7:45 p.m. ET, October 12, 2020
US is in a bad place with Covid-19, Fauci says
From CNN’s Shelby Lin Erdman
Coronavirus cases are on the rise in 31 states, according to CNN tracking data, and Dr. Anthony Fauci says the country has to “turn this around.”
“I think we’re facing a whole lot of trouble,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview on CNBC Monday.
New coronavirus infections are numbering between 40,000 and 50,000 a day in the US.
“That's a bad place to be when you're going into the cooler weather of the fall and the colder weather of the winter,” Fauci said.
The increase in the percentage of people testing positive for the virus is also going in the wrong direction, said Fauci, who is a member of the White House coronavirus task force.
“So you combine an increase in test positivity, which is always a predictor of more cases, and ultimately more hospitalizations, and ultimately more deaths, and you combine that with a baseline of 40, 45, 50,000 new cases a day as you go into a weather system where you're going to be spending more time indoors rather than outdoors, which is a perfect setup for an acceleration of respiratory-borne diseases — that is unquestionably a problem,” he said.
“So that's the concern that I have and so many of my fellow public health officials have,” Fauci added.
“We're in a bad place now. We've got to turn this around," he said.