Top public health officials, Democratic and Republican senators voice concerns over coronavirus

US top health expert Dr. Anthony Fauci says that the coronavirus is not under control contradicting President Donald Trump, who has called for a quick reopening in the country.

On Tuesday, a day after Trump declared the nation had “met the moment, and we have prevailed,” Fauci warned easing restrictions too quickly will result in “some suffering and death that could be avoided.”

“It would almost run the clock back rather than going forward,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the Senate Health Committee. “That is my major concern.”

Fauci also said the disease was unlikely to simply disappear unlike Trump who has repeatedly said the novel virus would go away without a vaccine.

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“That is just not going to happen because it’s such a highly transmissible virus,” Fauci said. “Even if we get better control over the summer months, it is likely that there will be virus somewhere on this planet that will eventually get back to us.”

A few Democratic and Republican senators also expressed concern about the pandemic, painting a much starker picture of the virus challenges still facing the nation than the rosier outlook Trump offered.

GOP senators called for more testing, with Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the committee, saying that although it was “impressive” that over 9 million COVID-19 tests had been carried out in the country, many more were needed.

“Vaccines and treatments are the ultimate solutions but until we have them, all roads back to work and back to school go through testing,” he said. “This will require millions more new tests, many of them new technologies.”

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney also said, “I find our testing record nothing to celebrate whatsoever.”

At a White House press conference on Monday, Trump and Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services, argued that the US had done more than twice the rate of testing per capita than what South Korea achieved.

But Romney said, “the fact is their test numbers are going down, down, down now because they don't have the kind of outbreak we have.”

Meanwhile, Washington state Sen. Patty Murray, the panel’s top Democrat, accused Trump of lying to the nation, calling his administration’s response a “disaster” full of missteps and delays.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., also described the White House’s guidance to states on how to reopen as “criminally vague.”

There were also a few skirmishes during the hearing. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said that while he respected Fauci, “I don’t think you’re the end all.”

“So I think we ought to have a little bit of humility in our belief that we know what’s best for the economy,” Paul said. “I don’t think you’re the one person that gets to make a decision.”

He said that “people on the other side” believe that there would not be a surge “and that we can safely open the economy and the facts will bear this out.”

Fauci responded by noting that he had “never made myself out to be the end all and only voice in this.”

“I'm a scientist, a physician and a public health official. I give advice according to the best scientific evidence,” he added.

So far, the virus has infected more than 1,408,600 and killed over 83,400 people across the United States.

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