Get fully vaccinated before resuming normal activities, health experts plead with Americans

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Fri, 2021-04-02 08:41 — mike kraft

Get fully vaccinated before resuming normal activities, health experts plead with Americans With fears growing that the US may be facing a fourth surge of Covid-19 cases, health experts are pleading with Americans to keep taking precautions until they are fully vaccinated. Madeline Holcombe, CNN CNN

(CNN) With fears growing that the US may be facing a fourth surge of Covid-19 cases, health experts are pleading with Americans to keep taking precautions until they are fully vaccinated.

"Please wait until you're fully vaccinated before you're traveling, before you're engaging in high-risk activities," said CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen. "No doubt when you become vaccinated, the activities that were once higher risk are now going to be lower risk and so just wait until then."

Wen said she worries the US is on the "precipice" of a fourth surge as data is showing that infections are now skewed toward a younger generation.

Her sentiments were echoed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who told NBC Nightly News that while he is feeling some Covid-19 fatigue himself, it is important the US continue taking precautions while vaccinating Americans.

"We need to hold out just a bit longer and give vaccines a chance to really get the upper hand in this," Fauci said. "I'll guarantee as we get into the late spring and the early summer, you're going to see a return to gradual degree of normality that everyone is hoping for, but we don't want to do it prematurely."

High on the list of factors worrying experts is the spread of coronavirus variants in the US.

Michigan on Thursday said it identified its first case of a variant that was originally found in Brazil, adding to reports of variants spreading across the US. That spread, along with relaxation of social distancing and mask mandates in many states, contributed to an influential model increasing its prediction of the number of people who will die of the virus by July 1.

Last week, the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) forecast that 600,000 people would die by the start of July, and this week that number is up to 609,000.

"Relatively small changes in behavior can have a profound impact on deaths in the near term," the IHME said.

More than 30.5 million people in the US have been infected with coronavirus and 553,120 people have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

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