Via The Guardian: Fauci says US death toll 'going to be very disturbing' and fears 100,000 daily cases. Excerpt:
Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert, has said the country could see 100,000 new coronavirus cases daily unless action is taken to reverse the epidemic.
Appearing before the Senate health, education, labor and pensions committee on Tuesday, Fauci warned that the US is “going in the wrong direction” over handling the coronavirus, and said the death toll “is going to be very disturbing”.
He appeared a day after the White House insisted the outbreak had been reduced to “embers” but the principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr Anne Schuchat, insisted: “This is really the beginning.”
Speaking on Capitol Hill, Fauci was asked about the increase in new cases of coronavirus – the US last week reported 40,000 in one day – and whether the pandemic was under control.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” he said. “I’m very concerned, I’m not satisfied with what’s going on, because we’re going in the wrong direction.
“Clearly we’re not in total control.”
Fauci said that without a more robust response, the daily number of cases could more than double.
“I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around,” he said.
Fauci said he could not provide an estimated death toll, but said: “It is going to be very disturbing, I guarantee you that.”
The stark warning came after Schuchat told the Journal of the American Medical Association: “What we hope is that we can take it seriously and slow the transmission. We have way too much virus across the country for that right now, so it’s very discouraging.”
She added that there was “a lot of wishful thinking around the country” that the pandemic would be over by the summer.
“We are not even beginning to be over this,” Schuchat said. “There are a lot of worrisome factors about the last week or so.
“We’re not in the situation of New Zealand or Singapore or Korea, where a new case is rapidly identified and all the contacts are traced, and people are isolated who are sick, and people who are exposed are quarantined and they can keep things under control.”
Testifying before the Senate committee, Fauci said he was “quite concerned about what we are seeing evolve right now in several states” which had moved quickly in attempts to return to normal.
“They need to follow the guidelines that have been very carefully laid out with regard to [reopening] checkpoints. What we’ve seen in several states are different iterations of that, perhaps maybe in some, they’re going too quickly and skipping over some.”
