Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, painted a gloomy picture in private regarding the dire rise in coronavirus cases in major cities across the United States.
In a Wednesday call with local and state health officials, Birx said 12 cities, including Baltimore, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, San Jose, and St. Louis, need to take aggressive steps to mitigate their surges in COVID-19 cases. She noted that the increase in testing in these cities has shown that more results are coming back as positive.
“When you first see that increase in test positivity, that is when to start the mitigation efforts,” she said in an audio recording obtained by the Center for Public Integrity.
Birx also added that the federal government was monitoring declines in test positivity coming out of the Sunbelt, such as in Phoenix and San Antonio, but officials were noticing a trend that cases were moving north and east.
“What started out very much as a southern and western epidemic is starting to move up the East Coast into Tennessee, Arkansas, up into Missouri, up across Colorado, and, obviously, we’re talking about increases now in Baltimore,” she said.
The U.S. has now hit over 4 million cases of the coronavirus and has seen more than 140,000 deaths. Recent surges, especially in the Southern region, have prompted local and state leadership to rescind or halt reopening measures.
