As the “very exciting” rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine distribution gets underway in the United States, Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, says the country is still experiencing “astronomical” numbers of new infections and deaths. “We’ve just had a federal government that has given up on any efforts to try and control the pandemic,” he says. “What we have to do is get through the next few months with basic public health measures until vaccines become widely available and widely adopted. Until that time, there is no reason to let up whatsoever.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.