The nation’s top infectious disease expert warned that the United States is going to see a lot of coronavirus deaths this week but pointed out a silver lining.
Appearing Wednesday on Fox News, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that COVID-19 deaths will rise this week even as hospitalizations and new infections slow in some parts of the country.
“It’s going to be a bad week for deaths,” the doctor warned.
However, he noted that deaths tend to lag behind new infections and increased hospitalizations, which appear to be about to peak in some areas. Fauci said after this week, the U.S. could see the “beginning of a turnaround.”
“So, we need to keep pushing on the mitigation strategies because there is no doubt that that’s having a positive impact on the dynamics of the outbreak,” Fauci said. “Now is not the time to pull back at all. It’s the time to intensify.”
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Fauci and Deborah Birx, the response coordinator for the White House coronavirus task force, expressed optimism that the country might be able to beat the projected death toll at a recent White House news conference. The task force initially projected that between 100,000 and 240,000 people would die during the pandemic if proper mitigation measures are followed.
“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 Monday. “If we do what I’ve been talking about over the past few minutes, we can make that number go down.”
