Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for three decades and one of the leading experts on pandemics in the United States for the past four decades, told US lawmakers Tuesday that SARS-CoV-2 took it for surprise. , particularly in a unique way that helped lead to one of the biggest public health crises in a generation.
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‘I have been dealing with viral outbreaks for the past 40 years. I have never seen a single virus, that is, a pathogen, that has a range where 20% to 40% of people have no symptoms. ”
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“I have been dealing with viral outbreaks for the past 40 years. I have never seen a single virus, that is, a pathogen, that has a range in which 20% to 40% of people do not have symptoms, “he told a Committee of the Chamber of Energy and Commerce about the response of the Trump administration to the new coronavirus pandemic on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC
The World Health Organization currently estimates that 16% of people with COVID-19 are asymptomatic and can transmit the coronavirus, while other data shows that 40% of coronavirus transmission is due to carriers showing no symptoms. of the illness. As a result, public health officials have advised people to keep a distance of six feet from each other.
A recent study from the University of California, San Francisco said there is a high viral load of SARS-CoV-2 detachment in the upper respiratory tract, even among pre-symptomatic patients, “which distinguishes it from SARS-CoV-1. , where replication occurs mainly in the lower respiratory tract. ” Such a viral load makes detection of infection based on symptoms less effective in the case of SARS CoV-2, he said.
Also Tuesday, Fauci dismissed criticism that federal authorities had created a serious mistake by telling the public not to wear masks during the early days of the pandemic, only to reverse that decision later. The Centers for Disease Control, the White House and the World Health Organization reversed their decision on the effectiveness of wearing masks.
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“There was a shortage of equipment that our healthcare providers needed, who put themselves in daily danger of caring for sick people.”
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“Okay, let’s play that game,” Fauci said when asked about the seemingly sudden turnaround in public health policy. “I don’t regret that because, let me explain what happened. At the time, there was a shortage of equipment that our health care providers needed, who put themselves on the line every day to care for sick people. “
After two months of obfuscation over the effectiveness of face masks, during which New York City became the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, and one month after the WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak Like a pandemic, federal authorities in the United States said that all Americans should, after all, wear face covers in public places.
The COVID-19 pandemic, which was first identified in Wuhan, China in December, had infected 9,178,773 people worldwide and 2,338,275 in the United States as of Tuesday. It had claimed at least 474,513 lives worldwide, 121,119 of which were in the United States. USA, According to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
The Dow Jones DJIA Industrial Index,
and the S&P 500 SPX,
Tuesday ended a little higher, as investors evaluated progress in the COVID-19 vaccine investigation amid fears of a surge in coronavirus in the US states. USA who have relaxed the restrictions. Fauci said he was hopeful that a coronavirus vaccine could be developed in early 2021.
How COVID-19 is transmitted
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