Michigan should shut down again to combat its worrying spike in coronavirus cases, Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Monday.
At a White House briefing on Monday, Walensky said vaccines have a “delayed response” when it comes to lowering new cases because it usually takes two to six weeks to see the effect of increased vaccination rates.
“The answer to that is to really close things down, to go back to our basics, to go back to where we were last spring, last summer, and to shut things down,” Walensky said. “I think if we try to vaccinate our way out of what is happening in Michigan, we would be disappointed that it took so long for the vaccine to work to actually have the impact.”
Joe Biden has said Washington will give Michigan more resources but not additional vaccines. On Sunday, Whitmer told CBS she would work with the White House but wanted to do everything she could to get additional doses.
Michigan has the highest rate of new Covid-19 infections in the US. Whitmer said one factor behind the spike was that her state “kept our spread low for a long period of time, so we’ve got reservoirs of people that don’t have antibodies. We have variants, big presence of variants here in Michigan that are easier to catch. And people are tired and they’re moving around more.
