Top U.S. disease expert urges strict control of COVID-19

NEW DELHI – Top U.S. infectious disease official Anthony Fauci has urged strict prevention and control measures against COVID-19 as he believes that the virus may not be eliminated.

“There’s no way we’re going to eradicate, I doubt, because of the transmissibility … I doubt very seriously whether we’re going to eliminate it, like we’ve eliminated polio, and we’ve eliminated measles, and a century ago we eliminated malaria from the United States,” Fauci was quoted by television news channel Times Now as saying.

“But there’s control and it’s going to be up to us what level of control that we are willing to accept,” he said, suggesting that control is what will be the key weapon in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic that has infected more than 260 million people across the world.

Fauci made the remarks as COVID-19 cases surged across Europe and in large swaths of the United States.

“If you’re willing to accept control at 70,000 per day, that’s wrong. No way we can accept 70,000, (or) 80,000 infections a day. You have to get it down so low that it doesn’t impact, in a negative way, society. So we don’t worry about getting sick and dying,” he said.

“When we get there, I can’t predict. I hope it’s relatively soon, and it’s going to depend a lot on how well we do in vaccinating the population,” Fauci said. (Xinhua)