White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci says that US must “get better control” of the coronavirus as it reopens the economy.
“The United States of America has been hit very severely by this. You just need to look at the numbers and see the number of infections in the millions and the number of deaths ... keeps going up each day. We’re still seeing an increase in hospitalizations.” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during an interview with the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation in an interview.
“We need to get better control over things. We need to open up the country because staying shut down has economic, employment, health and other negative consequences that are significant,” he said.
According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, the coronavirus pandemic infected 77,200 new individuals Thursday, a record-breaking daily rise that swept away its previous high by nearly 10,000 cases.
Meanwhile, 44 states and the District of Columbia announced that the seven-day average of daily new cases had a 5% increase on Thursday from a week earlier, according to the Johns Hopkins data.
Some states also saw a rise in coronavirus cases for weeks, particularly in the American West and South as US economy reopens. California, Texas, and Florida made up for more than half of all new Covid-19 cases on Thursday. Hospitalizations were reportedly rising in at least 32 states, based on a seven-day average, according to a CNBC analysis of data from the Covid Tracking Project.
“When you have more hospitalizations inevitably you’re going to see more deaths because if people are serious enough to get hospitalized, a certain percentage of them are going to be very sick and a certain percentage of them are going to die, and that’s exactly what you’re seeing in certain areas,” Dr. Fauci said.
There were several states that postponed their reopening plans to contain the spread of coronavirus. Many of the country’s biggest school districts have said they would not immediately ask students to join in-person classes in the fall as cases continue to soar.
“We’ve got to have a delicate balance of carefully and prudently going towards normality and opening up at the same time that we contain and not allow these surgings that we’re seeing in certain Southern states,” Dr. Fauci said as US economy reopens. “That’s a big challenge, that’s the thing I get concerned about the most.”
The top infectious disease expert stressed the “unfortunate mindset” that public health guidelines are a hindrance to the country’s reopening. He pointed out that the “default position” for schools is to do their best to ensure safety and health of students and teachers first when they return to schools.
Young people
Dr. Fauci also warned young people about “propagating the pandemic.”
“You have to have responsibility for yourself but also a societal responsibility that you’re getting infected is not just you in a vacuum. You’re propagating the pandemic,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in an interview.
Dr. Fauci’s statements came as state health officials say that more young Americans are disregarding social distancing measures and testing positive for coronavirus at a higher rate. He said that the average age of a new Covid-19 patient has declined by 15 years since the start of the pandemic in the US.
According to Vice President Mike Pence, roughly half of the new cases in the US were individuals under the age of 35, particularly in Texas and Florida.
