Kevin Dietsch | Bloomberg | Getty Images
“Don’t ever, ever underestimate the potential of the pandemic. And don’t try and look at the rosy side of things.” So says Dr. Anthony Fauci. Fauci made the comment on Thursday during a panel discussion with doctors from Harvard Medical School.
Fauci, a White House advisor and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned Americans that they need to prepare for a second wave of Covid-19 infections as flu season approaches.
“We need to hunker down and get through this fall and winter because it’s not going to be easy,” Fauci told Harvard Medical School.
Fauci noted that while new Covid-19 cases have decreased to less than 40,000 cases per day in the U.S. (a 16% decrease from two weeks ago, according to a New York Times database), that number is still “an unacceptably baseline,” he said.
“We’ve got to get it down, I’d like to see it 10,000 or less, hopefully less,” he added.
As of Friday morning, more than 6.4 million people have been inflected with Covid-19 in the U.S. and at least 187,000 have died, according to Johns Hopkins.
Despite the gloomy outlook, Fauci said Covid-19 vaccine trials are “progressing very well” and he is hopefully that one will be available by the end of the year or by early 2021.
Fauci’s comments come days after audio tapes were released by journalist Bob Woodward of President Donald Trump admitting that he downplayed the Covid-19 threat because he didn’t want “to create a panic.”
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