The number of Covid-19 cases after the holidays may surge, according to White House Health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci.
He believes that the U.S. may witness a “surge upon a surge” of Covid-19 cases after holidays as holiday parties and shoppers could trigger an outbreak.
“If you look across the United States, we are really in a public health crisis right now,” Dr. Fauci told Colorado Gov. Jared Polis during a livestream session. “Now that we’re in the mid- to late fall, merging on into the winter, we’ve seen, because a variety of circumstances, a surge that has really surpassed the others.”
According to the infectious diseases specialist, the potential surge of Covid-19 cases after holidays is based on the number of people who traveled for Thanksgiving and shared meals with family and friends.
The U.S. posted an average of 162,364 new infections daily over the past week, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
“One of the things that you should keep your eye on is that as we get two to three weeks beyond the Thanksgiving holiday, that it is likely ... you’re going to start seeing the curve that had gone to flatten out go back up again, unless people really have done a considerable degree of mitigating,” Dr. Fauci said.
He stressed that the next 30 or more days will be a period of “precarious risk” as people shop for gifts and celebrate Christmas and New Year.
Hopkins data suggests that the coronavirus pandemic is killing over 1,400 people daily in the U.S. on average.
“This is something that is quite problematic, and to say it’s challenging is to really say the least,” Fauci said.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases stressed the importance of having enough coronavirus vaccines for the general population heading into April 2021.
However, Covid vaccine chief Moncef Slaoui said that the entire population of the U.S. could be vaccinated by June next year and that there are sufficient doses to immunize the rest of the world by early to mid-2022.
Hospital leaders have expressed that they are prepared to fight the pandemic through vaccination.
Atrium Health CEO Eugene Woods confirmed that they are “locked and loaded” to fight the coronavirus pandemic through vaccinations. “We have refrigeration units that can store up on Day One 300,000 vials,” Woods said on “Squawk on the Street.” “We also are training staff as we speak.”
“We’re working on the protocols, working through the triaging of people, and it’s going to be an exciting time. It’s really, hopefully, going to be the beginning of the end” of the pandemic, Markovich said. “It won’t be easy. It’s not going to be fast. It’s going to be complicated, but I really think it’s going to be an exciting time.”
“People are tired. I wouldn’t say they are anxious. I think they feel supported, but they are mentally and physically pretty darn exhausted,” he stressed. “Once the vaccine gets out, we need really to push on the population to get as many people vaccinated as possible.”
