White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said that he is not pleased with how the Covid outbreak in the US is going.
US public health experts have started to witness a “disturbing” increase in the rate of coronavirus tests that return positive in some regions of the nation, Dr. Fauci said during a National Geographic panel held by ABC News Correspondent Deborah Roberts, which aired on Thursday. “Bottom line is, I’m not pleased with how things are going.”
“We certainly are not where I hope we would be, we are in the middle of very serious historic pandemic,” the expert added.
According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, the US has the worst coronavirus outbreak in the world. It reported more than 5 million infections and 166,000 deaths as of Thursday. On Wednesday, US recorded more than 1,500 deaths due to Covid-19, making it the deadliest day for the country since the end of May.
Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has previously mentioned the potential increase in Covid-19 cases happening in states like Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.
Meanwhile, outbreaks in California, Texas, Florida, and Arizona are seeing improvements and are “having now, less deaths, less hospitalizations, less cases,” Dr. Fauci said.
He pointed out that the US will continue to see Covid-19 infections rise and fall unless the federal government and states unite. “That’s the thing that I’m concerned about because I believe we can, we have within our power to be able to get that down,” he said.
However, Dr. Fauci’s remarks are at odds with President Donald Trump, who previously said at a White House press briefing that the Covid outbreak in the US will be in “good shape” in “a very short period of time.” Trump stressed that US health officials are continuing to see “encouraging signs,” lauding a recent drop in cases and hospitalization in Texas and Florida.
“I do want to say that at the end of a very short period of time we will be in good shape in this country,” he told reporters.
No “silver bullet”
Meanwhile, according to the World Health Organization, there is no “silver bullet” for the coronavirus yet and there “might never be.”
WHO is encouraging countries to observe the “basics,” including testing, isolating, and treating patients and tracing, and quarantining their contacts. “The message to people and governments is clear: Do it all,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Aug 3.
Dr. Fauci said before that the coronavirus is so contagious it would not be completely eradicated. But he mentioned that it is possible that world leaders and public health officials could work to reduce the spread of the virus.
He noted that the US has so many cases because some states did not close early in the outbreak while others reopened too early. He added that other countries were able to control their first wave of outbreaks after ordering the shutdown of at least 90% of their nonessential businesses.
