Fauci: U.S. "starting to see glimmers of hope" in new coronavirus cases
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The U.S. is starting to see "glimmers of hope" when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, despite recent increases in the rate of reported deaths due to the illness, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Fox News.
The big picture: Fauci said deaths generally lag behind the number of new cases and hospitalizations. The latter two indicators are what's "fueling the outbreak," Fauci said. He pointed to stabilizing or decreasing numbers of key indicators in New York as a sign that "we should start to see the beginning of a turnaround," after this week.
Driving the news: The U.S. reported its largest single-day increase in fatalities on Tuesday — with more than 2,000 dead. More than 1,000 people in the U.S. have died each day since April 1 from COVID-19.
What he's saying:
"Well, as you correctly reported, the number of deaths on a given day continues to increase. You know, at the same time, seemingly paradoxically but not, we are starting to see some glimmers of hope, because the deaths generally lag by a couple of weeks behind what's fueling the outbreak, namely the number of new cases and the number of hospitalizations.
So at the same time as we're seeing an increase in death, like typically what we are seeing now from New York, over the last few days, there's been a stabilization and a decrease in the hospitalizations, admissions to intensive care and of the requirements for intubations. That means that, as we get further on beyond this week we should start to see the beginning of a turnaround which is a good sign.
So you know, it's very sobering to see the increase in deaths and we predicted over the weekend that this would really be a bad week. And it is, it's going to be a bad week for deaths. But driving that and ahead of that is a fact that we're going to start to see the beginning of a turnaround. So we need to keep pushing on the mitigation strategies because there is no doubt that that is having a positive impact on the dynamics of the outbreak."— Fauci, on Fox News
