CDC Director: ‘Hard to Put a Number’ on Daily Case Count That Would Mean We’re Turning Corner

On Thursday’s broadcast of NBC’s “Today,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said that it’s “hard to put a number” on what daily case count of coronavirus cases would constitute turning a corner.

Co-host Craig Melvin asked, “You talked a little bit yesterday about the concerns that you have. 55,000, that’s the number, the daily infection rate number in this country. It’s remained stubbornly high over the last week or two. Hospitalizations, flat, deaths seem to be flat. The question continues to be, are we turning a corner? How will we know? How are we quantifying success, Dr. Walensky, when we see a daily case count of what, 20,000, 30,000?”

Walensky responded, “You know it’s hard to put a number on that. What worries me is the steady flow of 50,000, 60,000, and we continue to see that even today. What we do know is that we’re vaccinating people at two-and-a-half million people per day and we’re really starting to see the positive effects of that vaccination. We know that people who are over the age of 65, their mortality rates have come down dramatically from 16 in 100,000 in January to 1 in 100,000 now. So we know, and we’re getting that early evidence that this vaccine is working. And what we really want to do is make sure that we can reach all the population that will — can get the vaccine so that we can get that mortality rate down because we’re still seeing about a thousand deaths a day, way too many.”

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