Holiday restrictions are necessary to prevent Covid spread, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert.
“What we expect, unfortunately, as we go for the next couple of weeks into December, is that we might see a surge superimposed on the surge we are already in,” Fauci said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press”. “I don’t want to frighten people, except to say it is not too late to do something about this.”
Dr. Fauci called on the public to be cautious as they return from Thanksgiving holiday travel and wear masks to help contain the spread of the virus. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in November asked people to not travel for Thanksgiving, more than 9 million people traveled in airports ahead of the holiday and the weekend after it.
“I think we are going to have to make decisions as a nation, state, city and family that we are in a very difficult time, and we’re going to have to do the kinds of restrictions of things we would have liked to have done, particularly in this holiday season, because we’re entering into what’s really a precarious situation,” Fauci said.
Holiday restrictions, lockdowns
Moreover, Dr. Fauci said that colleagues from different states have asked him for advice about potential local lockdown measures if problems with hospitalization turned worse. Americans must implement their own virus mitigation steps in order to manage hospital systems and not experience lockdowns, Fauci added.
“We’ve got to realize that we do have within our capability to be able to blunt that by doing the simple things that we talk about short of locking down, so we don’t precipitate the necessity of locking down,” Fauci said.
Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, expressed his concern about a spike in infections and hospitalizations from increased travel.
Giroir, who leads the government’s Covid-19 testing effort, told CNN that he cannot offer predictions on daily death counts but that “a lot depends on this weekend” in relation to the U.S. avoiding major increases in cases and deaths.
Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, said that the country is approaching the days following Thanksgiving with a higher number of cases, hospitalizations, and daily deaths across the country than the period after Memorial Day weekend.
“We saw what happened post-Memorial day. Now we are deeply worried about what could happen post-Thanksgiving because the number of cases — 25,000 versus 180,000 a day — that’s why we are deeply concerned,” Birx said in an interview with CBS News.
“We know people may have made mistakes over the Thanksgiving time period,” Birx said. “If you’re young and you gathered you need to be tested about five to ten days later, but you need to assume you’re infected and not go near your grandparents and aunts and others without a mask.”
