Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CBS ‘Face the Nation on Sunday that current coronavirus levels of 60,000 to 70,000 new cases per day are unacceptable.
Therefore, he argued that he withdrew masking and the physical distance “carefully and slowly”.
Partial transcript as follows:
BRENNAN: You recently warned that the country could be in danger of another infection. Are you worried about a fourth wave of this epidemic?
DR. FAUCI: Well, my concern, Margaret, is based on the fact that even though things are going down very nicely, you have been reducing very sharply over the past week and a half, we have seen that the decline is now done, essentially starting to plateau. And historically, if you look back at the different thrusts we had, when they come down and then start at a very high level plateau, it is not acceptable at a level of 60 to 70,000 new cases per day. It’s really very high. And if you look at what happened in Europe a few weeks ago, it’s usually a few weeks ahead of us in these patterns; they also descended and then flattened. And over the past week or so, they have had a 9% increase in cases. The message we are saying, therefore, is that we want to come back cautiously and slowly to return to mitigation methods. But do not turn the switch on and off, because it would be really dangerous to have a boom again, which we do not want because we are at a very high level. Sixty to 70,000 new infections per day are quite high.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I know you’ve been watching this new New York tribe that showed resistance to antibody treatments and vaccines. How widespread is it?
DR. FAUCI: Well, it’s not widespread yet, but it seems to be spreading fairly efficiently through the metropolitan area of New York and beyond. One of the things you need to watch out for is that when you get a variant that has the ability to be quite powerful – in the ability to spread, and the fact is that it evades a bit, not as much as the South not. African isolate, but it evades some protection against the antibodies, against monoclonal antibodies as well as the vaccine. The one thing you want to do is make sure you do not let it spread. Two ways to do this are to get people vaccinated as quickly and as quickly as possible, and especially keep the social health measures we talk about so often, the masking, the physical distance, and the avoidance of congregational institutions, especially indoors. This is what you can do to prevent the spread of a worrying variant.
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