Fauci expected to warn the Senate of 'needless suffering and death' if U.S. opens up too quickly

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the most recognized medical expert on the White House coronavirus task force, is expected to warn the Senate on Tuesday that if the U.S. reopens too fast, Americans will experience "needless suffering and death," The New York Times reports.

Fauci and three other top government doctors are scheduled to testify remotely before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. In an email sent late Monday night, Fauci wrote that the "major message" he hopes to convey to the committee is "if we skip over the checkpoints in the guidelines to 'Open America Again,' then we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks throughout the country. This will not only result in needless suffering and death, but would actually set us back on our quest to return to normal."

The White House's three-phase Opening Up America Again plan sets guidelines for states to follow regarding reopening. One key point is that states should have a "downward trajectory of positive tests" or a "downward trajectory of documented cases" of COVID-19 over two weeks, while at the same time testing asymptomatic people in vulnerable populations and conducting extensive contact tracing. Many states that have started to reopen are not following these guidelines, and scientists say a second wave of infection may happen earlier than the fall, with waves occurring across the country, the Times reports.

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