(CNSNews.com) - Vaccinations are proceeding, even accelerating, but COVID-19 cases are rising, and Americans should remain very concerned, President Biden and members of his administration warned on Monday:
"Our work is far from over. The war against COVID-19 is far from won. This is deadly serious," President Biden said.
"We share the sentiment of Dr. Walensky, the head of the Center for Disease Control and--and Prevention. The CDC expressed earlier today this is not a time to lessen our efforts. That's what she said. We could still see a setback in the vaccination program. And most importantly, if we let our guard down now we could see a virus getting worse, not better."
'Feeling...of impending doom'
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, going off-script at a different news conference earlier on Monday, told Americans she's "scared."
"And I'm going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom," Walensky said. "We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope. But right now, I'm scared."
Walensky talked about her experience with dying patients, with hospitals running out of supplies, with makeshift morgues set up outside:
"We have come such a long way. Three historic scientific breakthrough vaccines and we are rolling them out now so very fast. So I'm speaking today, not necessarily as your CDC director and not only as your CDC director but as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter, to ask you to just please hold on a little while longer.
"I so badly want to be done. I know you all so badly want to be done. We are just almost there, but not quite yet. And so I'm asking you to just hold on a little longer, to get vaccinated when you can so that all of those people that we all love will still be here when this pandemic ends."
Walensky pointed to a spike in cases in Europe as a reason for Americans to be concerned -- although the U.S. leads the world in vaccinations:
"I'm calling on our elected officials, our faith-based communities, our civic leaders and our other influencers in communities across the nation. And I'm calling on every single one of you to sound the alarm, to carry these messages into your community and your spheres of influence. We do not have the luxury of inaction. For the health of our country, we must work together now to prevent a fourth surge."
Aside from her feeling of "impending doom," Walensky gave numbers:
"CDC's most recent data show that the seven-day average of new cases is slightly less than 60,000 cases per day. This is a 10 percent increase compared to the prior seven-day period," she said.
"Hospitalizations have also increased. The most recent seven-day average of about 4,800 admissions per day is up from 4,600 admissions per day in the prior seven-day period. And deaths, which typically lag behind cases and hospitalizations, have now started to rise, increasing nearly three percent to a seven-day average of approximately one thousand deaths per day."
Walensky told the news conference that an uptick in cases, which we have seen before, could end up as a big surge:
"We know that cases sometimes can be a week or two behind, the behaviors that lead to those cases, the mixing that leads to those cases. We know that travel is up, and I just worry that we will see the surges that we saw over the summer and over the winter again."
On vaccinations, 'no other country has come close' to U.S.
President Biden on Monday told Americans to "look at what we have done in the past ten weeks."
"No other country has come close. 100 million shots in less than 60 days, and now we're moving to the next 100 million shots in just 40 days," Biden said.
But despite the many vaccinations delivered, "we still have more Americans left to go," Biden said:
You know, we will administer more shots in March than any country on earth, but even so we have to give more shots in April than we did in March. Because we're in the life and death race with the virus that is spreading quickly, with cases rising again. New variants are spreading, and sadly, some of the reckless behavior we've seen on television over the past few weeks means that more new cases are to come in the weeks ahead.
With vaccines there's hope. Which is a--which is a very good thing, to state the obvious. But people are...letting up on precautions, which is a very bad thing. Look, to this point, cases have fallen two-thirds since I took office. Deaths have also fallen two-thirds. But now cases are going back up. And in some states, deaths are as well.
Biden said, "It's time to do even more."
First, he talked about moving more vaccine supply to the highest risk Americans.
"Second, I'm reiterating my call for every governor, mayor, and local leader to maintain and reinstate the mask mandate. Please, this is not politics. Reinstate the mandate if you let it down. And businesses should require masks as well. The failure to take this virus seriously, precisely what got us in this mess in the first place, risks more cases and more deaths."
Biden repeated that wearing a mask is a "patriotic duty. It's the only way we ever get back to normal."
"Third, I announced on March 11th I'd direct every state, territory, and tribe to open up their vaccinations to all adults no later than May one. I issued that order because moving beyond priority groups to enable all adults to get vaccinated is critical to having a July 4th that's closer to normal. I want this to come as quickly as possible."
Point number four, Biden said, was his announcement that he's "sending out millions of dollars through the Department of Health and Human Services to provide assistance, including transportation, so more vulnerable seniors and people with disabilities can get their shots."
After touting all the progress made on his watch, Biden ended with this:
"Now's not the time to let down. Now's not the time to celebrate. It's time to do what we do best as a country, our duty, our jobs, take care of one another and fight this to the finish. We can and will do this, but don't let up now, don't let up now."