Dr. Deborah Birx apparently didn’t listen to her own advice during the Thanksgiving holiday. Birx, who is the Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the White House’s task force, was seen traveling to Delaware, where she spent Thanksgiving with her daughter, son-in-law, and her grandchildren, according to the Associated Press.
The outlet reports that they spent the festivities at one of their vacation properties in Fenwick Island. In total, there were six people present from two different households. Just ahead of the holiday, Birx had been adamant in preaching the latest rules issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which had urged Americans not to travel for the holidays and to avoid indoor gatherings with non-household members. Speaking with the AP, Birx said the family had gone there to winterize the property and was not there to celebrate Thanksgiving.
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This comes after Birx called out people who went against the CDC recommendations and insisted on gathering for the holiday. “We know people may have made mistakes over the Thanksgiving time period,” she stated. She called for anyone who went about this to get tested within a week of the event and assume that they have been infected.
In the three weeks that have transpired since Thanksgiving, the country has been hit its hardest by the coronavirus. COVID-19 cases reached a record-high on Dec. 3 with more than 205,000 daily cases and a record at the time of 2,777 deaths related to the virus. These numbers have since been overtaken multiple times. The current high was reached on Friday, with more than 250,000 cases being reported. As health experts had warned for months prior, the holidays mixed with the colder season resulted in a scary situation for the United States. These same doctors and experts are concerned that gatherings for the December holidays will again trigger a major uptick in cases.
Optimism has become more apparent, however, in the fight against the coronavirus. This past week saw the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine delivered across the country, one of the few bright spots to occur over the pandemic. It remains to be seen how quickly a turnaround the country will have in gaining access to more doses over the next few months. On Sunday, Congress also reached an agreement on another coronavirus relief fund that will support small businesses, provide more aid to federal unemployment and extend $600 checks to individuals along with additional payments to families per child.
