White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday that a second round of the coronavirus is “inevitable” – predicting a “bad fall and a bad winter” if the US doesn’t make enough progress in combating the deadly bug.
“If by that time we have put into place all of the countermeasures that you need to address this, we should do reasonably well,” said the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, according to CNN.
“If we don’t do that successfully, we could be in for a bad fall and a bad winter,” he added.
The top expert warned that if states begin to lift social-distancing restrictions too soon, the country could be hit with a rebound that would “get us right back in the same boat that we were a few weeks ago,” adding that many more deaths could occur than are now predicted.
A leading model predicts over 72,000 people will die in the country by early August, CNN reported.
More than 1 million Americans have been infected and at least 58,355 have died so far.
Fauci stressed the importance of testing, tracking and isolating as keys to make sure a second wave is not as deadly.
The US is still lagging behind in testing, according to a new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development cited by CNN.
The nation has performed 16.4 tests per 1,000 people, while Spain and Italy have conducted 22.3 and 29.7 tests per 1,000 people, respectively, according to the report.
The federal government must help states to increase their numbers of conducted tests, Fauci said.
“The truth is that we’re going in the right direction,” he said. “But we need to continue to partner in a very active collaborative way with the states. We need to help them the same way they need to do the execution.”
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