Dr. Deborah Birx, the coronavirus task force coordinator, is cautioning people not to get lulled into a false sense of security this summer since the virus could still have a strong presence throughout the season.
"None of us can be lulled into this false sense of security that the cases may go down this summer," Birx said during a discussion with German Marshall Fund president.
Birx also said U.S. officials are now working on pinpointing and containing new coronavirus outbreaks by using contact tracing and surveillance. Those efforts will be shouldered by city and state agencies.
"Europe needs to be preparing exactly the same way," Birx said. "No country, no matter what approach that they have taken, have resulted in enough immunity to protect their population if the virus comes back in the fall."
Birx called the pandemic a "wake-up call" that the developed world needs to heed to collect the proper resources and make efforts to combat the global pandemic.
"Our supply chains were not made for that kind of dramatic surge, and they weren't anywhere in the world," Birx said. “The level of stress on the supply chain to the developed world was equal if not greater to the stress I have experienced in resource-limited settings. The things that we ran out of or came close to running out of — it was shocking to me."
Birx added: "Our European health colleagues gave us the ability to understand this virus in a way we weren't able to get from other countries at the beginning of the pandemic."
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