The number two official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave a grim assessment Monday of the spread of the coronavirus in the US, warning that the country “is not even beginning to overcome this” and “clearly is not At a point where there is so much, a small virus is spreading that will be easy to eliminate. “
Comments from CDC Deputy Principal Director Dr. Anne Schuchat were presented in a live Q&A with The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Schuchat compared the situation in the United States to that of New Zealand or Singapore, “where a new case is quickly identified and all contacts are located and people who are ill and isolated are quarantined and can be kept and kept things under control. “
“We have too many viruses across the country for that at the moment, so it is very discouraging,” he said.
The new surge in Covid-19 cases in the United States, Schuchat warned, is “really the beginning.”
“I think there were a lot of illusions across the country saying, ‘Hello, it’s summer. Everything is going to be fine. We have overcome this,’ and we are not even beginning to overcome this,” Schuchat said, adding: “There are many worrying factors about the last week or so. “
“As much as we have studied [the 1918 flu pandemic]I think what we are experiencing as a global community is really bad and is similar to that transformative experience of 1918, “he said.
PBS NewshourWilliam Brangham tweeted that Schuchat’s comments served as a “brutal check on pandemic reality.”
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Public health experts also weighed in on the interview.
On the right, important comments about the seriousness of the COVID situation in the United States by Anne Schuchat, deputy director @cdcgov. The country should hear more from Dr. Schuchat, who has led major epidemics in the past, planned for years, and speaks directly and objectively https://t.co/ieNJzfWWlK
- Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) June 30, 2020
Seeing Dr. Anne Schuchat speak and be cited in the press is the most encouraging COVID development in a long time, even though it's bringing bad news = true, a rare product of USG recently. https://t.co/KrG6jBWfuB
- Marc Lipsitch (@mlipsitch) June 30, 2020
I hear every word Dr. Schuchat says on @ COVID19. He has worked on this for over 20 years. Brilliant, thoughtful, effective. This is ESSENTIAL listening. The virus is "incredibly infectious". More masks, less chance of the virus spreading. Pearls of wisdom. Professional epidemiology. https://t.co/r4hzJWZJrr
- Dr. Tom Frieden (@DrTomFrieden) June 30, 2020
Schuchat's interview took place on the same day that the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, made an equally sobering assessment of progress in containing the coronavirus, saying that "this is not even close to completion "
"Although many countries have made progress," he said, "globally, the pandemic is accelerating."
As of press time, there were more than 10.4 million confirmed cases of coronavirus, including more than 2.6 million in the US, according to Johns Hopkins.
The university tracker also showed that Covid-19 has caused 509,706 deaths, 129,545 of which were in the U.S.
