The National Association of Governors (NGA) met for four days in the nation’s capital to discuss topics such as infrastructure, return to work, and cyber attacks. NGA chair and Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson made a statement after their meeting Monday morning at the White House.
“There’s a number of areas that we have full agreement on and [this] is one: we need to move away from the pandemic,” he said. “And we asked the President to help give us clear guidelines on how we can return to a greater state of normality…we want to partner with the administration and move beyond the pandemic.”
According to reports from Johns Hopkins University and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, positive COVID-19 tests have decreased 30 percent and hospitalizations have fallen 11 percent in the last week.
Some states and cities are changing their guidelines and restrictions. In Colorado, for instance, state public health officials have allowed people to attend public indoor events of more than 500 attendees in several counties, including Denver, without showing proof of vaccination. Today San Francisco is lifting mask mandates in offices and gyms for the vaccinated.
“I certainly share the optimism that we’re in a better place now, and we will be in a better place in a few weeks,” said Dr. Vivek Murthy, U.S. surgeon general. “But I don’t think that means that we should take our foot off the accelerator.”
Despite the positive statistics, the country’s daily average of cases remains near 500,000, with an average of 1,000 deaths per day and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly all counties are experiencing high transmission of the virus.
President Biden added that the United States still has a lot of progress to make before returning to normality.
