CDC director calls on Michigan to ‘close things down’ amid surge in cases

As Michigan’s governor calls for more vaccine doses for her state, the Biden administration has a different response in mind: Close things down.

CDC director Rochelle Walensky addressed the growing spread of COVID-19 in the Wolverine State by saying sending more vaccines to the state won’t solve the problem, as immunizations take two to six weeks to affect coronavirus statistics.

CDC’s take: “When you have an acute situation, an extraordinary number of cases like we have in Michigan, the answer is not necessarily to give vaccines — in fact we know the vaccine will have a delayed response,” she said.

“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 … to flatten the curve, decrease contact with one another, to test to the extent we have available, to contact trace,” she said during a White House COVID-19 response team briefing.

Gov. Whitmer’s take: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) had called for more shots to go to the Wolverine State last week, saying that the federal strategy should be “squelching where the hot spots are.”

“I made the case for a surge strategy,” Whitmer said at a briefing on Friday. “At this point, that’s not being deployed, but I am not giving up.”