It’s still too soon to ease up on mask use, says CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky

Hold on to that mask — it’s way too soon to ease mandates requiring face coverings, the new head of the CDC said Sunday.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky noted the country is still seeing about 100,000 new COVID cases per day and up to 3,500 daily deaths.

“The cases are more than two-and-a-half-fold times what we saw over the summer,” Walensky told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “It’s encouraging to see these trends coming down, but they’re coming down from an extraordinarily high place.”

She also sounded the alarm over the COVID strain first found in Britain, saying over 1,000 cases of the variant have been found in 39 states.

“We know that early data have demonstrated that is around 40-50% more transmissible,” the doc said. “We’re likely to have more cases and more deaths from this, and now these early data that have come from a prior set of early data have suggested that there ... might in fact be increased morbidity and mortality.

“We can’t let our guard down,” Walensky concluded. “We have to continue wearing masks. We have to continue with our current mitigation measures.”

On schools, she said there should be flexibility on social-distancing rules requiring people to stay 6 feet away from one another — some school leaders have pushed for 3-foot limits — depending on how bad the outbreak is in surrounding communities.

“We are more flexible with the 6 feet if there’s limited amount of community spread in those low-to-moderate ranges,” Walensky said. “When you get to substantial and high ranges of community spread, we really feel like you need 6 feet.”

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