Iran Press/ America: The head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a leading member of President Trump’s coronavirus task force, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday the US is "struggling" the get the novel coronavirus outbreak under control and warned Americans to prepare for the upcoming week "to be a bad week."
"So on the one hand, things are going to get bad and we need to be prepared for that," Fauci said, according to NBC News.
"It's going to be shocking to some. It's certainly is really disturbing to see that. But that's what's going to happen before it turns around. So just buckle down, continue to mitigate, continue to do the physical separation because we've got to get through this week that's coming up because it is going to be a bad week," he added.
"I will not say we have it under control, that would be a false statement," Fauci said. "We are struggling to get it under control. And that's the issue that's at hand right now. The thing that's important is that what you see is increases in new cases which then start to flatten out."
He said that the death toll will lag behind a curbing of confirmed cases anywhere from one to two weeks or possibly longer.
"But the end result of that you don't see for days or weeks down the pipe because, as the cases go down, then you get less hospitalizations, less intensive care, and less death," Fauci said. "So even though you're getting really an improvement in that the number of new cases are starting to flatten, the deaths will lag by one or two weeks or more. So we need to be prepared that even though it's clear that mitigation is working, we're still going to see that tail-off of deaths."
As of Sunday morning, at least 8,400 Americans have died due to the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 309,000 confirmed cases in the country, according to an NBC News count. Experts are anticipating that the virus could kill more than 100,000 Americans while infecting millions.
The vast majority of governors have imposed stay-at-home orders aimed at curbing the spread of the highly contagious virus.
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also recommended for the first time that Americans wear face masks when in public settings.
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