Dr. Anthony Fauci told a Senate committee today that the US could see a nearly 150% increase in reported new coronavirus cases daily if practices to contain the virus continue to be ignored and are not widely practiced.
Testifying before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, the head of infectious disease research at the National Institutes of Health said that some states may have started to open too quickly and carelessly, leading to recent spikes in cases.
The United States is reporting an average of around 40,000 new cases daily for the past week, which could surpass 100,000 daily cases because of lax transmission prevention, Fauci said.
“What we saw were a lot of people who maybe felt that because they think they are invulnerable, and we know many young people are not because they’re getting serious disease, that therefore they’re getting infected has nothing at all to do with anyone else, when in fact it does,” Fauci said.
Republican Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, the chair of the committee, commented that President Trump could lead by example in respecting the CDC recommendations to help stem the spread of the virus, according to reporting in USA Today.
“The president has plenty of admirers.They would follow his lead,” Alexander noted.