The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr. Anthony Fauci, has shared his thoughts on the outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus in the United States. He was interviewed by MSNBC and he gave an update on where the country was in terms of the pandemic.
Fauci said, “With regards to the virus itself, the next few weeks for most Americans, is obviously what you’re going to see is an acceleration of cases. There’s no doubt about it, because that’s how these outbreaks work.”
When talking about what would happen if a country doesn’t put in measures like travel bans and isolation of cases, Fauci explained, “When you look at the historical perspective of these type of outbreaks, they go along like this,” Fauci simulated a graph with his hand.
The graph he described, of the amount of people infected by the coronavirus, showed a steady horizontal line of cases at the beginning. He explained, “then they start to come up, and then they take a big spike. They peak and [then] they come down.”
He continued, “If you try and interfere — either by preventing an influx of cases from the outside like with travel bans, which we’re doing, as well as containment, and mitigation, the kinds of things of physical separation of people — what you hope to do is to get that peak [to] become a little bit of a hump.”
Fauci reiterated that the “hump” still means that a lot of people could contract COVID-19, but “hopefully it will be much, much less than the major peaks.”
Dr. Fauci Confirms: ‘Things Are Going to Get Worse Before They Get Better’
Dr. Fauci then shared what he believes the next three weeks will look like for Americans in terms of the coronavirus.
The director of NIAID said, “Two things we are looking for. [First,] things are going to get worse before they get better, but [second] what’s happening now with many more tests that are going out very, very shortly. With people now very seriously taking containment and mitigation into effect, hopefully we will be able to blunt that peak. That’s what I see in the next few weeks.”
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