Top infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci warned Sunday the coronavirus could become a seasonal threat unless it’s controlled across the globe.
In an interview on CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Health— and a member of the White House coronavirus response team — said it’s “unlikely” the virus will be eradicated.
“Unless we get this globally under control, there's a very good chance that it will assume a seasonal nature,” he said, explaining, “when we get it down to the point where it really is at a very low level, we need to be prepared that since it unlikely it will be completely eradicated from the planet, that as we get into next season, we may see the beginning of a resurgence.”
He said there is a push now to have preparedness for a next round, as well as for a vaccine and therapeutic interventions.
“Hopefully if in fact we do see that resurgence, we will have interventions that we did not have in the beginning of the situation that we're in right now,” he said.
Fauci said the nation has to brace for what “is going to be a bad week.”
“If you look at the projection of the curves, of the kinetics of the curves, we're going to continue to see an escalation,” he said.
He said mitigation is “absolutely key” to the success of a “flattening out of the curve and coming down” in terms of reported COVID-19 cases and deaths.
“We are struggling to get it under control, and that's the issue that's at hand right now,” he said, adding: “Even though you're getting improvement in that the number of new cases is starting to flatten, the deaths will lag by one or two weeks or more.”