US President Donald Trump and his top infectious diseasesexpert, Dr Anthony Fauci, have not met in "several months."?Dr Anthony Fauci has revealed that President Trump has notattended a White House Coronavirus Task Force meeting for several months,despite the fact COVID-19 cases are surging and several states are recording spike, reports CNBC.
Fauci revealed the news during an interview with MSNBC'sChuck Todd on Friday, just hours before he appeared on CNN,?where he advocatedfor a nationwide mask mandate for the very first time.
The response of theworld's wealthiest country in the face of COVID-19 has been disastrous.
The US recorded 71,671 new cases on Thursday, with severalstates setting records across the Midwest and West. This is the single highestdaily tally since the pandemic began. Texas leads with maximum new cases. Theseven-day rolling average for new daily COVID-19 cases in the US was 44,647, twoweeks ago.
The virus has killed more than 223,000 people in the US and made more than 8 million sick.
Less than 24 hours after the final presidential debate onOctober 22, US President Donald Trump was back at the White House holding amini super spreader event, while the country's top infectious diseases expert isurging the government to see the logic of a "golden mean" thatfactors common sense public health guidelines to reopen the economy.
Trump had 30 people huddled around him in the Oval Office onFriday and only one woman in that group was wearing a mask.
"Every time I talk about these things, people getconcerned about shutting down. We're not talking about shutting down, but we'retalking about doubling down on some of the fundamental public health measuresthat we need to adhere to - the universal wearing of masks," Fauci saidduring a television interview on Friday.
Days ahead of the US 2020 election, the coronavirus pandemiccontinues to haunt incumbent Donald Trump both in debates and his poll numbers.He trails Biden in both national and battleground polling.
In recent days, Trump has called Fauci and his ilk"idiots" and claimed that Americans are tired of "COVID, COVID,COVID" all the time.
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Trump has mocked Biden for wearing masks and for adhering topublic health guidance. "We can't live like that," Trump has saidoften held, and continues to hold super spreader rallies and aggressively push theidea of herd immunity.
Fauci has pinned America's failure to contain the virus onthe lack of a uniform guidance from the top, without mentioning Trump."I've always felt that uniformity of response and consistency of responseis always a good thing. People know where they stand, know what they need to doand it was certain fundamental things that have not been adhered to consistently,"he said on Friday.
In the US, at least 5 vaccine candidates are in Phase 3trials. The vaccine made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech is amongseveral leading candidates in final testing. Two studies which started trialson July 27 are fully enrolled and ready to start collecting data.
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Fauci said we'll likely know about vaccine efficacy andsafety latest by early December, and that vaccine doses will be made and readyto go by the end of the year for frontline workers and the most vulnerable.
The vaccine will be available widely only by the summer of2021, according to US public health officials.
All Inputs IANS