Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci issued a dire prediction about U.S. coronavirus infection rates today – saying as many as 100,000 Americans could become infected each day if the nation doesn’t make urgent behavioral changes.
Fauci made the bleak prediction as new coronavirus cases surged 46 percent amid new outbreaks in the south and west.
Diagnoses almost doubled last week with 31 states reporting an uptick in cases – as Arizona became the latest hot spot to reverse its reopening by closing bars and gyms.
COVID-19 cases across the US increased by 46 percent in the week ending June 28, compared to the previous seven days, with the majority of rises in the West and South of the country.
Nationally, new cases have consistently spiked every week for four straight weeks. Daily cases have been increasing to record highs of 40,000 in the past week – well above the initial surge of infections that were seen back in mid-April.
Infections across the US have now surpassed 2.58 million and more than 126,000 Americans have died since the virus took hold in March.
‘We are now having 40-plus thousand new cases a day,’ Fauci told a Senate Committee during testimony. ‘I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around, so I am very concerned,’ he said.
‘We can’t just focus on those areas that are having the surge. It puts the entire country at risk,’ he said under questioning from Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Warren asked Fauci if he would provide an estimate of U.S. deaths, which he declined to do.
‘I think it’s important to tell you and the American public that I’m very concerned because it could get very bad,’ he told her.
Fauci repeatedly pointed to a lack of sufficient social distancing in the country, urging people to avoid groups and wear masks when in a position where they might be exposed to others.
‘We’re going to continue to be in a lot of trouble and there’s going to be a lot of hurt if that does not stop,’ he said.
‘It is going to be very disturbing, I can guarantee you that,’ he said.
At the start of the hearing, Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander pleaded with President Trump to wear a mask in public to encourage his MAGA-followers – as the nation’s top health officials embraced a call for distribution of free masks to encourage their use.
‘The president has plenty of admirers,’ Alexander, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, noted at the top of the hearing.
The former Education Secretary then predicted: ‘They would follow his lead, it would help end this political debate. The stakes are too high for this political debate about pro-Trump, anti-Trump to continue.’
‘The stakes are too high for the political debate about pro-Trump, anti-Trump masks to continue,’ Alexander said. He had to go into quarantine after coming in contact with an aide who tested positive for the virus, but says he was protected by the staffer wearing a mask.
Alexander’s urging came as Fauci agreed during testimony with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ suggestion that the government provide masks to the public free of charge.
‘Anything that furthers the use of masks whether it’s giving out free masks or any other mechanism I am thoroughly in favor of,’ Fauci told Sanders, a democratic socialist who failed to beat back former Vice President Joe Biden in the battle for the Democratic nomination.
Fauci called masks ‘extremely important,’ saying they protect both the person wearing it and those they might come in contact with.
‘There’s no doubt that wearing masks protects you and gets you to be protected,’ he said.
Fauci had asked him: ‘Would you support an effort to greatly increase the production of high quality masks’ and to ”distribute them free of charge to every household in America?’
Centers for Disease Control director Dr. Robert Redfield, also pressed by Sanders on the idea, responded that ‘universal masks’ are ‘fundamentally the most important thing we can do’ amid the ongoing spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
Joe Biden and Dick Cheney show off their masks.
Admiral Brett Giroir of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, the assistant secretary of health, agreed. ‘Yes sir I agree that that is very important because we need to support mask wearing,’ he told Sanders.
While cases continues to spike, deaths are showing a downward trend across the country. Arizona, Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky, Florida and Tennessee were the states that saw the largest increases in deaths in the past week.
In Arizona, deaths increased by 62 percent after recording 249 new fatalities in a week, bringing the death toll to 1,588.
Health officials have warned, however, that the death rate could potentially shoot back up again because fatality rates often lag behind infection rates.
They also point to the current trend of young adults making up the majority of new cases.
Officials say people under 35 years old have been going to bars, parties and social events without masks, becoming infected and then spreading the disease to older, more vulnerable people.
With about 40,000 new cases being reported a day, Dr Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, told Congress he ‘would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around’.
‘I am very concerned,’ he said, adding that areas seeing recent outbreaks are putting the entire nation at risk, including areas that have made progress in reducing COVID-19 cases.
He cited recent video footage of people socializing in crowds, often without masks, and otherwise ignoring safety guidelines.
In the past week, Florida, Louisiana, Idaho and Washington state have seen new infections more than double, according to a Reuters analysis of data from The COVID Tracking Project.
In response to the new cases, Louisiana and Washington have temporarily halted the reopening of their economies, with Washington also mandating the wearing of face masks in public.
Florida ordered all bars to close on Friday and has shut down beaches ahead of the July 4 holiday weekend.
Arizona’s Republican governor Doug Ducey followed on Monday by ordering all bars, gyms, movie theaters and water parks to close for at least 30 days.
The state’s cases increased 29 percent in the last week after reporting several record daily increases in cases.
Arizona health officials reported 4,682 more confirmed coronavirus cases on Monday – the most reported in a single day in the state so far and the eighth time in the past 10 days that daily cases surpassed the 3,000 mark.
Most Arizona bars and nightclubs opened after the governor’s stay-at-home and business closure orders were allowed to expire in mid-May.
Large crowds of young people were spotted out as recently as Saturday tubing on Arizona’s Salt River and about 3,000 students crowded together last week for an indoor rally in Phoenix with President Trump.
‘Our expectation is that next week our numbers will be worse,’ Ducey said, as he also ordered public schools to delay the start of classes until at least August 17.
Arizona is not alone in its reversal with Texas, Florida and California also backtracking, closing beaches and bars in most areas.
Nationally, 7 percent of diagnostic tests came back positive last week, which is up from 5 percent the prior week.
Twenty-one states reported positivity test rates above the level that the World Health Organization has flagged as concerning.
The WHO considers a positivity rate above 5 percent to be a cause for concern because it suggests there are more cases in the community that have not yet been uncovered.
Officials say that if a positivity rate is too high – above 5 percent – it could indicate that the state is only testing the sickest patients and not casting a wide enough net to see how much the virus is spreading.
Arizona’s positivity test rate was 24 percent last week, Florida’s was 16 percent, and Nevada, South Carolina and Texas’s were all 15 percent, according to the analysis.
It comes as deputy director of the CDC, Dr Anne Schuchat, said on Monday that the virus was now spreading too rapidly to control.
‘We have way too much virus across the country… it’s very discouraging,’ she told The Journal of the American Medical Association.
‘This is really the beginning. I think there was a lot of wishful thinking around the country that, hey it’s summer. Everything’s going to be fine. We’re over this and we are not even beginning to be over this. There are a lot of worrisome factors about the last week or so.’