Posted on 07/07/20
| News Source: MATZAV
(WASHINGTON) -- The current state of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. is "really not good," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country's top infectious disease expert, said Monday amid an alarming rise in new cases and hospitalizations.
His comments were in stark contrast with those of President Donald Trump, who has sought to play down the danger in states where governors and mayors are struggling to control outbreaks after reopening -- outbreaks the president has called "embers."
Fauci said the current state of the pandemic in the U.S. is worsening in part because, unlike Europe, states and cities in the U.S. moved to reopen before the country sufficiently lowered the number of cases.
Several states in the south and west have seen surges in the number of people testing positive in recent weeks.
The positivity rate in California has reached 6.8%, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday, and Arizona has reached 100,000 cases with concerns rising about a lack of available ICU beds in the state.
Ten states hit a record high number of new COVID-19 cases over the weekend and nine hit record numbers of current hospitalizations, according to state data compiled by The New York Times and The COVID Tracking Project.
"The current state is really not good, in the sense that, as you know, we had been in a situation we were averaging about 20,000 new cases, a day. And then a series of circumstances associated with various states and cities trying to open up in the sense of getting back to some form of normality has led to a situation where we now have record breaking cases. Two days ago it was at 57,500. So within a period of a week and a half. We've almost doubled the number of cases," Fauci said in a livestream with National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins. Read more at WBAL