Daily coronavirus cases in the US are “unacceptably high,” according to White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The US faces about 40,000 new cases a day, but it must bring infections down to 10,000, Dr. Fauci said during an interview with MSNBC.
According to Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, how the public behaves over the Labor Day holiday weekend will reflect how the coronavirus spreads in the US through the colder months.
“We know from prior experience as you get into the holiday weekend, the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, there’s a tendency of people to be careless somewhat with regard to the public health measures,” Dr. Fauci said.
“I want to use this opportunity to almost have a plea to the people in this country to realize that we really still need to get our arms around this and to suppress these types of surges we’ve seen," he added.
The infectious diseases specialist noted: “We’re around 40,000 cases. That’s an unacceptably high baseline. We’ve got to get it down to, I’d like to see 10,000 or less.”
Coronavirus cases in the US started to rise shortly after the Memorial Day holiday in the earlier phase of the pandemic.
New cases reached a peak in April of about 31,000 before constantly dropping to about 20,000 cases a day by the end of May. However, after the holiday, new cases started to rise again, soaring to about 70,000 cases a day in July, based on a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data.
Data is again hinting troubling signs of another surge. The US recorded 43,253 new Covid-19 infections on Tuesday, pushing the seven-day average past 42,300, a 0.6% increase compared with a week earlier, based on the Hopkins data.
Cooler temperatures
US health officials are worried that the pandemic in the US could worsen due to cooler temperatures and people tend to stay indoors.
Their concerns comes as people worry about the potential surge of coronavirus cases in the Northern Hemisphere when the seasons change. Respiratory illnesses are more common during cooler weather conditions.
Respiratory diseases like Covid-19 usually spread through droplets that are produced by coughing or sneezing.
In addition, experts stress the impact of colder and drier conditions in winter on the transmission of flu-like illnesses.
“It is not an unreasonable hypothesis to think that it will get worse in the winter,” Dr. Simon Clarke, associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, said during an interview with CNBC.
“It is not a ridiculous notion to float, there just isn’t any evidence for it. We can’t have any evidence of seasonality because we have known about it for less than a year. We haven’t been through one cycle yet,” he noted.
However, some experts say that the health crisis may persist even beyond the winter season.
The coronavirus pandemic may last for two years, according to scientists from the University of Minnesota.
According to their report, the coronavirus pandemic was more contagious than the flu. It was likely to spread even after a first wave this spring.
Researchers from the university’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) noted that the new coronavirus has a longer incubation period than the flu. This means that symptoms may take longer to appear after a person got the virus.
