The order takes effect at 11:59 pm. Monday.
It was clarified that wearing a blanket over nose and mouth is mandatory while waiting, boarding, traveling and disembarking. Masks shall be made of at least two layers of breathable material and shall be secured to the head with straps, earrings or elastics, according to the instructions for use.
The CDC has stated that it reserves the right to enforce the Order through criminal penalties, but that it strongly encourages and expects broad voluntary implementation of the Order and awaits the support of other federal agencies to implement the Order.
With 436,000 deaths due to Covid-19 in the United States, the Biden administration has already called for masks to be required for 100 days and vaccine doses to be increased by 16 percent in every state in hopes of controlling the effects of the virus, making January the deadliest month of the pandemic.
Variantscould dominate the pandemic in the future
And while the vaccines are making their way to the population, health experts say the country still faces many months of pandemic, and the spread of the variants is alarming.
More than 400 cases of the variant of coronavirus first identified in Britain have been reported in the United States, and health experts say new strains may soon prevail.
At least 434 cases of this variant have been found in 30 states, the CDC reported Wednesday – more than 100 cases more than reported a few days earlier.
The British variant, like the other initial discovery in South Africa, has caused concern among officials and experts because it is more easily transmitted than the strain that the United States has faced. And while authorities are trying to vaccinate Americans, they say new strains can spread quickly.
The forecast for the United Kingdom (option) is that there will likely be more dominance in that country by late March or early April, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, at a White House briefing on Friday.
The fact is that if you have a virus that can spread more efficiently than the wild type in a community, sooner or later it will become more dominant than the wild type through sheer viral dynamics, Fauci said.
The options are likely to worsen the spread of the coronavirus and increase the number of deaths, the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrology and Evaluation predicted Thursday.
His model now indicates 594,624 deaths by May 1, compared to the previous forecast of 569,000 deaths by May 1.
And with the rapid release option, this number will increase by 1. May at 620,000, reports the IHME. In the worst case scenario, a total of about 654,000 Americans will be killed by Covid-19 as of January 1, 2009, the IHME warned.
Filling the vaccine gap against new strains
In order to prevent the spread of the virus, experts believe that the gap between the number of doses of vaccine available and the number of doses administered must be closed.
To date, at least 49,216,500 doses of vaccine and at least 27,884,661 doses of vaccine have been distributed, according to the CDC.
Experts say they expect existing vaccines to provide protection against new strains of the virus, but the nature of the South African strain could make them less effective, further hampering efforts to return the United States to normal.
But officials also said they expected the production of new boosts or vaccines to proceed quickly through the systems already in place.
The biotech company Novavax said it is developing a booster to protect against new strains.
On Thursday, the company announced that its vaccine, called NVX-CoV2373, was 89.3% effective in a phase 3 clinical trial in the UK, and that the vaccine appears to be clinically effective against some variants of the coronavirus.
Novavax started developing boosters for the new modifications in January and plans to select the ideal candidates in the coming days.
The company expects to begin clinical trials of these new vaccines in the second quarter of this year, Novavax reports.
CNN’s Jen Christensen, Rebecca Riess, Lauren Mascarenhas, Michael Nedelman and Jacqueline Howard contributed to this report.
