The latest:
- Travellers who were fully vaccinated in the United States or European Union won’t have to quarantine when entering England — but vaccinated Canadians will still need to follow quarantine rules.
- Tokyo reports 3,177 new COVID-19 cases — a new single-day high.
- Man charged with emailing death threats to Dr. Anthony Fauci, U.S. prosecutors say.
- INTERACTIVE | Where is the coronavirus pandemic getting better or worse?
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Dr. Rochelle Walensky says new mask-wearing guidance, coupled with higher rates of vaccination against COVID-19, could halt the current escalation of infections in “a couple of weeks.”
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told CBS This Morning she hopes more stringent mask-wearing guidelines and other measures won’t be necessary as the country heads into the fall.
“We can halt the chain of transmission,” she said. “We can do something if we unify together, if we get people vaccinated who are not yet vaccinated, if we mask in the interim, we can halt this in just a matter of a couple of weeks.”
With the delta variant fuelling a surge of infections across the country, the CDC on Tuesday recommended even vaccinated people return to wearing masks indoors in areas where the variant is prevalent.
Walensky said 80 per cent of the counties with the highest number of infections have less than 40 per cent of people vaccinated.
The nation is averaging more than 57,000 cases a day and 24,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations. The guidance on masks in indoor public places applies in parts of the U.S. with at least 50 new cases per 100,000 people in the last week.
–From The Associated Press last updated at 9:45 a.m. ET
What’s happening in Canada
![](https://thumbnails.cbc.ca/maven_legacy/thumbnails/123/795/VACCINES-CDNS-NICHOLSON-260721.jpg?crop=1.777xh:h;*,*&downsize=510px:* 510w")
What could it take to convince the small but determined group of Canadians who remain wary of the COVID-19 vaccines on offer? Experts say there isn’t one answer. 2:05
What’s happening around the world
As of early Wednesday morning, more than 195.3 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, according to a case-tracking tool maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The reported global death toll stood at more than 4.1 million.
In Africa, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan received her vaccine in public, in the most decisive signal yet of a break from the policies of her late predecessor who repeatedly dismissed the threat of the pandemic.
Zimbabwe has authorized the emergency use of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, the first Western-made shot to be approved by the southern African nation, its medicines regulator said.
In Europe, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged caution on Wednesday about drawing conclusions from a seven-day decline in COVID-19 cases in Britain, saying it was too early to assess whether it was a definite trend.
“We have seen some encouraging recent data. There’s no question about that but it is far, far too early to draw any general conclusions,” Johnson told LBC radio.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Indonesia recorded 47,791 new cases and 1,824 confirmed in the last 24 hours. The Health Ministry recorded 558,392 active cases in Indonesia, with more than 81,000 cases from Sumatra regions.
In the Middle East, Israel is considering giving a third shot of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to its elderly population, even before FDA approval, to help fend off the delta variant.
-From Reuters, The Associated Press and CBC News, last updated at 11:50 a.m. ET
Have questions about this story? We’re answering as many as we can in the comments.
