US Authorities To Increase Testing To Combat Covid-19
US health authorities are looking at significantly increasing coronavirus testing in areas where cases are soaring due to people not wearing masks and ignoring social-distancing rules.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned the “hard reality” is the pandemic is not even close being to over.
This story was last updated at 3:00am on Tuesday.
America’s top infectious disease official says a spike in US coronavirus infections has been fuelled in large part by people ignoring advice to practise social distancing and wear masks.
A daily surge in confirmed cases has been most pronounced in southern and western states which did not follow health officials’ recommendations to wait for a steady decline in infections for two weeks before reopening their economies.
“That’s a recipe for disaster,” Anthony Fauci, who directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN in an interview broadcast on Monday.
“Now we’re seeing the consequences of community spread, which is even more difficult to contain than spread in a well-known physical location like a prison or nursing home or meatpacking place.”
More than 2.5 million people have tested positive for coronavirus in the US and more than 125,000 have died.
Dr Fauci said in places where cases were soaring, US health officials were considering “completely blanketing these communities with tests”.
The COVID-19 pandemic is not even close to being over, World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing on Monday.
“We all want this to be over. We all want to get on with our lives. But the hard reality is that this is not even close to being over. Although many countries have made some progress globally, the pandemic is actually speeding up,” Dr Tedros said.
The head of the WHO’s emergencies program, Mike Ryan, told the briefing that tremendous progress had been made towards finding a safe and effective vaccine to prevent infection, but there was still no guarantee the effort would succeed.
In the meantime, countries could fight the spread of the disease by testing, isolating confirmed cases and tracking their contacts, he said. He singled out Japan, South Korea and Germany for their “comprehensive, sustained strategy” against the virus.
The global body was planning to convene a meeting this week to assess progress in research towards fighting the disease.