CNN medical contributor Dr. Leana Wen on Tuesday’s “Situation Room” said the Biden administration should reinstate some mask mandates and move toward “proof of vaccination” effort at this point in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Guest anchor Jim Acosta said, “You say the Biden administration needs to change its approach to this pandemic now that the Delta variant has taken hold. What specific changes do you want to see? Are we going to see more masking in at least federal buildings around Washington, do you think?”
Wen, the former Planned Parenthood president, said, “I really hope so because, Jim, we are at a very different point in the pandemic than we were a month ago. We now have three times the number of new infections compared to a month ago. We have the Delta variant, which in people who are infected with it, they have about a thousand times the amount of virus than they would if they got infected with the original variant. We don’t know for those individuals who are fully vaccinated — are they able to transmit the Delta variant to others? And so, as a result, we use the abundance of caution approach. I hope the Biden administration hits the reset button and says, we acknowledge that we are at a very different point and therefore we should follow the example of L.A. County and say then if there are places where vaccinated and unvaccinated people are mixing, then indoor mask mandates should still apply.”
She concluded, “I really think it is time for us to reinstate some of these masking mandates while in the meantime ideally aiming for proof of vaccination so we can really boost our vaccination numbers.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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