As the United States faces a record wave of infections and hospitalizations due to the omicron variant of coronavirus, the country’s health authorities are in the spotlight due to the confusion surrounding the days of isolation and the use of masks.
The contradictory messages were repeated this Wednesday at the weekly White House press conference on covid-19, where the president’s team, Joe Biden, was unable to clarify what type of mask to use in the face of the new variant.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, in English), Rochelle Walensky, denied that her body is studying recommending to Americans the use of the “higher quality” mask and ruled that “any mask is better than none”.
But in the same appearance, Jeff Zients, coordinator of the government’s response team to the pandemic, said that the White House “is seriously considering” facilitating access to masks of greater protection, such as KN95 or N95, than those made of cloth.
“We will follow the advice of science, and the CDC is leading on this matter … but it is an issue that we are actively exploring,” Zients said.
Walensky ended up admitting that the CDC will update its website to help Americans choose a mask and use it correctly.
In the hurricane eye
The director of the CDC, a renowned scientist who has led this prestigious institution since the beginning of the Biden administration, has been in the eye of the hurricane for the past two weeks for her messages and recommendations.
At the end of December, he recommended that people infected with omicron and without symptoms lift their quarantine after five days without the need for a negative test, a decision motivated by the lack of personnel that the isolations generated in several sectors, including hospitals.
After that, the American Medical Association raised the cry in the sky, because “hundreds of thousands of people could return to work and school, and continue to infect if they follow the new CDC guide.”
Last week, Walensky held an unprecedented telephone press conference, his first since he has been in office, to defend himself against criticism.
In that call, he clarified regarding isolation that the onset of symptoms should be counted as day zero and that confinement can be lifted on the sixth day if one is asymptomatic and always wearing a mask.
That of the mask is an issue that has haunted her long before, specifically May, when the CDC announced that its use was not necessary for those fully vaccinated, a recommendation that they later modified.
Everyone is going to have the virus
The confusing recommendations coincide with a vertiginous rise in COVID-19 infections in the United States, where the omicron variant, more contagious than the previous ones, already accounts for 98% of cases.
The country, which surpassed one million new confirmed cases for the first time on January 3, broke a new record for hospital admissions due to covid-19 on Tuesday, with more than 145,000 people in health centers.
Faced with this situation, the government’s main epidemiologist, Anthony Fauci, took for granted this Wednesday that almost “everyone” will contract the coronavirus sooner and later, although he defended the effectiveness of vaccines to prevent the disease from being serious.
“Virtually everyone will end up exposed and will probably become infected, but if they are vaccinated and receive boosters, the chances of them getting sick are very, very low,” Fauci said during the press conference.
Fauci insisted that COVID-19 “cannot be eradicated,” although he defended that it will eventually be controlled.
According to the CDC, the vaccines have allowed the risk of hospitalization with the omicron variant to be reduced 53% compared to the delta, while that of ending up in an intensive care unit has dropped 74% and that of death, 91%.