Fauci: Not too late for turnaround
Infectious disease doctor frets over high positivity rates heading into winter months
Most states are “going in the wrong direction” in terms of COVID test positivity as the cold winter months approach, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, but it isn’t too late to clamp down on public health measures.
“You can’t enter into the cool months of the fall and the cold months of the winter with a high community infection baseline,” said Fauci during a Friday “fireside chat” hosted by Johns Hopkins University.
Fauci said test positivity is “going in the wrong direction” in more than 30 states.
“The baseline fluctuated and never went down to the level that I would have hoped it went down to,” said Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease doctor.
The baseline case count for the country has stayed at around 20,000, according to Fauci, and when reopening began months ago, it wasn’t done uniformly and southern states surged, which increased the count to about 70,000 a day.
Now, cases sit at around 40,000 to 50,000 per day, said Fauci, and with colder months on the horizon, many people will stay indoors where risk for transmission is higher.
“That’s when you have to be particularly careful about the spread of a respiratoryborne disease,” said Fauci.
It is not too late to “vigorously” apply public health interventions though, and he said that doesn’t require shutting the country down again.
“People think that we want to shut the country down. We don’t want to do that,” said Fauci.
He added, “Public health measures, as I’ve said so many times, need to be the vehicle and the gateway to opening the economy, not the obstacle to opening the economy.”
The most important public health intervention, according to Fauci, is avoiding indoor crowded spaces where people are not wearing masks.
“You can do that while you’re still marching carefully to opening up the country,” said Fauci.
Fauci noted a “whack-amole” situation in the country where there’s a surge in cases, it decreases and preventive measures are relaxed, leading to another surge.
“I think what it’s begging for is a consistent uniform approach of all of this country, pulling together to extinguish this high level of community spread,” said Fauci, which is something the United States has not done well, he added.
Once a coronavirus vaccine is available and distributed, Fauci said it is likely we can get close to back to normal, but how quickly that happens depends on vaccine efficacy and the amount of people who take it.
But as for crowded theaters and packed sports events, “we may not get there for awhile,” said Fauci.