But Anthony Fauci added that he did not strictly view the continuing increase in cases as a “wave”.
Washington, United States:
The United States is still “on its knees” in its first wave of coronavirus infections and must act immediately to fight the recent outbreak, the country’s leading infectious disease expert said on Monday.
Anthony Fauci said that the number of cases had never reached a satisfactory reference level before the current resurgence, which warned the authorities of the risks of crushing hospitals in the south and west of the country.
“This is a serious situation that we must address immediately,” said Fauci in a web interview with the director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins.
But Fauci added that he did not strictly view the continuing increase in cases as a “wave”.
“It was a flare-up or resurgence of infections superimposed on a baseline,” he said.
“If you look at the graphs of Europe, of the European Union as a whole, it went up and then came back to the baseline. Now they have little flaws, as you can imagine, then they’re trying to reopen. We’ve grown, never returned to the base, and now we’re going back up. ”
The death toll from the virus in the United States reached 130,000 on Monday, according to a count from Johns Hopkins University, and the number of infections is approaching three million.
A disturbing number of new cases have been reported in a context of resurgence which has forced several States to suspend progressive economic reopening.
Fauci, who heads the U.S. National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, is a prominent member of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force and has become a trusted face in the administration’s battle against the epidemic.
The United States is the nation hardest hit by the virus in the world and is struggling to meet a new standard of social distancing and wearing a mask.
Authorities have warned that some of the country’s hospitals are at risk of being overwhelmed by the influx of COVID-19 patients.
Hospital beds are full in parts of Texas, while calls for new home stay orders are increasing.
Some mayors said their cities had reopened too early as Trump tried to minimize the severity of the crisis, favoring economic reopening instead.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
