“I’m not sure what he means,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN’s Jim Acosta in the Situation Room.
“There are certain states that are actually doing well in the sense that cases are dropping.” However, Fauci continued, experts remain concerned about a number of states, including Montana, Michigan, Minnesota and Dakota, which are seeing an increase in the percentage of positive coronavirus tests, indicating the spread of the virus.
“We’re going around the corner, by the way,” Trump said at a White House briefing. “We are approaching a virus.”
“Of course it is possible,” Fauci said of the model’s prediction. “If you do a lot indoors and don’t use masks to their fullest, you’re likely to hit that number.”
But Fauci called the forecast “a good warning” about what could happen if Americans don’t take precautions. “While this number is a little scary … for us it can be a kind of push to realize that we can do something to stop it,” Fauci said.
A model from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation says the near-universal use of masks could cut the predicted additional deaths by more than half.
Ahead of Labor Day, Fauci advised people to wear masks, stay out of the public eye and avoid large crowds.
“We want to make sure that across the country, but especially in vulnerable states that are starting to show growth, we comply with the public health regulations and rules that we talk about all the time over the weekend, and not in essence, have the same type of spikes. which we saw after other holiday weekends such as the Fourth of July and Memorial Day, ”he said.
