Fauci warns U.S. against premature lifting of lockdowns
Leading U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday warned Congress that a premature lifting of lockdowns could lead to additional outbreaks of the deadly coronavirus, which has killed 80,000 Americans and brought the economy to its knees.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a U.S. Senate panel that the virus epidemic is not yet under control in areas of the nation.
“I think we’re going in the right direction, but the right direction does not mean we have by any means total control of this outbreak,” Fauci said during the 3-1/2-hour hearing.
Reuters news agency reports that Dr. Anthony Fauci urged states to follow health experts’ recommendations to wait for signs, including a declining number of new infections, before reopening.
President Donald Trump has been encouraging states to end a weeks-long shuttering of major components of their economies.
But senators heard a sobering assessment from Fauci, when asked by Democrats about a premature opening of the economy.
“There is a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak that you may not be able to control and, in fact paradoxically, will set you back, not only leading to some suffering and death that could be avoided, but could even set you back on the road to try to get economic recovery,” Fauci said of premature steps.
The veteran doctor, who has worked under Republican and Democratic administrations and is a coronavirus adviser to the current White House, noted some progress in the fight against a virus that the medical world is still trying to understand.
He mentioned a slowing in the growth of cases in hotspots such as New York, even as other areas of the country were seeing spikes.
