COVID-19: US scientist warns of possible virus ‘surge’

A leading member of the White House coronavirus task force, Anthony Fauci has urged US states including Arizona, Texas, and Florida to move aggressively to prevent recent increases in cases from turning into “a real surge”.

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases issued his call after US vice-president Mike Pence, head of the task force, played down the possibility of a “second wave” of Covid-19 cases, saying in a Wall Street Journal column that “such panic is overblown”.

“We are concerned about it but hopefully we can prevent individual blips we are seeing becoming a real surge,” he told the Financial Times. “The critical issue is how we handle and respond to the increases in cases.”

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“All you need to do is look at the data, the facts, to see that the pandemic is not over by any means. The numbers speak for themselves,” said Fauci.

In a related development, the World Health Organisation (WHO) head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus has warned that countries need to “stay alert to the possibility of resurgence” as new clusters of cases emerge in Beijing and more than 100,000 cases of coronavirus are reported across the world every day.

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