COVID Lockdown Again? Former CDC Director Doesn’t Think So

As fear of another COVID lockdown grows among Americans, one expert believes that a countrywide shutdown will not happen despite cases of the Delta variant surging across the nation.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention former acting director Richard Besser told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that he doesn’t believe a massive shutdown throughout the U.S. will occur due to the recent spike in COVID-19 cases.

Besser continued by saying, “The reason it's not going to be the same as it was early in the pandemic is that there is a vaccine, and we have done a very good job at vaccinating people who are at the greatest risk, so elderly people, people with underlying medical conditions, front-line health care workers.”

According to the CDC, 50.7% of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

However, Besser did tell “This Week” that schools could be affected by the increase in COVID cases.

He said: “What we're going to see is schools closing when cases spread through schools. We're going to see more recommendations for use of masks.”

Besser’s comments come as the National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins told "Fox News Sunday" that the U.S. could hit over 200,000 daily COVID cases in the coming weeks.

He told the news outlet, “I will be surprised if we don't cross 200,000 cases a day in the next couple of weeks...That's heartbreaking considering we never thought we would ever be back in that space again. But here we are with the Delta variant, which is so contagious, and this heartbreaking situation where 90 million people are still unvaccinated who are sitting ducks for this virus, and that's the mess we're in.”

Besser, who is president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, warned that there has to be a “full-on press to get people vaccinated who aren't vaccinated.”

He added, “That's what's going to do the most. But it's not going to be the same kind of situation that we saw a year ago.”

The CDC has said that with the rise of the Delta variant, 93% of all new COVID cases are now comprised of the strain.