With the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines, you could be forgiven for breathing a sigh of relief that the worst is behind us.
Take a deep breath. The necessity for preventative measures has not left our reality.
In fact, they're as important as they've ever been.
Cases in the U.S. continue to climb, to about 24 million in January with deaths near 400,000, according to Johns Hopkins University, which has tracked COVID-19 from the beginning.
Don't exhale yet.
Wash your hands. Keep your distance. Wear a mask when you're outside your family bubble. And, yes, get tested.
"Testing is a critical first-line of defense," Andrea Wainer, Executive Vice President, Rapid and Molecular Diagnostics at Abbott, told Bloomberg reporter Michelle Fay Cortez during this year's CES, the Consumer Electronics Show. "It needs to be used in context with other hygiene practices of wearing your mask and washing your hands and by no means does this replace that. It comes together along with vaccinations. So, the more you can test, the more you can catch the virus. It's just simple math. Because at any one point in time, anyone can become infected."
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