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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said she anticipates COVID-19 will become a seasonal virus.
“I do anticipate that this is probably going to be a seasonal virus,” she told NBC News on Monday.
MASK MANDATES GO AWAY IN SCHOOLS, BUT PARENT WORRIES PERSIST
Walensky also told the network that Americans should anticipate they will need to wear face masks again and hope that they are not always necessary.
The agency moved to loosen mask restrictions for much of the U.S. at the end of last month.
“We may want to be more vigilant during some seasons,” she noted. “Maybe during respiratory season, if things ramped up, we would want to put on our masks again to protect both from flu and from COVID and from all other respiratory diseases.”
Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), during a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden and members of the White House Covid-19 Response Team on the Omicron variant in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021.
(Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. reported 67,516 new coronavirus cases and 1,686 new deaths.
Those numbers are markedly down from January’s surge of the omicron variant – although CDC data shows the variant still makes up 99.9% of new cases.
HOUSE REPUBLICANS CALL FOR END TO VACCINE MANDATES FOR FOREIGN TRUCKERS, AGRICULTURAL WORKERS AT THE BORDER
Walensky said it remained unclear whether people will need additional COVID-19 booster shots over the next year.
In a reversal of the U.N. agency’s previous stance, an expert group convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday that it “strongly supports urgent and broad access” to booster doses.
In a statement, the organization said its group concluded that immunization with authorized COVID-19 vaccines…
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