Joe Biden on Friday night warned Americans that new restrictions were coming, as the Delta variant causes COVID-19 caseloads across the country to soar.
The president, leaving the White House for a weekend at Camp David, was asked whether new rules were likely to be introduced.
‘In all probability,’ he said, without expanding.
On Tuesday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its guidance to recommend the wearing of face masks indoors, in areas where there is considerable transmission of the virus.
The new advice applies to both vaccinated and unvaccinated people.
The Delta variant, first detected in India, causes infections that are more contagious than the common cold, flu, smallpox and the Ebola virus, and it is as infectious as chickenpox, according to new research, published by the CDC on Friday.
They note COVID-19 vaccines are still highly effective against the Delta variant at preventing serious illness and death, but detail an outbreak in Provincetown, on Cape Cod, over the July 4 weekend which saw many vaccinated people become infected. No one who was vaccinated died.
Joe Biden on Friday night told reporters that new restrictions were likely on their way to stem the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak
Biden stopped to talk to the media as he left the White House on Friday evening, en route to Camp David for the weekend
To counter the rising raise of infection, the White House is pushing for Americans to get their COVID vaccine but has said repeatedly they won’t mandate people get their shot in the arm.
‘Yesterday, almost a million people got vaccinated, about half a million people for the first time,’ Biden said, calling it ‘good news.’
Biden is requiring the more than two million employees of the federal government get vaccinated or submit to regular COVID testing.
The White House has said vaccine requirements are up to private businesses.
On Friday, Disney and Wal-Mart, two of America’s largest employers, announced a vaccine requirement for their employees.
While Biden did not specify what the new restrictions would entail, the White House on Friday said that there were not planning on reintroducing lockdowns.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the principal deputy press secretary, was asked whether there have been ‘conversations in the White House or between the White House and its scientific advisors about more lockdowns, partial lockdowns or anything along those lines’.
Jean-Pierre responded: ‘We have the tools in our toolbelt to fight this variant.
‘We are not going to head towards a lockdown.
‘We want to make sure that we’re doing everything that we can because we have the resources to make sure that doesn’t happen.’
Earlier on Friday, Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, said that a federal vaccine mandate was being considered.
Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, appeared on Fox News on Friday and said that discussions were being held about a possible federal vaccine mandate. She said she could not go into details
‘That’s something that I think the administration is looking into. It’s something that I think we are looking to see approval of, from the vaccine,’ she said.
‘Overall, I think in general, I am all for more vaccination.
‘But, I have nothing further to say on that except that we are looking into those policies.’
Walensky added that any vaccine mandates currently in place are strictly on the local or corporate level.
Fox News anchor Brett Baier asked what Walensky would say to those who do not want to get vaccinated, seeing it as an infringement on their right to do what they want with their own bodies.
‘I completely understand the pushback,’ she said, but explained that vaccinations against diseases such as polio, measles and TB are already routine.
She said that as a former chief epidemiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, she was mandated to receive an influenza shot every year to be able to hold her job.
‘I understand both perspectives,’ she said.
‘Some people haven’t had access. Some people haven’t had time off. Some people don’t understand its benefits. Some people are worried about the side effects.
‘So I think as we go and try and provide information to people who are not yet vaccinated.’
In a report published on Friday, Walensky’s agency detailed a COVID-19 outbreak earlier this month in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, linked to the spread of the Indian ‘Delta’ variant.
A new CDC report detailed 469 cases of COVID-19 linked to an outbreak in Provincetown, Massachusetts between July 3 and July 17, of which 74% were in fully vaccinated people
Only four of the vaccinated people were hospitalized, two of whom had underlying conditions, and there were no deaths. This shows vaccines are effective even against the Delta variant, which now makes up 83% of all new infections
Researchers found nearly three-quarters of the infections occurred in people who were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 with either of three shots approved in the U.S. for emergency use.
What’s more, tests showed that immunized people carried about the same viral levels in their noses and throats as unvaccinated people did.
However, there were just four hospitalizations and no fatalities among the fully vaccinated group, showing that the vaccines are very effective against severe disease and death.
The team looked at COVID-19 cases linked to summer events and large gatherings in Provincetown, on Massachusetts’s Cape Cod, between July 3 and July 17.
Thousands of residents and tourists flocked to the summer town for Independence Day celebrations as well as family vacations, resulting in crowded bars, restaurants, rental homes and more.
Travis Dagenais, who was among the many vaccinated people infected, said ‘throwing caution to the wind’ and partying in crowds for long nights over the July Fourth holiday was a mistake in hindsight.
‘The dominant public messaging has been that the vaccine means a return to normal,’ the 35-year-old Boston resident told AP on Thursday.
‘Unfortunately, I’ve now learned it’s a few steps toward normal, not the zero-to-sixty that we seem to have undertaken.’
Dagenais credits being vaccinated with easing the worst of the flu-like symptoms in a couple of days. He has recovered.
On July 10, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health began receiving reports of an increased number of cases linked to the county.
The 14-day rolling average of COVID-19 cases in the county rose from zero cases per 100,000 persons on July 3 to 177 cases per 100,000 persons.
By July 26, 469 cases had been identified, of which 74 percent – or 346 – were among fully vaccinated with at least 14 days since their final dose.
Although experts generally agreed with the CDC’s revised indoor masking stance, some said the report on the Provincetown outbreak does not prove that vaccinated people are a significant source of new infections.
‘There’s scientific plausibility for the (CDC) recommendation. But it’s not derived from this study,’ said Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins University public health researcher.
The CDC report is based on about 470 COVID-19 cases linked to the Provincetown festivities, which included densely packed indoor and outdoor holiday events at bars, restaurants, guest houses and rental homes.
‘What’s going on here? Why are they saying this?’ asked Tucker Carlson, the Fox News anchor, on Friday night, questioning why new restrictions could be brought in.
‘It turns out the COVID vaccines – the drugs more impressive than the moon landings, which you could not question – don’t actually do what they thought they could.’
He noted that three quarters of the people infected in a recent outbreak, in Cape Cod, were vaccinated.
‘So now we learn that virtually everything they told us about the vaccinations is wrong,’ he claimed – failing to point out that there were no deaths among vaccinated people in the Cape Cod outbreak, which shows the vaccine does work.
He accused the Biden administration with not being honest with the American public, insisting that more should have been done to explain that the science was preliminary and evolving, and saying that the public could ‘cope with the truth’.
Carlson accused the scientists of lacking ‘humility’.
‘They are punishing the country for the disaster they made,’ he said. ‘It’s your fault.’
He added: ‘Why are lockdowns the answer to a failing vaccine?’
Carlson pointed out that the UK did not reimpose a lockdown, despite their spread of the Delta variant being considered more advanced than the United States.