American health authorities were alarmed on Wednesday by the sharp rise in Covid-19 cases in the state of Michigan, in the northern United States, despite a vaccination campaign in full swing in the country.
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"We are seeing a significant increase in our Covid-19 cases,"
Michigan deputy health department chief Joneigh Khaldun tweeted on Wednesday.
“Our hospitalizations are also on the rise.
The people of Michigan must redouble their efforts and follow the measures to help curb the spread of the virus, ”
she called.
Michigan is the state which is currently experiencing the highest rise in contamination, in proportion to its population.
Some point to the effect of spring break.
A team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the country's main federal public health agency, "is on site to assess (the extent) of outbreaks (of cases) in prison facilities," said the director of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, during a press point on Wednesday.
"We are working to facilitate increased tests (...) in the context of the practice of sport among young people",
she added, affirming that she encourages the State to send its anti-Covid vaccines to the most affected regions.
The CDC is also working to carry out more sequencing operations to
"understand what is happening"
vis-à-vis the variants, including the British, now the majority throughout the country, she also announced.
Despite a vaccination rate of now more than 3 million injections per day at the national level, the number of daily infections has started to increase again, and remains at a very high level (about 63,000 new cases per day on average over the seven last days).
The health authorities are thus trying to convince Americans to continue to follow barrier gestures (wearing a mask, physical distancing, etc.), until a sufficiently large part of the population is immunized.
However, the number of daily deaths is itself down thanks to the vaccination of the most
"vulnerable"
, already well advanced, greeted Rochelle Walensky.