Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday she is “cautiously optimistic” that the U.S. is “turning the corner” in its battle against COVID-19.
In an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” co-host George Stephanopoulos asked Walensky if her “feeling of impending doom” from last month has passed.
“I have a feeling of cautious optimism now,” she responded.
Walensky said that, at the time of her “impending doom” comment, the country was “seeing cases go up, we were seeing people relaxing their measures, and I was really worried that we were in for yet another surge.”
The CDC chief said that cases in the country have plateaued, which she credited to increased vaccination rates and more people taking precautions such as social distancing and mask wearing.
“I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re turning the corner,” she said.
Walensky voiced a similar sentiment the day before, saying at a press briefing that the U.S. is seeing a “hopeful decline” in coronavirus cases. She called attention to declines in the seven-day averages of cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
In the ABC interview, she also stressed the importance of monitoring communities that have not been fully vaccinated. She called the coronavirus an “opportunist,” and said these locations are “where the virus is going to strike.”
The U.S. has reported more than 32 million coronavirus cases and more than 573,000 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, according to The New York Times.
According to the Times, 43 percent of Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.