States seeing surging COVID-19 cases "should seriously look at shutting down" again, Anthony Fauci, the Trump administration's top coronavirus official, said on a Wall Street Journal podcast Wednesday. "It's not for me to say, because each state is different," Fauci clarified.
That statement puts Fauci at odds with President Trump, who has pledged the U.S. will not shut down again even though coronavirus case counts are skyrocketing to new heights. A record 62,000 new cases were reported in the U.S. on Wednesday, bringing the total case count in the U.S. to 3 million. The national death toll has hit 132,000, per Johns Hopkins University numbers.
Dr. Ali Khan, the former director of the CDC's public health preparedness office, similarly told CNN that if states aren't doing what's necessary to "get this outbreak under control ... your only option is to shut down."
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