- U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams on Sunday expressed confidence in handing over COVID-19 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after criticizing Donald Trump unfounded.
- “From a public health perspective, I have no reason to doubt the numbers,” Adams said during an appearance on CNN Sunday.
- Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also disputed Sunday’s characterization of the CDC data.
- As of Sunday, more than 350,000 people in the U.S. had died as a result of COVID-19, according to an analysis by Johns Hopkins University. The CDC total is slightly lower, just over 346,000.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said Sunday that he believes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention accurately counts and proposes COVID-19 infections and deaths after President Donald Trump unjustifiably questioned their accuracy.
The president to Twitter on Sunday criticized his own government, claiming that the “number of cases and deaths of the China virus in the United States is greatly exaggerated because of @ CDCgov’s ridiculous method of determination compared to other countries, of which many report, deliberately, very inaccurate and low. “
Trump has long referred to COVID-19 as the ‘China virus’ despite racist connotations associated with the moniker. As Yelena Dzhanova of Business Insider reported Sunday, the CDC is run by people appointed by President Trump and has regularly updated its COVID-19 statistics for months.
“From a public health perspective, I have no reason to doubt the numbers,” Adams told CNN’s Jake Tapper during an appearance in “State of the Union.”
He added: “And I think people need to be very aware that it’s not just about the deaths like we talked about earlier. It’s about hospitalizations, the capacity. These cases have an impact in different ways and people need to understand There is a finish line in sight, but we must keep running towards it. ‘
—State of the Union (@CNNSotu) January 3, 2021
The US daily COVID-19 hospitalizations have risen more than 100,000 a month, and experts expect hospitalizations in the country will only increase as the disease is diagnosed after the holidays, as reported by Aria Bendix of Insider.
According to data analyzed by Johns Hopkins University, more than 350,000 people in the U.S. died after contracting COVID-19 on Sunday, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. According to the analysis, more people died in the US than in any other country worldwide. The CDC tracker puts the death toll just above 346,000 as of Saturday.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also said Sunday that the CDC numbers were accurate.
“This is not false,” Fauci said during an appearance in ABC News. “It really is.”
Although there is no evidence that the number of COVID-19 cases or deaths is wrongly or deliberately exaggerated, despite denied conspiracy theories that have persisted since the early days of the pandemic, scientists and experts have been saying for months that the opposite may be true: In the US, the number of people infected with COVID-19 and dying as a result may be less.
While two U.S. vaccines received an emergency permit from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration late last year, the vaccine will be slow and it will take months before every American who wants to be vaccinated gets the chance.
Current distribution plans are left to the health departments and give preference to health workers and residents of long-term care facilities.