Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, said in a new interview that he’s hopeful about blunting the rate of new infections into the summer but that the new coronavirus isn’t just going to “disappear” moving forward.
“I don’t think there’s a chance that this virus is just going to disappear. It’s going to be around, and if given the opportunity, it will resurge,” Dr. Fauci told National Geographic on Monday.
“Shame on us if we don’t have enough tests by the time this so-called return might occur in the fall and winter,” said Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
He also expressed hope about getting several candidates for a vaccine into an advanced trial sometime during the summer.
President Trump said on Sunday he expects that a vaccine will be available before the end of the year.
Though the Trump administration has said there’s strong evidence that the virus originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, rather than a “wet market,” Dr. Fauci pushed back on that notion.
“If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats, and what’s out there now is very, very strongly leaning toward this [virus] could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated — the way the mutations have naturally evolved,” he said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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