Washington: Amid the ongoing resurgence of new COVID-19 cases in the US, Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, has slammed the White House over its response to the pandemic, saying the spike was “not a good situation”.
“We’re in for a whole lot of hurt. It’s not a good situation,” The Hill news website reported on Sunday citing Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, as saying in an interview to The Washington Post.
The Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said that “all the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors”.
“You could not possibly be positioned more poorly,” he added.
Fauci further said that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was “taking it (pandemic) seriously from a public health perspective”, while President Donald Trump is “looking at it from a different perspective” by focusing on “the economy and reopening the country”.
In another claim, the top health expert added that the White House coronavirus task force has had fewer meetings the despite the continued resurgence.
Regarding his meetings with Trump, Fauci said: “The last time I spoke to the President was not about any policy; it was when he was recovering in Walter Reed, he called me up.
“All of a sudden, they didn’t like what the message was because it wasn’t what they wanted to do anymore.
“They needed to have a medical message that was essentially consistent with what they were saying.”
Fauci’s latest rebuke against the administration comes after he had said late last month that it was not likely for a Covid-19 vaccine to be available in the US until next year, The Hill news reported.
In a statement to the JAMA medical journal, Fauci said that even though companies “would have enough data for the independent safety monitoring board to recommend applying for emergency authorization” by December, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) might not grant that authorization early next year.
Also last month in a call with his re-election campaign staff, Trump slammed Fauci and called him “a disaster” and even accused the health exert of providing inconsistent advice about the pandemic and claimed that if he had followed all of the top scientist’s advice, the US would have “700,000 to 800,000 deaths right now”.
The overall number of coronavirus cases in the US as of Monday has increased to 9,199,523, while the deaths have surged to 230,934, according to the Johns Hopkins University.
The US is currently the worst-hit country in the world.
IANS
