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<br>Dr. Anthony Fauci warned on Wednesday the coronavirus situation in the United States is going to get worse and 'many, many millions' will be affected.
His warning came as 33 people in the United States have died, the number of infected topped 1,000, the stock markets tanked and several schools said they would move to online classes after spring break out of fears of infection.
'Bottom line, it's going to get worse,' Fauci, the director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at congressional hearing on the outbreak.
He warned millions will be affected.
'If we are complacent and don't do really aggressive containment and mitigation, the number could go way up and be involved in many, many millions. If we contain we could flatten it,' he noted.
He also recommended large sporting events be banned.
'We would recommend that there not be large crowds. If that means not having any people in the audience as the N.B.A. plays, so be it,' he said.
And he warned that the mortality rate for coronavirus is at least 10 times that of regular seasonal flu - to which it has been compared by President Donald Trump.
He said that the WHO estimated it to be lethal in 3.4% of recorded cases so far, a figure he expects to drop to 1% - 'which means it's 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu.'
Fauci, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, and other administration officials sat before the House Oversight committee to testify on the administration's response to the epidemic.
The hearing quickly turned into a bipartisan bickering match with Democrats criticizing the administration's response and Republicans accusing the other side of playing politics.
Dr. Anthony Fauci warned the coronavirus is going to get worse when he testified on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning
CDC Director Robert Redfield revealed there was a problem with the original test kits manufactured which set back production
At the top of the hearing, Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney announced their testimony would be cut short because President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence called an 'emergency meeting' at the White House later today on the coronavirus.
She did not offer more details.
When she ended the meeting at 11:35 a.m., the New York Democrat said: 'I don't know what is going on White House.'
She noted that the White House is telling journalists the meeting was scheduled yesterday.
However, she added: ‘Your staff said the White House did not tell them about this sudden meeting until this morning. There seems to be a great deal of confusion and lack of coordination at the White House.'
And <a href="http://jetblacktransportation.com/c/lp/how-much-is-a-taxi-from-jfk-to-new-rochelle-ny/">JetBlack</a>; two members of the committee - incoming White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Rep. Paul Gosar - were not present because they are self-quarantining after coming into contact with the person at CPAC who tested positive for coronavirus.
Fauci offered his grim prognosis under questioning from Democratic lawmakers, who were critical over the lacking of testing kits available for the disease.
'My constituents are telling me they can't get tested,' Maloney told the witnesses. 'South Korea can test more people in one day than we have tested in the past two months.'
South Korea has said it's testing 10,000 people a day.
'Unfortunately when we look at the last three months objectively it is clear that strategic errors and a failure of leadership impaired our nation's ability to respond to this outbreak. This in turn endangers us all,' she said.
She asked Fauci: 'Is the worst yet to come?'
'Yes it is,' he responded.
He cited concerns about 'community spread' in his response. And he noted that how much worse it gets depends on two things: the ability of U.S. authorities to curtail the influx of travelers who may be bringing the disease into the country and the ability of states and communities to contain local outbreaks in this country.
He also noted the United States is 'going to have to rely on public health measures to contain this outbreak.'
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Kadlec, assistant secretary of Health and Human Services for Preparedness and Response, Dr. Terry Rauch, acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for health readiness policy and oversight, and Chris Currie, director of emergency management and national preparedness at the Government Accountability Office, are sworn in before testifying at a House Oversight Committee
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, confer before testifying on Capitol Hill about the coronavirus
Medics transport a patient through heavy rain into an ambulance at Life Care Center of Kirkland, the long-term care facility linked to several confirmed coronavirus cases in the state, in Kirkland, Washington
And <a href="https://www.purevolume.com/?s=Redfield%20argued">Redfield argued</a> the CDC has put out 75,000 tests. He noted any health center can send a sample to the agency's headquarters in Atlanta for testing and get the results in a couple of days.
‘It's not just for an individual to take a test, they need to see a medical professional and have an assessment,' he said.
He also revealed there was a problem with the first set of testing kits developed by the CDC which set back sending them out to health centers. He declined to provide details on what the problem was or what company had manufactured the problem kits.
President Donald Trump has blamed federal regulations put in place by the Obama administration for the delay in testing.
Republican Congressman Jim Jordan, a close ally of President Trump on Capitol Hill, defended the administration's response and appealed for bipartisanship.
'On this issue we should all work together for the health of every American. We should not play politics with coronavirus,' he said. 'He should all come together under President Trump's leadership.'
The total number of US deaths now stands at 31, with most of them coming from a Washington care home.
The number of confirmed infections has also hit 1,039 on Wednesday morning, after 274 new cases were recorded across the country on Tuesday.
However experts believe that is likely an under-estimate and the true number could be in excess of 10,000.
The new deaths were confirmed as:
Google told all 100,000 of its US staff to work from home to prevent the spread of the virus
Washington's governor was poised to announce a ban on gatherings of 250 people or more in Seattle
New York think-tank Council on Foreign Relations canceled a conference on coronavirus because of the virus
A team of US and Chinese researchers estimated that there could already be more than 10,000 cases of coronavirus in America, the majority of them undetected
Trump's former pandemic adviser Tom Bossert warned 'we are 10 days from hospitals getting creamed'
Dr. Marty Makary, of Johns Hopkins University, warned the situation in the US could easily get as bad as China
The Treasury said it could delay tax payments beyond the April 15 deadline to help businesses cope
A woman in her 90s who was living in the Carlton Senior Living facility in Elk Grove, California, died on Monday after being infected with coronavirus, state health officials said on Tuesday
First responders in Kirkland, Washington State are seen on Tuesday after loading a patient into an ambulance at the Life Care Center in Kirkland - the nursing home that is at the center of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus
A man wears a face mask as he walks in front of a synagogue in New Rochelle on Tuesday. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo deployed the National Guard to the area after scores of cases of coronavirus were reported
Since the pandemic began last month, there have been at least 1,025 confirmed cases in more than 35 states, according to The New York Times.
However, researchers from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and Peking University in Beijing have published research suggesting that there could be as many as 9,000 additional cases that have gone undetected.
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