CDC director warns of ‘avoidable surge’ of COVID-19 amid relaxing precautions

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky on Monday warned of an “avoidable surge” in COVID-19 cases if people do not take sufficient precautions.

“We must find the fortitude to hang in there for just a little bit longer,” Walensky said during a White House press briefing. “We are at a critical point in this pandemic, a fork in the road, where we as a country must decide which path we are going to take.”

Europe is seeing a new wave of cases as it struggles with a slower pace of vaccinations and with more infectious variants of the virus. Walensky pointed to the rise of the variants and said a similar situation could play out here.

“We must act now and I am worried that if we don’t take the right actions now, we will have another avoidable surge just as we are seeing in Europe right now and just as we are so aggressively scaling up vaccination,” she said.

Down in Miami, they’re not heeding all the warnings: Walensky’s comments come as crowds of people on spring break flock to South Florida, forcing the city of Miami Beach to extend a curfew.