FILE – CDC Director Dr Robert Redfield wears a protective mask while testifying at a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis hearing on July 31, 2020 in Washington, DC (Photo by Erin Scott-Pool / Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES – U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield said Americans may have “worst case” season because of the potentially deadly combination of the new coronavirus, seasonal flu, and people who do not follow essential COVID-19 preventive measures.
During an August 14 interview with WebMD’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. John Whyte, Redfield discussed the importance of COVID-19 preventive measures, including wearing a mask, social distance, washing hands and preventing large crowds.
“You’re doing these four things, it’s going to bring this outbreak down,” Redfield said. “But if we do not do that, as I said last April, this may be the worst case scenario from a public health perspective we have ever had.”
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Redfield said his biggest concern is a combined wave of two viruses, the new coronavirus and the flu, which are hitting Americans at the worst public health crisis in decades.
“We’re going to have flu in the fall, and one of them could even plague hospital systems,” Redfield said. “I’ve seen hospital-intensive units stretch through a heavy flu season, and clearly, we’ve all seen it recently with COVID.”
The CDC director also stressed the need for individuals to get a flu vaccine.
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“By getting that vaccine, you may be able to ignore the need for a hospital bed. And then that hospital bed could be more available to those who could potentially get hospitalized for COVID, “Redfield said, adding that in the last 10 years, nearly 360,000 people in the U.S. have died from the flu.
As of August 14, the number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths in the United States stood at more than 167,000 and confirmed cases nationwide at more than 5.2 million, according to Johns Hopkins University data .
When asked about the possibility of a coronavirus vaccine being available in early 2021, Redfield said he was cautiously optimistic “that we will deploy one or more vaccines before the first of the year.”
Even with rapid developments being made on a coronavirus vaccine, many infectious disease experts believe it could take as long as a year until one is available to the public after the vaccine is approved – and even longer until the world returns. comes to relative normal.
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InCrowd, a medical research firm, surveyed 100 infectious disease specialists between July 26 and 6 about their thoughts and beliefs about the COVID-19 crisis. Survey results showed that 80% of respondents believed that a coronavirus vaccine would be widely available to the public within a year after it was approved for distribution.
According to a press release about the survey, doctors treating frontline said they believe it will not be until October 2021 that the world returns to a sense of normalcy, a prediction “that is more than twice as long as doctor estimates in May. “
And even if a vaccine was widely available, its effectiveness could be hindered by Americans refusing to take it.
A August 7 Gallup poll showed as many as one in three Americans said they would not receive a vaccine for COVID-19, even if the vaccine was FDA-approved and there were no costs involved.
Redfield called for the ongoing practice of recommended measures to help stop the spread of the new coronavirus.
“If the American public is really going to wear what I asked for, you’re going to wear a mask, the social distance, to use great hand – hand hygiene, and be smart about crowds, and we all do,” Redfield said. ‘And I always tell people, I ask some of America not to do it. We have to do it all. ”
