ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — With more and more states dropping their COVID-19 restrictions and few masks seen at this weekend’s Super Bowl, America is trying to move on from the pandemic. Again.
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The Biden administration famously declared that the end was in sight in the spring of 2021, then was forced to backtrack as the Delta variant gripped the world. Officials are not making that mistake twice.
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“The job’s not done, we still have some work to do,” White House Senior Policy Adviser Dr. Cameron Webb said.
Though cases are falling and deaths are on the decline, the numbers are still at high levels. Webb explained that the federal government will not move on from the pandemic until the virus is less of a presence.
However, he pressed back on characterizations that the administration was trying to linger on COVID-19.
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“We want to see this pandemic in the rear view, we want to get rid of masks, we want to get rid of the restrictions,” he said. “If you’re asking what’s going to be the next step in kind of the the nation’s progress, it’s going to be guided by CDC guidelines.”
The CDC has not made major changes to their guidance in months. With Florida still recording 13,000 cases per day, Webb hinted the country as a whole needed to see bigger declines before major policy shifts took place.
“It’s not a political statement here. It’s just a matter of you wanting to keep your grandparents who live with you safe,” he said.
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