The nation's top infectious disease expert said Sunday that the U.S. "may see a surge upon a surge" of the coronavirus in the weeks after Thanksgiving, and he does not expect current recommendations on social distancing to be relaxed before Christmas.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on ABC's "This Week" that the level of infection in the U.S. would not "all of a sudden turn around."
"So clearly in the next few weeks, we're going to have the same sort of thing. And perhaps even two or three weeks down the line ... we may see a surge upon a surge," he said.
Several members of President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force, including Fauci, fanned out across the Sunday talk shows to promise a rapid rollout of coronavirus vaccines to millions of Americans by year's end and to implore Americans to follow safety guidelines to help limit the spread of the virus in the coming weeks.
Fauci, speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press," said that it's "not too late" for people traveling home after Thanksgiving to help curb the virus by wearing masks, staying distant from others and avoiding large groups of people.
The number of new covid-19 cases reported in the United States topped 200,000 for the first time Friday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Since January, when the first infections were reported in the U.S., the nation's total number of cases has surpassed 13 million. More than 266,000 people have died.
Other experts agreed that the coming weeks would be difficult, especially after so many people traveled over the holiday and held in-person dinners indoors.
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Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation" that Americans who traveled in the past week should try to avoid people over 65. She said that those who were around others for Thanksgiving "have to assume that you were exposed and you became infected, and you really need to get tested in the next week."
Birx warned that the number of coronavirus cases is "three, four and 10 times" as high as it was during the second surge, which came after Memorial Day weekend.
"It looked like things were starting to improve in our northern plain states, and now with Thanksgiving, we're worried that all of that will be reversed," Birx said, adding that people should "take it upon yourself to be restrictive" even in states that do not have regulations in place to curb the spread of the virus.
U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams also called on Americans to help stop the virus's spread by wearing masks and avoiding gatherings in the months remaining before a vaccine is widely available.
"It's going to get worse over the next several weeks," Adams said on "Fox News Sunday," referring to the rates of infection, hospitalization and deaths resulting from the pandemic. "The actions we take over the next several days will determine how bad it's going to get."
Brett Giroir, assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, declined to recommend that all Americans who traveled or will travel during holidays quarantine afterward.
In an interview on CNN, Giroir said those who traveled should decrease unnecessary activities and quarantine only if they had close contact with someone known to have had covid-19.
Meanwhile, a busy travel weekend continued, despite the warnings for Americans to stay close to home and limit their holiday gatherings.
Aside from the Thanksgiving holiday itself, anywhere from 800,000 to more than 1 million travelers made their way through U.S. airport checkpoints on any day during the past week, according to Transportation Security Administration statistics. That's a far cry from the 2.3 million to 2.6 million seen daily last year. But it far surpasses the number of travelers early in the pandemic, when daily totals fell below 100,000 on some spring days.
VACCINE ROLLOUT
Adams said the federal government hopes to quickly review and approve requests from drugmakers for emergency use of their covid-19 vaccines.
Pfizer Inc. submitted an Emergency Use Authorization request on Nov. 20 for the vaccine it developed with Germany's BioNTech. It was the first to seek such clearance. A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee of outside experts will meet Dec. 10 to review the Pfizer/BioNTech clinical trial data in public, which could precede rapid approval.
"We, from a federal perspective, have promised and set everything up so we can quickly review those [Emergency Use Authorizations] and hopefully start sending out vaccines within 24 to 48 hours," Adams said on "Fox News Sunday."
Adams said he expects 40 million vaccine doses to be produced by the end of the year and for most Americans to have access to a vaccine by early in the second quarter of 2021.
Fauci, on "Meet the Press," said the arrival of vaccines offers a "light at the end of the tunnel." This week, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will meet with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to discuss a rollout of the vaccine, he said.
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He added that President-elect Joe Biden should focus on distributing vaccines in an "efficient and equitable way." Fauci also said he planned to push the new administration for a rigorous testing program.
Health care workers will likely be among the first to be vaccinated, with the first vaccinations happening before the end of December, followed by many more in January, February and March, he said.
"So if we can hang together as a country and do these kinds of things to blunt these surges until we get a substantial proportion of the population vaccinated, we can get through this," Fauci said.
United Airlines Holdings Inc. began operating charter flights on Friday to position doses of Pfizer's vaccine for quick distribution once approved, Dow Jones reported. A week ago, the chief executive officer of CVS Health Corp. said the pharmacy chain is ready to quickly vaccinate residents at thousands of long-term care facilities.
"It's pretty much decided" that residents and staffs of such care facilities, and health care workers in general, will be the first groups to get access to vaccines, former FDA administrator Scott Gottlieb said on "Face the Nation."
"There's about 20 million health care workers who might be eligible, and about 3 million residents of long-term care facilities and staff of those facilities. Those will be the first group of patients who get access to it," he said.
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On "This Week," Fauci said the covid-19 vaccine won't be "centrally mandated" in the U.S., but that some local officials or employers might apply pressure to get people vaccinated.
"Any individual group can mandate vaccines in certain ways," he said. "Individual units, be they hospitals or other organizations, can do that. It's within their right to say, if you want to work with us, you're going to have to get a vaccine."
Fauci said he has some concern about the overall anti-vaccination movement but that the vaccine research process has been "scientifically sound."
"The process of determining whether it works, whether it's safe and effective has been independent, by independent bodies, and transparent," he said.
TIGHTER RESTRICTIONS
States and cities are unevenly navigating the current surge, with some clamping down while others are resisting measures that could slow the spread of the virus.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, announced on Sunday a reopening of the nation's largest public school system, starting with elementary schools, a reversal of his decision to close New York City public schools less than two weeks ago. The Supreme Court's conservative majority last week struck down temporary pandemic-related restrictions on religious organizations imposed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, in hot spots where the virus is raging.
More covid-19 restrictions are in store for California starting today. Los Angeles County will impose a lockdown calling for its 10 million residents to stay home. Santa Clara County, which includes San Jose, is banning all high school, collegiate and professional sports and imposing a quarantine for anyone traveling into the region from more than 150 miles away.
"We know we are asking a lot from so many who have been sacrificing for months on end and we hope that L.A. County residents continue following Public Health safety measures that we know can slow the spread," Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said in a statement.
California and Texas last week broke the U.S. record for most new coronavirus infections reported in a single day. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, earlier this month ruled out any further shutdowns in the state.
Additionally, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and his partner, Marlon Reis, have both tested positive for the coronavirus and are asymptomatic, the governor said in a statement Saturday night.
Polis, a Democrat, had started quarantining Wednesday after he said he was exposed to the virus. Polis had tweeted late Wednesday that he tested negative the night after learning of his exposure but would be retested.
The state has been hit with a substantial spike in covid-19 cases. One in 41 residents are believed to be contagious.
"It doesn't matter who you are or what you do, no one is immune from this virus," Polis said in his statement. "Now is the time to be more cautious than ever before. There is more of the virus circulating across the country, including in Colorado, now than there even was in the spring."
Information for this article was contributed by Tamara Lush, Sarah Skidmore Sell, David B. Caruso, Karen Matthews and staff members of The Associated Press; by Christopher Condon and Yueqi Yang of Bloomberg News; and by Jacqueline Alemany of The Washington Post.
