White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci suggested India should “shut down temporarily” as the country continues to have rising levels of infections and confirmed cases of transmission.
“It just seems to me that, right now, India is in a very difficult and desperate situation,” Fauci told the Indian Express, calling on travel to the country to be restricted. “You should think of this, in some respects, like a war. The enemy is the virus. So, you know where the enemy is. So, I would make it almost like wartime because it’s an emergency.”
“We know that when China had this big explosion a year ago, they completely shut down. And if you shut down, you don’t have to shut down for six months. You can shut down temporarily to put an end to the cycle of transmission,” he added, as India recently observed 400,000 daily new cases. Prior to this record-setting figure, India saw 10 consecutive days of more than 300,000 daily new infections.
Fauci called for other countries to do their part to help India contain the virus as the country is facing one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks the world has seen since the start of the pandemic.
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“There is the immediate, the intermediate, and the long range. I think the most important thing in the immediate is to get oxygen, get supplies, get medication, get PPE, those kinds of things but also, one of the immediate things to do is to essentially call a shutdown of the country,” America’s leading infectious disease expert said.
Fauci, who has led both the Trump administration’s and Biden administration’s coronavirus relief efforts, made the comments just a day after the Biden administration announced that it would restrict travel from India and provide key financial aid to the country.
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On Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced the White House will restrict travel from India starting midnight on Tuesday.
“On the advice of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the administration will restrict travel from India starting immediately,” Psaki said during a press conference.
“Just as India sent assistance to the United States when our hospitals were strained early in the pandemic, the United States is determined to help India in its time of need,” a subsequent statement from the White House read, announcing the U.S. would sent $100 million in aid.
The State Department has also called on U.S. citizens in India to leave the country at their earliest convenience.
