Dr. Anthony Fauci describing himself as a "very cautious person," believes the nation is "seeing some light at the end of the tunnel," but still, several steps remain necessary before stay-at-home orders can be lifted.
"There are still a couple of cities that we're worried about that haven't yet peaked and turned around," Fauci, the head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NBC "Today" co-anchor Savannah Guthrie in an interview airing Wednesday. "If you look at the New York metropolitan area as kind of the prototype that's been driving this through the country and look at the country as a whole, there's no doubt what we've seen over the last several days is a flattening out."
Even in New York, the numbers are starting to come down with admissions, hospitalizations and the needs for intensive care and intubation, said Fauci, and "hopefully that trend will continue."
President Donald Trump has said there are some states that could lift orders even before May 1, and Fauci said he is sure the president, even though he hasn't discussed this matter with him, is talking about some states that have a lot of land but few people.
"I haven't gone state-by-state through them [with Trump]," said Fauci. "There is going to be a great deal of variability. There probably would be a rolling entry into it with some states actually doing nothing different because they are still in a really difficult situation. You would not want to relax any of the physical separation guidelines and others that would be doing much better. It's not going to be a one size fits all."
He also discounted reports from South Korea that the virus had been reactivated in some patients who had thought they were cured.
"We don't know how common that is," he said. "It's likely an uncommon event and won't have a public health impact."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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