Dr. Anthony Fauci isn’t celebrating the defeat over coronavirus, yet.
The country’s top infectious disease expert told The Daily Beast that the U.S. is still fighting off the first wave of the coronavirus outbreak.
During a Tuesday interview, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said he doesn’t think states seeing a spike in cases will need to shut down completely, but he said the curve from the initial outbreak has not been totally flattened.
“We are seeing infections to a greater degree than they had previously seen in certain states, including states in the Southwest and in the South,” Fauci said. “I don't like to talk about a second wave right now, because we haven't gotten out of our first wave.”
Even though some states, including Arizona, California, North Carolina, Alabama and South Carolina, continue to see coronavirus cases and hospitalizations increase, Fauci said he doesn’t think a situation like New York City will happen again. New York was inundated with hospitalizations in April.
“New York, unfortunately, really got hit by surprise, because they had activity coming into this city from Europe when everybody was focusing on China. They all of a sudden found that they had a massive outbreak,” he told The Daily Beast. “I don't think that could happen under today's circumstances of our full awareness of the potential of this virus, which is highly transmissible.”
He said lockdowns will likely be able to be avoided because states can identify areas experiencing outbreaks and use isolation and contact tracing to stop the spread of the virus.
“When you start to see the inevitable exceptions that you might see when you try to pull back on the mitigation and open up … use public health measures to help you to get to your goal,” Fauci said. “Namely, if you get new infections, you put into place, the manpower, the system ... the ability to identify, isolate and contact-trace so that you're actually utilizing public health measures to help you to open up.”
As more businesses reopen, Fauci said he is nervous about people gathering in crowds and not wearing masks. He said he wouldn’t attend one of President Donald Trump’s rallies.
“I'm in a high-risk category. Personally, I would not. Of course not,” he said.
He said that if Trump holds a rally, an outside one would be better than an inside one.
“No crowd is better than crowd,” and “crowd is better than big crowd,” he said.
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