US government health experts led by Anthony Fauci warned Congress on Tuesday that the country is facing “historic” challenges with the coronavirus and that Americans should prepare for a long battle against the pandemic.
Fauci, testifying following Donald Trump’s comments that he urged health officials to “slow down tests” for the coronavirus, also insisted that the president had never given him such an order.
But the government’s top infectious disease expert has raised the alarm over the rising trend in cases, telling lawmakers that several states are experiencing “a worrying wave of infections”.
The next two weeks, added Fauci, will be “critical to our ability to cope with these surgeries” in states like Florida, Texas and Arizona.
The United States is the nation hardest hit by the virus, with more than 120,000 deaths, new epidemics across the country and a government showing little capacity to stop the spread.
Fauci led a panel of witnesses who stressed that it is difficult to predict how long the coronavirus will remain a threat.
“COVID-19 activity is likely to continue for some time,” the experts said in prepared testimony attributed to each of them, prompting the director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Robert Redfield.
“These challenges are many and they are historic,” they said at the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing.
But Fauci himself said he felt “cautiously optimistic” about the timing of vaccination tests and reiterated his hope that large production and use of a vaccine could occur by “the end of this year civil “or early 2021.
Redfield made it clear that strengthening testing was an “essential foundation” for mitigating viruses, joining Fauci in saying that Trump had never urged them to limit them.
“None of us have ever been asked to slow down testing,” Fauci told the panel. “It’s the opposite. We will do more tests, not less.”
“I am not joking”
Trump was criticized for stating at a campaign rally on Saturday – where most of the participants wore no masks, ignoring CDC recommendations – that he wanted to slow down coronavirus testing.
White House officials said the president’s remarks were a joke, but on Tuesday Trump doubled.
“I’m not kidding,” he told reporters before hailing the US testing program as the best in the world.
“By having more tests, we find more cases,” said Trump, even suggesting that the high number is a political responsibility for him during an election year.
“By having more cases, it sounds bad,” he said. “But in reality, we find people.”
Trump has repeatedly criticized his criticism of his handling of the pandemic, and he remained provocative on Tuesday that his early action – including a ban on flights from China, where the virus first appeared – helped to prevent a disaster.
“We have done a great job on CoronaVirus,” Trump tweeted. “We have saved millions of American lives!”
Trump’s electoral rival in November, Democrat Joe Biden, accused the president of gross incompetence during the crisis and chastised him on Tuesday for “intentionally slowing down” coronavirus testing.
“It’s pretty simple: if we want to save jobs and save lives, we need more tests – and we need them faster,” Biden said on Twitter.
While the country’s former epicenters of virus, New York and New Jersey, have largely controlled their epidemics, the number of cases is now increasing in 20 states.
Florida is a potential new hotspot that has exceeded 100,000 cases on Monday, according to local health officials.
Brett Giroir, the administration’s test coordinator, told the House panel that 27 million tests have been administered to date.
About 500,000 are now being conducted daily, and Giroir said he expects the country to be able to test 40 to 50 million people a month by the fall.
Experts have warned that any potential “second wave” of virus cases could be made worse in the fall and winter, when the typical American flu is more endemic.
The data show that minority groups, especially African-Americans, die from COVID-19 at higher rates than whites.
To address this inequality, Giroir announced the launch of a $ 40 million initiative to combat COVID-19 among ethnic minorities and other vulnerable communities.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
