Americans should prepare for the COVID-19 pandemic to get worse before it gets better, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday.
With December being the deadliest month of the pandemic in the U.S. so far – with more than 65,000 confirmed and probable virus-related deaths, according to The COVID Tracking Project – Fauci told CNN that January could be even worse due largely to the amount of holiday travel the past five weeks despite warnings from public health officials.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it is too late to control travel, as most people have done so already. However, he begged holiday travelers to avoid congregating with large numbers of people after they travel.
"We're in a surge right now whose incline, whose inflection is very sharp," Fauci said.
"That's what we're concerned about that in addition to the surge, we're gonna have an increase superimposed on that surge, which could make January even worse than December. I hope not, I hope that doesn’t happen, but that certainly is possible."
The U.S. surpassed 19 million coronavirus infections Sunday. Fauci said the country is seeing between 100,000 and 200,000 new infections daily, spiking that means an increase in hospitalizations and deaths.
"I hope we don't just get to that level of continually seeing over 200,000 because, as you know, it staggers: You get cases, you get hospitalizations and then you get deaths," Fauci said per The Hill. "It's highly predictable that once you increase in those number of cases in a staggered way every couple of weeks, you get increase in the number of hospitalizations."
Fauci also said the coronavirus surge has "gotten out of control in many respects," and the result has been increased difficulty "to do effective identification, isolation and contact tracing."
"I think we just have to assume that it's going to get worse," Fauci said.
According to data from the COVID Tracking Project, the previous monthly high of COVID-related deaths was in April, when more than 55,000 Americans died.
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