“This is a true call to action,” Health and Human Services Section. Alex Azar told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Monday, encouraging Americans to “wear face covers when we can’t practice social distancing,” noting that while “we have many more tools now than we did two months ago,” There is still a “heavy burden on us in terms of our collective responsibility as individuals when we reopen.”
However, Azar refused to endorse a possible federal order ordering the use of masks in public. Although former Vice President Joe Biden, the alleged Democratic presidential candidate, has endorsed the proposal, Trump administration officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, have pointed out to Americans the guidelines on face covers issued by cities and states.
“We are a very, very broad country with different circumstances,” Azar said Monday, adding: “You don’t need a national mandate. What you need are local leaders to determine the circumstances in that community.”
When asked Monday about the administration’s advice for states to see spikes in cases, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany appeared to pressure governors to move forward with their reopening plans, saying to “Fox & Friends” that “this country cannot afford to remain closed.” “
McEnany also argued that the United States “has entered a different phase of this disease” and is now “trapping people in the community, not in hospitals in the later stages” of the disease. “We are in a place where we can handle the cases that we are seeing,” he said.
But Fauci cautioned that the federal government was “not doing very well” in contact tracing, the process by which health officials identify and isolate those who have come into contact with infected people, saying the containment strategy of the The disease has been further complicated by the epidemiological nature of recent outbreaks.
“We are now looking at the consequences of the spread of the community, which is even more difficult to contain than the spread in a known physical location,” such as a prison, a nursing home or a meat packing plant, Fauci said.
“When the community spreads, it is insidious, because there are many people in the community who are infected, but are asymptomatic,” he added. “It makes efficient contact tracking extremely problematic, because most infected people don’t even know they are infected. So how do you trace contacts when someone doesn’t have any symptoms?
