Dr. Deborah Birx, the response coordinator for the White House coronavirus task force, warned of a “second wave” of coronavirus infections if people begin leaving their homes.
Appearing Wednesday on Today, Birx said that though there are positive signs that some states that were hit early, such as Washington and California, have begun flattening the curve, Americans must stick with the social distancing measures within their states and continuing guidance from the federal government.
Birx said that those two states’ curves are “persistently flat, and that’s very encouraging.”
The doctor also said that while New York and New Jersey have seen a “logarithmic rise in the number of new cases,” she noted that “we’re seeing that stabilizing.”
“What’s really important is that people don’t turn these early signs of hope into releasing from the 30 days to stop the spread — it’s really critical,” Birx cautioned. “If people start going out again and socially interacting, we could see a very acute second wave very early.”
She also pointed out that while the death toll across the country has seen steep increases this week, many of those are likely from infections from two or three weeks ago, before more stringent guidelines were implemented.
Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Monday that they were hopeful that the United States could reduce the predicted death toll of 100,000 to 240,000 people.
“I don’t accept every day that we have to have 100,000 to 200,000 deaths. I think we can really bring that down,” Fauci said.
“I think Dr. Fauci and I both strongly believe that if we work as hard as we can over the next several weeks, that we will see potential to go under the numbers that were predicted by the models,” Birx added.
