CDC Director: COVID-19 has 'stabilized,' anticipate decline
Dr. Robert Redfield, CDC director, discusses when he thinks the U.S. will hit coronavirus peak and the importance of staying committed to mitigation steps
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Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, discussed on “Fox & Friends” Monday when he thinks the U.S. will hit the coronavirus peak and said, “we're going to need to reopen gradually in a thoughtful, prudent way.”
Redfield, a long-time infectious disease specialist, made the comment on Monday as the Trump administration has been trying to reopen the economy by May.
Redfield said on Monday that “we are still not reached the peak, but we’re close.”
He acknowledged that “the outbreak has stabilized across our country,” but added that people will know that the United States has reached the peak when the numbers start going down.
As of Monday, more than 557,000 positive coronavirus cases have been reported in the United States with more than 22,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
In New York, the hardest hit state, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said the number of hospitalizations due to the new coronavirus has been decreasing.
THE CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK STATE BY STATE
“I think we’ve really stabilized across the country,” Redfield said on Monday. “We’re still seeing a small rate of increase in the range of 5 to 6 percent, as opposed to where we were before when it was 20 percent, 30 percent per day; but we are close.”
“We’re stabilized and I anticipate that we will begin to see a decline in the days ahead, but we have got to just continue to take it day by day and look at the data,” he continued.
He added that it’s “going to be really important that we stay committed to the mitigation steps that we have in the 30 days to slow the spread of this coronavirus.”
“We're going to need to reopen gradually in a thoughtful, prudent way, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, based on the data about what's the state of transmission of this virus in those areas,” he explained.
Redfield thanked the American people for “embracing the sacrifice of the social distancing guidelines that we’ve put out” and added that “the consequence of that” is noticeable.
He noted that the original models had predicted that 2 million people could have lost their lives if mitigation efforts have not been implemented and followed.
“It's much, much, much less than that and it’s really a direct consequence of the American public all coming in,” he said. “It's going to be critical over the next four to eight to 12 weeks that we continue thoughtful mitigation steps as we begin to bring our country back to work.”
Redfield also acknowledged that “critical” to opening the country back up “is going to be the continued increase in the availability of testing.”
“The fundamental to that is that the fundamentals of public health are in place so that we can have early case recognition, isolation, contact tracing,” he said.
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He added, “We’re obviously gearing up to reinforce the public health capacity across this nation to do it, but increasing in testing is continuing on a daily basis and it is going to need to be in place in order for us to effectively reopen and keep this nation reopened.”
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