White House hits troubling pandemic crossroads as rising cases threaten progress.

Washington (CNN) When Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the US Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, ditched her prepared remarks this week to voice a
feeling of "impending doom" about rising Covid-19 cases, she flipped the script on
weeks of hopeful news in the United States' fight against the pandemic. While Biden
administration officials have for weeks urged Americans not to let their guard
down, rising vaccination rates spurred a wave of optimism the long, national
nightmare was reaching its end. That shifted this week as a steady increase in
cases. Earlier reminiscent of the last three surges took hold, worrying
administration officials who fear a backslide. Fighting back tears, Walensky's
dramatic warning during Monday's White House coronavirus briefing and her plea to
"hold on a little while longer" marked an inflection point in the narrative of the
pandemic, jolting the country to the reality that even the current pace of nearly
three million shots per day may not be enough to prevent a final surge among the
majority of Americans who are not yet vaccinated. Message initially caught some
members of the administration off guard, and prompted mild annoyance among some of
Biden's advisers, According to people familiar with the matter Others praised her
publicly. In either case, her words reflected an aeute sense within the White House
that the surge they had been preparing for was finaly on the horizona "sinking
feeling, one senior administration official said, that things could get worse
before they get better. Inside the White House, a balancing act is now underway
between maintaining the optimism that an accelerated vaccination program will
ultimately bring the crisis to a close while publicly ramping up warnings of a
potential fourth surge fueled by new variants.