COVID-19 HITS ‘NEW PHASE’ IN U.S.

‘NEW PHASE’ IN U.S.

WASHINGTON • Deborah Birx, the physician overseeing the White House coronavirus response, warned Sunday that the United States had entered a “new phase” of the pandemic and urged people to take extreme health precautions as infections and deaths rise sharply throughout the country.

“I want to be very clear what we’re seeing today is different from March and April,” Birx told CNN’S State of the Union on Sunday, noting that cases were increasing in rural and urban areas. “It is extraordinarily widespread.”

“To everybody who lives in a rural area: You are not immune or protected from this virus,” Birx said,

Asked about an estimate from former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb that virus deaths could top 300,000 by the end of the year, Birx said “anything is possible.”

The seven-day average for new deaths rose in nearly half of U.S. states over the past week, pushing the national death toll past 150,000.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she doesn’t trust information from Birx, linking her to disinformation about the virus spread by President Donald Trump.

Birx “is his appointee, so I don’t have confidence there, no,” Pelosi said on ABC’S This Week.

Pelosi was asked about a Politico report that she described Birx as a spreader of disinformation during a closed-door meeting Friday with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

“Deborah Birx is the worst. Wow, what horrible hands you’re in,” Pelosi said at the meeting, according to Politico.

A New York Times article in July on the Trump administration’s coronavirus response portrayed Birx as overly optimistic about the course of the pandemic. While voicing “tremendous respect” for Pelosi, Birx on Sunday criticized the newspaper’s reporting.

“I have never been called Pollyanna-ish or non-scientific or non-data-driven, and I will stake my 40-year career on those fundamental principles of utilizing data to really implement better programs to save more lives,” Birx said on CNN’S State of the Union.

The New York Times article centred on the administration’s discussions in April and described Birx as “a constant source of upbeat news for the president and his aides, walking the halls with charts emphasizing that outbreaks were gradually easing.”

In contrast, White House officials came to view Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as “a purveyor of dire warnings but no solutions,” according to the newspaper.

“It was unfortunate that the New York Times wrote this article without speaking to me,” Birx said.