‘SURGE UPON SURGE’
Fauci warns of new US infection peak after social distancing ignored for Thanksgiving
The United State’s top infectious disease expert warned yesterday the US may see “surge upon a surge” of the coronavirus in the weeks after Thanksgiving, and he does not expect current recommendations around social distancing to be relaxed before Christmas.
Meanwhile, in a major reversal, New York City Mayor Bill Deblasio said the nation’s largest school system will reopen to in-person learning and increase the number of days a week manychildren attend class. The announcement came just 11 days after the Democratic mayor said schools would shut down because of rising Covid-19 cases.
“We feel confident that we can keep schools safe,” he said.
Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told ABC’S This Week that the level of infection in the
US would not “all of a sudden turn around”.
“So clearly in the next few weeks, we’re going to have the same sort of thing. And perhaps even two or three weeks down the line . . . we may see a surge upon a surge,” he said.
The number of new Covid-19 cases reported in the United States topped 200,000 for the first time on Saturday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Since January, when the first infections were reported in the US, the nation’s total number of cases has surpassed 13 million. More than 265,000 people have died.
Fauci said the arrival of vaccines offers a “light at the end of the tunnel”. This coming week, the Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices will meet with the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to discuss a rollout of the vaccine, he said. He added that President-elect
Joe Biden should focus on distributing vaccines in an “efficient and equitable way”. Fauci also said he planned to push the new administration for a rigorous testing programme.
Health care workers will likely be among the first to get the vaccine, with the first vaccinations happening before the end of December, followed by many more in January, February and March, he said.
“So if we can hang together as a country and do these kinds of things to blunt these surges until we get a substantial proportion of the population vaccinated, we can get through this,” Fauci said.
Other experts agreed that the coming weeks would be difficult, especially since so many travelled over Thanksgiving and person dinners indoors.
Dr Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response co-ordinator, said on CBS’ Face the Nation that Americans who travelled this past week should try to avoid people over 65. She said that those who were around others for Thanksgiving “have to assume that you were exposed and you became infected and you really need to get tested in the next week.”
Meanwhile, a busy travel weekend continued, despite warnings for Americans to stay close to home and limit their holiday gatherings.
Aside from the Thanksgiving holiday itself, anywhere from 800,000 to more than 1million travellers made their way through US airport checkpoints on any day during the past week, according to Transportation Security Administration statistics. — AP
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