Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that the United States could suffer renewed lockdowns later this year, as a resurgence of the coronavirus is likely during flu season.
“We’ve seen evidence that the concerns it would go south in the southern hemisphere like flu [are coming true], and you’re seeing what’s happening in Brazil now,” Redfield told the Financial Times Wednesday. “And then when the southern hemisphere is over I suspect it will reground itself in the north.”
Redfield warned that the challenge facing the country in the fall is even greater because renewed outbreaks of the coronavirus would coincide with the seasonal flu.
He said that he could not guarantee that further lockdowns would not be needed to control the virus. “What I can say is that we are committed to using the time that we have now to get this nation as overprepared as possible,” he said.
The CDC warned early in the coronavirus outbreak that “disruption to everyday life might be severe,” but the White House has argued in the past month that the worst of the virus has passed. Every state has started reopening, as the pandemic has resulted in over 1.5 million people in the U.S. getting infected.
Redfield said Wednesday that the virus “really brought my nation to its knees, and the reality is, it’s no one particular person’s fault,” although outside public health experts say that an aggressive system of testing, contact tracing, and isolating infected people could have avoided the astronomical number of cases and over 93,000 deaths.
To avoid another nationwide shutdown, Redfield said, the U.S. must invest in the public health system. While he did not discourage states from reopening, he urged people to continue social distancing practices to mitigate the spread of the virus.
“I think it’s important to rebuild the confidence of the American public that there is a path that they can go out safely but we want them to maintain social distancing,” Redfield said.
