In a series of interviews with Good Morning America and CBS This Morning, Fauci gave his bleak assessment of what is still to come
White House coronavirus expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Friday morning that the current state of crisis in the US would last for two months and that ‘it’s all on the table’ in terms of how much more severe things may become.
In a series of interviews with Good Morning America and CBS This Morning, Fauci gave his bleak assessment of what is still to come.
‘It’s certainly going to get worse before it gets better…there’s no doubt we have not peaked yet,’ he said.
Asked directly if America was heading towards a complete shutdown like China and Italy, he would not rule it out.
‘I’m not sure we’re going to get to that.
‘I think that would be really rather dramatic, but I can tell you that all things are on the table.
‘We just have to respond as things evolve over the days and the weeks,’ he said.
There has been a dramatic shift in tone from the government in the last several days.
At the start of the week, President Trump was advising Americans not to panic and even said the virus would ‘go away’.
He then shut the border to Europeans, and said on Thursday that even US citizens who test positive for the virus would not be allowed to come home.
Fauci’s prediction was that there will be at least another several weeks of the current mode of crisis, but that it could last up to two months.
‘It will be at least a matter of several weeks. It’s unpredictable, but if you look at historically how these things work, it will likely be anywhere from a few weeks to up to eight weeks.
An elderly person is taken in an ambulance from Life Care Center in Kirkland, Washington state, where several people died after contracting the virus
‘I hope it’s going to be in the earlier part, two, three, four weeks, but it’s impossible to make an accurate prediction,’ he said.
Later, in an interview with CBS, he said it was one of the worst things he had seen in his 36-year career.
‘I mean, there have been an awful lot of challenges over the 36 years that I’ve been doing this.
It’s like buying a printer without the ink: California receives COVID-19 tests that are MISSING PARTS
California Gov. Gavin Newsom
California Gov. Gavin Newsom fumed on Thursday that the CDC had sent hospitals and labs COVID-19 tests with some of the crucial parts missing.
In a press conference, he said: ‘The test kits do not include in every case the RNA extraction kits, the reagents, the chemicals, the solutions that are components of the broader tests.
‘This is imperative that the federal government and labs across the United States, not just state of California, get the benefit of all the ingredients, the components of the test.
‘I am surprised this is not more of the national conversation.
‘I think it’s very much in line with your going to the store and purchasing a printer but forgetting to purchase the ink.’
Fauci, addressing the disastrous testing blunder on Friday morning, said it was ‘unfortunate’.
‘Obviously HIV/AIDS, that was a disruption for beginning a very selected demographic group in the country even though there was a lot of general fear.
‘With regard to disruption of everyday life, we have not seen that before. We’ve not had this kind of a situation before.
‘I mean, we’ve had pandemics, the 2009 H1N1 swine flu was a pandemic, but it was influenza.
‘We were familiar with what influenza does. Familiar with its seasonal capability.
‘Right now there are a lot of unknowns, I think that’s the thing that’s frightening people.’
Fauci told congress on Thursday that the healthcare system had was failing and that there were not enough tests to go around or get done fast enough.
On Friday, he was more optimistic and said ‘very soon’ there will be wider scope for testing but he did not give specifics of where these tests would be available and who was producing them.
Experts say one of the largest problems is that so many people who are not yet showing symptoms are continuing the spread the virus without knowing it.
Because of the lack of tests, only those who show symptoms and seem ill are being given them.
That will change soon, Fauci said.
‘The system as it was designed, was designed for what it was designed for.
‘Let’s look ahead, and I believe what we’re hearing at the task force that we are now getting into that phase where we’ll be able to really scale it up a lot.
‘I think in the next week or so, you’re going to see an acceleration of availability of tests.
‘Right now as I’ve mentioned many times and I’ll stick by it, early on, the way the system was designed, as good a system as it was, it was not a design to approach that broad blanket testing.
‘We’re on our way to that now, and we’ll be able to do it relatively soon,’ he said.
To CBS, he added: ‘It’s not going to all happen tomorrow or the next day.
‘It’s going to start going like this — that relatively soon that kind of issue that was just mentioned by the person who spoke hopefully will no longer be existing.’
There are now more than 1,750 cases of coronavirus in the US and 41 have died
There were barely any pedestrians outside the Ferry Building at a near empty Embarcadero in San Francisco on Thursday
The ordinarily mobbed Met Museum in New York City had only a handful of visitors. It will close on Friday night
However all the tests currently being used take several days to make a positive diagnosis.
‘I WOULD LIKELY GET TESTED’: FAUCI ON PRESIDENT TRUMP’S LINK TO BRAZILIAN PRESIDENT AND HIS COVID-19 AIDE
Dr. Fauci refused to urge the president to get tested for COVID-19 after coming into contact with the Brazilian president and one of his aides who has the virus, but said if it were him, he likely would.
Trump and President Jair Bolsonaro had dinner at Mar-a-Lago on March 7, a day after one of his key aides tested positive for the virus.
Bolsonaro is now awaiting the results of his own test, but the White House says Trump has not had one.
The Mirror claimed on Friday that he had tested positive for the virus. That is yet to be confirmed by Brazilian officials.
Trump with Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro shaking hands on March 7. The Mirror reports that Bolsonaro’s first test for the virus came back positive. That is yet to be confirmed by officials
Fauci said on Friday morning that he did not want to comment too strongly on the decision and that Trump and his doctors would know the best course of action.
Ivanka Trump with Bill Barr (left) and Australian government minister Peter Dutton (right) on March 5. Dutton has tested positive for the virus
But when pushed, Fauci admitted that he would likely have a test if it were him who had come into contact with the infected aide.
‘I leave that to the president’s white house physician who is an extremely competent individual who I know well, and the decisions there were between what would be a potential patient and the physician,’ he said.
When asked if he would get a test, he said: ‘Likely I would, but I’m not sure.
‘It depends on the circumstances.
‘We should follow the guidelines of the CDC about when you are at a risk what you should do.’
Ivanka Trump was also at the dinner on March 7 and she has another connection to the virus – two days earlier, on March 5, she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with an Australian government minister who has now tested positive for the virus.
It is unclear whether or not she has been tested.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday night that the situation may remain like this for six months.
He has taken the extraordinary step of declaring a state of emergency and banning gatherings of 500 people or more in the city.
Any businesses that choose to remain open whose capacity is less than that has been told to operate at no more than 50 percent occupancy.
It puts an incredible strain on businesses.
‘We’re worried about people’s livelihoods… we’re worried about people being able to pay their rent,’ de Blasio said on Thursday night.
Trump said on Thursday afternoon that any Americans who are overseas and who test positive for coronavirus will not be allowed back into the country.
There is grave concern over what is being done though to test people when they get back to the US, or even.
The stock market has tanked as a result of the pandemic, dropping 2,000 points on Thursday in the worst day of trading for decades.
The Federal Reserve Bank has injected $1.5 trillion into the market to stop them from falling again.
Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche announced on Friday that it has received emergency approval from US regulators for a new and much faster coronavirus test.
On Friday, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted an ’emergency use authorization’ to commercialize the test, which is 10 times faster than the American government’s kit.
The test can be run in high volumes on fully automated equipment, Roche said, suggesting it could provide more results far faster than other tests available.
Widespread testing is essential in the race to rein in the spread of the virus, which has infected more than 134,000 people and killed more than 5,000 worldwide.
The new Roche tests, which will also now be available in markets that accept the European CE-mark certification, can provide results within about three-and-a-half hours, the company said.
In a 24-hour period, the largest machines can reportedly process up to 4,128 tests.
‘It is important to quickly and reliably detect whether a patient is infected’ with the virus,’ Schinecker said, insisting that speeding up the process of providing reliable diagnostics was ‘crucial to combat this serious disease.’
Roche said it would have millions of tests available each month, and that it was committed to pushing the limits of its production capacity and delivering as many tests as possible.
Scott Gottlieb, the former head of the FDA, praised the news on Twitter, saying it would ‘significantly improve’ the capacity to test patients across all labs.
In the US, more than 1,700 people have been infected and 41 people have died, but Gottlieb said the figures are probably lower than the true number.
‘We are likely to find that spread is far more distributed in communities across US and while total case count may still be in high thousands or probably low ten thousands, the widespread seeding make an epidemic inevitable,’ he tweeted.
‘We must focus on slowing spread through tough mitigation steps and reducing the scope and severity of the epidemic by good medical planning.
‘Every day, every hour, is critical to preparedness.’