It’s still too soon to ease up on mask use, says CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky

Hold on to that mask — it’s way too soon to ease mandates requiring face coverings, the new head of the CDC said Sunday.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky noted the country is still seeing about 100,000 new COVID cases per day and up to 3,500 daily deaths.

“The cases are more than two-and-a-half-fold times what we saw over the summer,” Walensky told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “It’s encouraging to see these trends coming down, but they’re coming down from an extraordinarily high place.”

She also sounded the alarm over the COVID strain first found in Britain, saying over 1,000 cases of the variant have been found in 39 states.