Dr Fauci warns US could 'be in for a bad fall' if there are no coronavirus treatments by then
The US could "be in for a bad fall" if researchers don't find an effective coronavirus treatment by that time, warns Dr Anthony Fauci.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, told the Economic Club of Washington that the virus was not going to disappear from the planet.
Even if the US manages to stem its spread, the virus could bounce back and trigger further outbreaks. “In my mind, it is inevitable that we will have a return of the virus, or maybe even that it never went away,” he said in the interview.
The warning comes as more states are opting to reopen. None of these states have fulfilled a federal guideline that recommends a 14-day drop in cases.
Speaking about premature reopening, Fauci said: it could cause “a rebound to get us right back in the same boat that we were in a few weeks ago.”
The US leads the world in the number of coronavirus cases: more than a million people have tested positive for the virus and 58,355 have died so far. And 115,936 have recovered from the infection, as per the John Hopkins tracker.
The US to prepare for the flu and COVID-19
The flu virus emerges strongly every fall and winter. Experts believe COVID-19 cases could rise in the flu season. And US officials may have no choice but to fight two epidemics at once.
“We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time,” Dr Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Washington Post. It could complicate the situation further, he said.
“When flu season comes, there is the possibility that we will be dealing with two respiratory viruses at the same time — flu and Covid,” Dr Thomas Frieden, the former head of the CDC and the president of Resolve to Save Lives, a nonprofit focused on disease prevention, told The New York Times. “This could be a double challenge for our health care systems," he added.
Many experts around the world believe the new coronavirus is more likely to strike again even if authorities manage to control. Singapore and Japan are experiencing the second wave of cases already.
As the crisis escalates, countries are placing their bets on a coronavirus vaccine. Oxford University researchers are optimistic about their vaccine hitting the markets by the end of the year. The team, which recently kickstarted human trials, recently announced the vaccine protected monkeys from catching the disease. In the US, Moderna and Inovio are already testing their vaccines on humans.
“COVID-19 is likely to continue to circulate until there is a vaccine. That means we need to be ready to reimpose distancing if cases threaten to overwhelm health and public health systems," Dr Frieden told The New York Times.
Fauci recently said he is “cautiously optimistic” about them — but there is no guarantee that they might work.