capacity.
“We still have 100,000 cases a day. We still have somewhere between 1,500 and 3,500 deaths per day,” Walensky told CBS’s Face the Nation. “And yet we see some communities relaxing some of their mitigation strategies. We are nowhere out of the woods.”
The U.S. is reporting more than 93,000 cases a day on average, down 22% from a week ago, and more than 3,000 deaths daily, up 4% from a week ago, according to Johns Hopkins University.
More than 480,000 people in the U.S. have died from the virus and more than 27 million have been infected since the pandemic began.
