Biden adviser proposes full lockdown as cases soar

Expert on president-elect’s new task force urges four to six-week shutdown as colleague disputes analysis

A SENIOR health adviser to Joe Biden has suggested locking down the United States for four to six weeks.

It came as the US set new records for coronavirus cases and hospital admissions, and the daily death toll rose to the highest in six months. Texas became the first state to record one million cases, and California was not far behind.

Dr Michael Osterholm, a professor and director of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota appointed to Mr Biden’s coronavirus task force, has been warning in recent days that America is “about to enter Covid Hell” and that the figures were “going to go far north”.

However, there appeared to be an early split within Mr Biden’s task force.

Dr Celine Gounder, another epidemiologist on the Covid-19 Advisory Board, told CNN: “With all due respect to Dr Osterholm that doesn’t necessarily represent the entire advisory board, or what the Biden-harris transition team is planning to do.”

Dr Gounder said she “doesn’t like” the words “lockdown” or “shutdown”. She added: “I really think about this more as a dimmer switch.”

Dr Osterholm said high levels of personal savings and low interest rates could mean all wages and losses to small and medium-sized companies being covered during a weeks-long shutdown.

He added: “We have a big pool of money out there that we could borrow. We could do all of that. If we did that, then we could lock down for four to six weeks. And if we did that, we could drive the numbers down, like they’ve done in Asia, like they did in New Zealand and Australia.”

He added: “And then, we could really watch ourselves, cruising into the vaccine availability in the first and second quarter of next year, and bringing back the economy long before that.” According to a Gallup poll, about one third of Americans said they would be unlikely to comply with a month-long lockdown.

The case total for Wednesday was a record 145,000, topping 100,000 for the ninth day running. A record total of 65,368 people are in hospital with the virus, and that has doubled in the past month.

Nearly 1,900 people died on Wednesday, the most in a day since May. Corey Lewandowski, one of Donald Trump’s most trusted advisers, became the latest person in the president’s inner circle to test positive. He said he believed he was infected while in Philadelphia last week contesting ballot-counting procedures.

In the US more than 242,000 deaths have been recorded, and 10.4 million cases. Figures for daily cases are rising in 49 states, and deaths are going up in 39 states. More than 12,500 coronavirus patients are in intensive care units, the highest since May.

Mr Trump has been critical of moves to lock down but some state governors have begun to look at new restrictions.