“I think we are going to get fooled,” Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia said Thursday. “I think what’s going to happen is you’re going to see that as we enter the summer months, numbers are going to go down, people will think great, we’re good.”
He added: “And then, if we don’t get to what I think is going to be at least 80% population immunity from natural infection or immunization, when the winter comes, you’re going to see a surge again.”
Yet many states have begun to relax measures, including mask mandates. And because of fewer masks and more people moving around with more transmissible variants, IHME increased its prediction of Covid-19 deaths by July 1 by an additional 22,000 people.
Overall, the IHME predicts nearly 600,000 Covid-19 deaths by July 1, up from the current number of around 530,000 recorded fatalities.
“I think March and April are just such important, critical times,” she said. “On the one hand, you have this hyper-transmissible virus that could result in another surge after spring break.
“On the other hand, we are scaling up vaccinations so very fast, and what we really want to do is just give those vaccines a fighting chance to overcome and not let this virus surge again.”
‘We have to be humble to with this virus’
For those who are vaccinated, CDC released new guidelines Monday, maintaining recommendations against travel for those who have been inoculated.
Some have questioned whether the guidelines are too strict.
“We have to be humble with this virus,” Walensky said in the interview with NBC Nightly News….
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