Fauci warns of ‘surge upon surge’ as US tops 13 million COVID-19 cases
US top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci warns about “a surge upon a surge” in coronavirus cases, as the nation heads into December, with coronavirus cases having topped 13 million across the country.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said on Sunday that the increase in US cases of the infectious disease would be almost vertical if shown on a graph.
“So what we expect, unfortunately, as we go for the next couple of weeks into December, that we might see a surge superimposed upon that surge that we're already in,” he said.
The country has now surpassed 13.2 million coronavirus cases and 266,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The number of coronavirus-related hospitalizations have also reached an all-time high of more than 91,000, with more than 18,000 people in the intensive care unit.
Health officials keep calling on people to adhere to health safety measures such as mask wearing and social distancing.
They cautioned people not to travel or gather with groups outside of their immediate household for Thanksgiving.
Some 6.8 million people, however, got on flights days ahead of the holiday, breaking air travel records during the pandemic.
“The travel that has been done has been done,” Fauci said. “Right now as people go back, we want to urge them ... to be really careful when you either return from the place that you went or other people come back into your house.”
He also warned the nation may see a surge upon a surge before the Christmas and New Years holidays.
Fauci said he plans to instruct President-elect Joe Biden to pursue “much broader blanket” testing across the country.
The prominent health expert said that he doesn't have any "power" to urge President Donald Trump to discourage holiday travel.
Trump had repeatedly disagreed with Fauci on COVID-19, including social-distancing guidelines and masks wearing, calling the doctor as “a little bit of an alarmist.”
The president has lately suggested to fire Fauci, calling him a “disaster.”
The doctor has been in the position since 1984 and is a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
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