Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a White House coronavirus task force member, offered a rare glimmer of hope amid surging confirmed coronavirus cases during an interview on CNN Tuesday morning.
After saying that the Trump administration is continuing to push mitigation efforts such as social distancing in the hopes of seeing a turnaround, Fauci was asked about what he sees as “early signs” of hope as New York sees a decline in the rate of growth in new infections.
“It occurs in phases,” Fauci said, before describing how new cases that require hospitalization will increase exponentially from day to day before the number starts leveling off.
“Once you start to level off, then you’re going to have less people who are going to be going into intensive care,” Fauci said. “And then later on, because it always lags, you’ll see a decrease in deaths.”
Fauci pointed out that the data so far shows “inklings” of hope.
“I don’t want to put too much stock on it because you don’t want to get overconfident, you just want to keep pushing in what you’re doing,” Fauci said, referring to mitigation efforts. “You’re starting to see that the daily increases are not in that steep incline, they’re starting to be able to possibly flatten out.”
Reiterating the importance of looking at data carefully, Fauci said that there’s “hope it’s going in the right direction,” but that the goal is attaining the “multi-phase component where it ultimately starts to come down.”
Watch Fauci’s remarks below:
Fauci responds to New York seeing decline in the rate of growth in new infections pic.twitter.com/tH0WOL4yZA
— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) March 31, 2020
