Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the U.S. National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said COVID-19 cases are likely to spike again in the fall, but that lessons learned from the current epidemic mean the nation is going to be far more prepared.
This report produced by Zachary Goelman.
The top U.S. infectious diseases expert is already looking ahead to autumn, when he expects to see a resurgence in COVID-19 cases after a summer lull.
But Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday said the U.S. will be far more prepared for the second wave come fall.
(SOUNDBITE) (English) DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES ANTHONY FAUCI, SAYING: "There will be several things that will be different: our ability to go out and test, identify, isolate and contact-trace will be orders of magnitude better than what it was just a couple months ago.
In addition we have a number of clinical trials that are looking at a variety of therapeutic interventions, we hope one or more of them will be available.
And importantly, as I've mentioned to you many times at these briefings, is that we have a vaccine that's on track, and multiple other candidates...So things are going to be very, very different.
What we're going through now is going to be more than just lessons learned, it's going to be things that we're going to have available to us that we did not have before." Fauci told Congress earlier this year that America's initial inability to deploy reliable, large-scale testing for the virus was "a failing." In more recent days, Fauci has estimated that hundreds of thousands of Americans could die from Coronavirus in the coming months, even with social distancing measures in place.
